This is such a great question. First of all I have to mention three pieces of writing that inspired the story: “Everyday Barf” by Eileen Myles, “Barf Manifesto” by Dodie Bellamy, and “Apoplexia, Toxic Shock, and Toilet Bowl: Some Notes on Why I Write” by Kate Zambreno. Three amazing women writing about vomit! In these writings, there’s a connection between, as Zambreno puts it, the revolting and the revolt. So yes, my characters are sick, but in a sick society, their sickness is a kind of health. This goes back to the idea of control—what is health, actually, and what is sickness, and who gets to decide? Very often, as you pointed out, people like Cee, who rebel against the status quo, are dismissed as “sick.” So when Tisha looks for liberation, for escape, that’s the only language she has for it. She wants to get sick. The science-fictional element of the implant or “bug” inside her is social control made literal: control imagined as a device that you can actually throw up. If only it were that easy!
The other important aspect of sickness in the story is that it’s catching: One person vomits and then everybody else wants to throw up too. This is something we all know, and it can be really funny—think of the “barf-o-rama” scene in the movie Stand by Me. In my story—and again, I owe this notion to the three writers I mentioned earlier—there’s a liberating power in this contagious urge to throw up. If nausea is rebellion, and nausea is catching, then it has real political implications. Of course it’s no accident that my rebels are a bunch of girls, girls whose bodies are controlled, and who get up to a secret vomit-fest in the bathroom. Feminist writing has always been concerned with the body and its potential, the body as a site of resistance, and how that affects writing.
What’s up next for you?
I’m working on the sequel to my novel A Stranger in Olondria. I’m also working on a chapbook of monstrous prose poems called Monster Portraits, with images by my brother, Del Samatar. I want to write an essay about the concepts of Afropolitanism and Afrofuturism, and the links between them. And I want to write an essay about Charlie Parker.
Bradley Englert is currently an undergrad at Western Kentucky University where he studies English, creative writing, and film. He enjoys writing fiction and directing short films. One day he hopes to have something written in italics in this section.
Author Spotlight: Chen Qiufan
Robyn Lupo
What was the spark that set you to writing “The Mao Ghost”? What was the most challenging aspect of writing this story?
The initial inspiration came from reading Ken Liu’s “The Paper Menagerie.” I wanted to write something about family relationships, Chinese style: Sometimes you feel they’re the closest people to you in the world, but a lot of times you treat them with extreme cruelty (or vice versa).
My father had liver cancer (fortunately, he survived); many of my female friends have difficult relationships with their mothers (this seems to be fairly common); I wanted to put these pieces together and tell a story about love and lies using the tropes of science fiction.
The biggest challenge for me was that I rarely write stories from a female point of view, let alone a young girl’s point of view. I tried to make the story plausible and to make the characters emotionally real. I consulted with and sought feedback from some of my female friends, and hopefully the result doesn’t feel too awkward to readers.
You wrote: “Who knows what’s the truth now? All the books have been carefully filtered, and all we can read are reports from newspapers that are refreshed daily at the designated time. Without these ghost stories, I’m afraid no one will remember anything.” Censorship of the larger world seems to be a theme in this story. Can you tell us more about censorship and how you see it in relation to “The Mao Ghost”?
There are several layers of deception in the story: The father hides the truth of his illness from the daughter; the state falsifies and tampers with history; and finally, the daughter, taught by everything around her, begins to view the world through a distorted lens, following unspoken rules.
This is, of course, like the reality of today’s China. The most visible aspect of the censorship apparatus is its control of public speech and tampering with media. But the censorship apparatus itself is undergoing change, adopting more intelligent techniques for managing opinions and ideas: to tell a beautiful story, to construct a national myth, even if it’s not true, as long as it can substitute for people’s understanding of reality.
The end of this strand of development is that everyone, almost imperceptibly, is guided into engaging in self-censorship, or self-deception, to distort their own thoughts to fit society’s mainstream values. This is what ought to be feared.
I hope members of the younger generation in China can have their own independent thoughts, to understand themselves, their nation, and the world truly.
I was really caught up in the complicated relationship between Qian and her mother. Can you tell us more about bringing this relationship to the story?
The well-known story of the “Tiger Mother” is an extreme example of the stereotype of Chinese mothers. In reality, this has to do with the generational experiences of Chinese society.
For those of us born in the 1970s and 1980s, our parents went through some of the most tumultuous times in Chinese history as they grew up: the Great Famines of 1959 through 1961, the Cultural Revolution of 1966 through 1976, the mass layoff of state-owned enterprise workers during the 1990s, etc. Too much was missing from their lives, and they had always been taught to live as only a component in a larger whole, to do everything for the benefit of the collective.
Thus, many of them placed their dreams, deeply buried in their hearts, onto the next generation. They used their own values to guide and measure the lives of their children, and so the intergenerational conflict between us is especially severe.
But as members of our generation become parents, the situation is improving. Many younger parents treat their children with a more open attitude and respect their children’s own dreams and lives, hoping that their children can pick paths in life that suit themselves.
Why do you think Qian’s father stuck with the ruse of being Chosen?
My mother went through the Great Famines when she was seven or eight, and she was always hungry. My grandmother would tell her stories filled with all kinds of delicious foods. She would describe in detail the shapes, textures, tastes, and smells. The effect was like the ancient Chinese general who told his soldiers, as they were marching through a desert and parched with thirst, that there would be a stand of plum trees ahead. The soldiers, salivating at the thought of the plums, marched faster and survived the desert.
In extreme conditions, people would try to manufacture beautiful illusions to deceive, numb, or encourage themselves to survive. This wasn’t a phenomenon limited to China—it also occurred in Nazi concentration camps.
In my story, the father created a lovely lie to maintain the daughter’s innocence and faith, so that she could live, as much as was possible, in a fairy tale in the midst of a cruel world, even if it was a very fragile and cheap fairy tale.
Robyn Lupo has been known to frequent southwestern Ontario with her graduate student husband and elderly dog. She writes, reads, and plays video games. She is personal assistant to three cats.
Author Spotlight: Jo Walton
Jude Griffin
How did “Turnover” come about?
I was on a panel about generation starships and people kept talking about how small they could make them, the minimum number of people you could have and keep genetic diversity and have enough people to work the ship. And I said “But what if they didn’t all want to do their jobs, after the first generation?” and Alison Sinclair said “What if they don’t want to be engineers, what if they want to be ballet dancers?” And I was excited by the idea of a ballet dancer on a generation starship.
You wrote on your blog last May that you had given up on “Turnover,” but it was published as a chapbook for Novacon this year—what happen
ed?
I wanted “Turnover” to be a novel, and that’s what I gave up on. What we have here may seem like a short story … but it’s really the first chapter of a novel I’m not writing.
You said once that “As well as history, all of my books are very informed by landscape. Almost all the places in all my books are real.” Since Speranza is set in space, is that why you recreated the Teatro del Sale in Speranza? Have you ever been to the Teatro del Sale in Florence?
Yes. I am a member of Teatro del Sale in Florence, which is exactly the way it’s described in the story, except for being in Florence and not on a generation starship. The first time I went there, my son said that it was the ultimate form of Western food, as dim sum was the ultimate form of Chinese food—and it does have something in common with dim sum, in terms of multiple small, delicious courses. Thinking about that, I naturally thought that these are the food arts we should take to the stars. Speranza, the spaceship, is made up, of course, but I have very solid imaginations of what it looks like and feels like, extrapolated out from real places. It’s about the size of Montreal, where I live, and, like Montreal, it has two major languages and cultures, with other cultures all over the place.
There’s a lot of discussion of choice in this story and how not making a choice to change the way things are is still as much of a choice to keep on with the way things are. Is clarity about the choices one makes the theme of the story?
Yes. Everyone makes choices every moment, and that’s what shapes the future. And the present is shaped by everyone’s past choices—our own, and other people’s. A generation starship allows us to see that in focus, because, after all, there they are, partway through a voyage they didn’t choose. They are the middle generation. But it’s true for all of us all the time—we didn’t choose where we’d be born or the choices made that shaped our world—and yet here we are, shaping the future and the choices of people who don’t even exist yet.
I like that none of the characters have physical descriptions: What was your thinking behind this?
In first person, I only write about what the character notices. People don’t really see their friends unless something has changed about them—a haircut, a new shirt. They just see their familiarity. So Fedra’s having lunch with friends and she’s noticing their expressions and what they’re saying, not what they look like. And she comes from a culture where what people look like is significant in different ways from ours. It’s more interesting that way.
Jude Griffin is an envirogeek, writer, and photographer. She has trained llamas at the Bronx Zoo; was a volunteer EMT, firefighter, and HAZMAT responder; worked as a guide and translator for journalists covering combat in Central America; lived in a haunted village in Thailand; ran an international frog monitoring network; and loves happy endings. Bonus points for frolicking dogs and kisses backlit by a shimmering full moon.
Author Spotlight: Kat Howard
Jude Griffin
What was the seed for “A Different Fate”?
I was rereading Lloyd Alexander’s The Black Cauldron. He has those terrific and terrible sisters, Orwen, Orddu, and Orgoch, and they got me to thinking about the repeating pattern of triune women in mythologies. Or, to be more accurate, it plucked that ongoing fascination with triune women out of the back of my brain, and put it into a place where I needed to write something about it. I had also recently reread a bunch of Greek tragedies, and so that was why the story took on the particular flavor that it did.
Did you uncover anything interesting while researching for the story?
It’s odd to think about actively doing research for this story, because in the absolute sense of “did I look up things specifically for this story,” the answer is no—except for checking the kind of fibers that might be used in weaving—I didn’t do any. But in another sense, most of the pieces of this story come from things that have fascinated me for a while, or stuck in my head like tiny, irritating grains of sand, just waiting for something to come along that would let me string them together in a story. Like the question of “What do women want?” and the archetype of the Loathly Lady, from “The Wife of Bath’s Tale”—it’s a fascinating look at desire and consent and autonomy, stuck into a monster story, so of course I want to write about that. Because part of that story is based around the question of a woman’s appearance, I could use that here, combining it with the idea that if there is a triune figure of womanhood, maybe the appearance of those three women changes, and the question of who gets to decide about that appearance—even the other sisters don’t ever want to be Orgoch.
You’ve said that “… one of the best things I can do to feed my own creativity is to immerse myself in art that is different than writing.” Did you immerse yourself at all into the art of weaving?
I wish that I had! Fiber arts fascinate me, and I would love to learn more about spinning and weaving, and maybe even be able to do them myself someday.
How can choice exist within the context of fate?
I don’t believe in predestination—the idea that everything is already written and planned out and that all we are doing is dancing a set of steps that have already been choreographed. I very much believe that we have the individual freedom to fuck up, and to be full of grace. I also believe that humans are storytelling animals—we like things to make sense, we like narrative. So when we look back, and try and make sense of things, we impose a context, a narrative, on top of events, and one of the names we call that context is Fate.
Why name the other sister Andromeda?
I needed a name from Greek mythology that wasn’t one associated directly with tragedy, so some of my favorite names—Iphigenia, Phaedra—were right out. And I love that Andromeda becomes a constellation after her death. It’s a good fate.
Jude Griffin is an envirogeek, writer, and photographer. She has trained llamas at the Bronx Zoo; was a volunteer EMT, firefighter, and HAZMAT responder; worked as a guide and translator for journalists covering combat in Central America; lived in a haunted village in Thailand; ran an international frog monitoring network; and loves happy endings. Bonus points for frolicking dogs and kisses backlit by a shimmering full moon.
Author Spotlight: Robert Jackson Bennett
Patrick J. Stephens
Where did “A Drink for Teddy Ford” find its beginning?
I started thinking about exactly how to write a speculative story set in the 1920s, as that was the theme of this anthology. Naturally, I started thinking about aspects of the era I’ve researched before and just generally liked, and that made me gravitate toward the P.G. Wodehouse stories about Bertie and Jeeves and the other foppish, empty-headed aristos boozing it up and causing havoc. This made me decide to set the story in a cocktail party, but it quickly took a darker, more sentimental turn. I find I can’t write purely light humor, unfortunately.
Which of the characters do you feel you most identified with as their author?
Probably Thoth. I can see Teddy, and I know what he’s done and what will happen to him, but despite what people may think of authorial power, I can’t change his fate, or what he did. Once you know the story and where it wants to go, there’s not much you as the author can do but watch.
Considering the historical importance, how did you approach blending the tone of the story with the speculative element?
It was really quite easy. Parties by nature have a somewhat fantastical atmosphere: A good party makes you feel like anything can happen, which is very much a fantastical state. Dress everyone up in costumes and stick them in a ramshackle mansion, and there you go. A god can walk among you and go pretty much unnoticed.
“A Drink for Teddy Ford” was originally published in an anthology called Broken Time Blues: Fantastic Tales in the Roaring 20s. What do you think the appeal of these types of stories is, and how do you see “Teddy Ford” fitting into that niche?
Honestly, I think these historical forays might have the same primary appeal we see in Downton Abbey, and Mad Men, and
the like—costumes and sets. It’s a superficial attraction, but an irresistible one. Who doesn’t want to play around in sumptuous clothing and historical venues?
What can we expect to see from you in the future?
My fifth novel, City of Stairs, comes out from Crown Publishing in September of 2014. Much like “Teddy Ford,” it deals with gods and their interactions with humanity; but unlike “Teddy Ford,” it’s set in a secondary world, and the gods have all been killed by a foreign power. The instant a god dies, everything they created vanishes along with them, and as the gods of this particular land were performing a lot of the basic duties of urban infrastructure—buildings, water, roads, etc.—all that was gone in an instant. Reality has grown schizophrenic and confused after so many “edits,” like a bad patchwork quilt, and as the leaders of this new world try to avoid international catastrophe, they slowly begin suspecting the past isn’t quite as dead as everyone seems to think.
It’s a story of statesmanship, spycraft, and diplomacy, set among ruined miracles and the fading divine. Should be a lot of fun.
Patrick J. Stephens recently graduated from the University of Edinburgh and, after spending the entire year writing speculative fiction, came back with a Master’s in Social Science. His first collection (Aurichrome and Other Stories) can be found on Kindle and Nook.
Author Spotlight: Matthew Hughes
Patrick J. Stephens
For readers being introduced to Kaslo through “Phalloon the Illimitable,” could you give the readers an overview of the universe you’ve created through this serial?
It’s a universe I’ve been writing about for twenty years: a far-future, galactic civilization. The thing most of its inhabitants don’t know is that every few thousand years, the universe arbitrarily shifts its fundamental operating principle between rationalism and magic. And one of those changes is just about to happen.
With the title of “Phalloon the Illimitable” and the first line calling that into question, beyond what we get on the page, who is Phalloon to you? What kind of character?
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