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CONTENTS
Department: EDITORIAL: TRUE CONFESSIONS by Sheila Williams
Department: REFLECTIONS: BUILDING WORLDS: PART II by Robert Silverberg
Department: ON THE NET: THE PEOPLE'S TELESCOPE by James Patrick Kelly
Department: THOUGHT EXPERIMENTS: ALMOST POSSIBLE by Mary Robinette Kowal
Novelette: BLOOD DAUBER by Ted Kosmatka and Michael Poore
Short Story: WHERE THE TIME GOES by Heather Lindsley
Novelette: WIFE-STEALING TIME by R. Garcia y Robertson
Poetry: DERIVATIVE WORK by Elissa Malcohn
Novelette: FLOWERS OF ASPHODEL by Damien Broderick
Poetry: FOR YE, OF VERY LITTLE FAITH... by W. Gregory Stewart
Short Story: EROSION by Ian Creasey
Poetry: MONSTERS by Geoffrey A. Landis
Novelette: FLOTSAM by Elissa Malcohn
Poetry: UNGHOST STORIES by Greg Beatty
Short Story: BEFORE MY LAST BREATH by Robert Reed
Novelette: THE GHOST HUNTER'S BEAUTIFUL DAUGHTER by Christopher Barzak
Poetry: THE HEDGE WITCH'S UPGRADE by Sandra Lindow
Short Story: DEADLY SINS by Nancy Kress
Poetry: EDGAR ALLAN POE by Bryan D. Dietrich
Novella: THE SEA OF DREAMS by William Barton
Department: NEXT ISSUE
Department: ON BOOKS: THE FOLK OF THE FRINGE by Norman Spinrad
Department: SF CONVENTIONAL CALENDAR by Erwin S. Strauss
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Asimov's Science Fiction. ISSN 1065-2698. Vol. 33, Nos. 10 & 11. Whole Nos. 405 & 406, October-November 2009. GST #R123293128. Published monthly except for two combined double issues in April/May and October/November by Dell Magazines, a division of Crosstown Publications. One year subscription $43.90 in the United States and U.S. possessions. In all other countries $53.90 (GST included in Canada), payable in advance in U.S. funds. Address for subscription and all other correspondence about them, 6 Prowitt Street, Norwalk, CT 06855. Allow 6 to 8 weeks for change of address. Address for all editorial matters: Asimov's Science Fiction, 475 Park Avenue South, New York, N.Y. 10016. Asimov's Science Fiction is the registered trademark of Dell Magazines, a division of Crosstown Publications. (c) 2008 by Dell Magazines, a division of Crosstown Publications, 6 Prowitt Street, Norwalk, CT 06855. All rights reserved, printed in the U.S.A. Protection secured under the Universal and Pan American Copyright Conventions. Reproduction or use of editorial or pictorial content in any manner without express permission is prohibited. All submissions must include a self-addressed, stamped envelope; the publisher assumes no responsibility for unsolicited manuscripts. Periodical postage paid at Norwalk, CT and additional mailing offices. Canadian postage paid at Montreal, Quebec, Canada Post International Publications Mail, Product Sales Agreement No. 40012460. POSTMASTER, send change of address to Asimov's Science Fiction, 6 Prowitt Street, Norwalk, CT 06855. In Canada return to Quebecor St. Jean, 800 Blvd. Industrial, St. Jean, Quebec J3B 8G4.
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Asimov's Science Fiction. ISSN 1065-2698. Vol. 33, Nos. 10 & 11. Whole Nos. 405 & 406, October/November 2009. GST #R123293128. Published monthly except for two combined double issues in April/May and October/November by Dell Magazines, a division of Crosstown Publications. One year subscription $43.90 in the United States and U.S. possessions. In all other countries $53.90 (GST included in Canada), payable in advance in U.S. funds. Address for subscription and all other correspondence about them, 6 Prowitt Street, Norwalk, CT 06855. Allow 6 to 8 weeks for change of address. Address for all editorial matters: Asimov's Science Fiction, 267 Broadway, Fourth Floor, New York, N.Y. 10007-2352. Asimov's Science Fiction is the registered trademark of Dell Magazines, a division of Crosstown Publications. © 2009 by Dell Magazines, a division of Crosstown Publications, 6 Prowitt Street, Norwalk, CT 06855. All rights reserved, printed in the U.S.A. Protection secured under the Universal and Pan American Copyright Conventions. Reproduction or use of editorial or pictorial content in any manner without express permission is prohibited. All submissions must include a self-addressed, stamped envelope; the publisher assumes no responsibility for unsolicited manuscripts. Periodical postage paid at Norwalk, CT and additional mailing offices. Canadian postage paid at Montreal, Quebec, Canada Post International Publications Mail, Product Sales Agreement No. 40012460. POSTMASTER, send change of address to Asimov's Science Fiction, 6 Prowitt Street, Norwalk, CT 06855. In Canada return to Quebecor St. Jean, 800 Blvd. Industrial, St. Jean, Quebec J3B 8G4.
Department: EDITORIAL: TRUE CONFESSIONS by Sheila Williams
My passion for Star Trek in my mid-teens, was a fire that went through me like a fever. It was kindled by Stephen Whitfield and Gene Rodenberry's nonfiction book The Making of Star Trek. While I had always been interested in the show, this paperback turned it into the typical teenage obsession. The book included a handy list of the show's original seventy-nine episodes. I would watch a rerun after high school and then check it off the list. Some episodes were rare, while others repeated endlessly. They seemed to be shown in no particular order. My fixation on the series was extinguished some two years later at the very moment that I crossed off my last episode—number 67, “The Empath."
While the passion might have ended, those two years had a profound impact on the rest
of my life. I devoured James Blish's short story adaptations of the episodes and wrote and lavishly illustrated my own Star Trek comic book (hopefully long since lost to time). It was because of the show that I attended my first science fiction convention—a Star Trek con at the old Commodore Hotel in New York City—and picked up flyers for the World Science Fiction convention. I also persuaded my parents to drive clear across our home state on a hot summer night to see Leonard Nimoy in an outdoor production of Camelot. Later that night, they waited patiently while I stood on line outside the tent that doubled as the actor's dressing room to get his autograph. The signature has long since fluttered away, but I still appreciate my parents’ indulgence.
Once this fire was doused, I hardly ever talked about it. I bristled when my dear friend Isaac Asimov insisted that the program in general, and Spock's ears in particular, had attracted a large number of women to all aspects of science fiction. While that might have been true for some, it was my love of print science fiction that had awoken my interest in the TV show. In my twenties, I was mortified to think that anyone would assume it was the other way around. Besides, I insisted, and still believe to some extent, my favorite character was the fatherly Dr. McCoy, and not the charismatic Captain Kirk or the mysterious and woefully misunderstood Mr. Spock.
My reticence was also due to the scorn that was piled upon the “Trekkies” (a term I never applied to myself) both within the field of SF and in the world at large. The mainstream press snidely heaped even more ridicule upon the show's aficionados than they did on the typical SF fan. And SF convention goers were rightly affronted when the only note that same mocking press took of a Worldcon was to run a photo of the guy in a red starfleet uniform. For some reason, anyone who had ever expressed an interest in the show had to loudly proclaim that they were gainfully employed and capable of forming relationships with people other than their parents.
While I saw most of the movies and many episodes of the first three television sequels, motherhood and a demanding job did make it difficult to keep up with the various permutations of Star Trek and most other television as well. Like many Star Trek viewers, I enjoyed the parodies when I got the chance to watch them. I thought Galaxy Quest was wonderful. One of the film's screenwriters, Robert Gordon, and its director, Dean Parisot, picked up the movie's Hugo Award at Chicon 2000. I told the two men that I thought the film was the kindest treatment I'd ever seen of the Star Trek phenomenon. After all, the fans were handled gently and it is a fan who ultimately saves the cast of the imaginary television show.
Until recently, First Contact was the last Star Trek movie I'd seen. I found I'd lost interest in Star Trek films that didn't feature any of the original cast. Although the buzz made the new movie sound interesting, I was at first ambivalent about seeing a film that featured new actors in the series’ traditional roles. Yet, when a friend who I've known since our teenagers were babies called to invite me to the movie over the opening weekend, I decided to abandon my husband and children for the reduced price showing on Saturday morning. Yes, there were enormous holes in the plot and I was disturbed by some of the storyline, but when the film ended, I felt like the surrounding air pressure had been lightened. I had truly enjoyed myself, and so had my friend, and so, apparently, had nearly everyone else. I told my husband I'd be happy to see the movie again with him and the kids.
A couple of weeks after catching the film, I found myself at a playground with other parents of first graders. They'd all loved the movie and they all seemed pretty familiar with the original show. One of the fathers, a landscape artist, appeared to be a walking compendium of all the early episodes. When he discovered that I could keep up with him pretty well, he grinned and announced loudly that I was a Trekkie. Well, I replied for the first time in my life, maybe I am.
I recently asked a group of teenagers why they had enjoyed the movie so much. They attributed it to the twist that made the unfolding story their own, not their parents. They also liked the excitement and the special effects. Finally, they admitted that what they really liked was that Spock was hot, and Kirk was hot, and Uhura was hot. And they were. They always were. But the hottest aspect of the show for me, has always been the strange new worlds and new civilizations. I hope the next movie will continue looking for them. In the meantime, though I still love Dr. McCoy, maybe Mr. Spock's ears aren't so resistible after all.
Copyright © 2009 Sheila Williams
[Back to Table of Contents]
Department: REFLECTIONS: BUILDING WORLDS: PART II by Robert Silverberg
Last month's column offered some general thoughts on how science fiction writers go about inventing plausible worlds, drawing heavily on the ideas of two masters of the process, Poul Anderson and Hal Clement. Now I want to offer some specifics showing how I devised my own best-known imaginary world, the planet Majipoor of Lord Valentine's Castle and its various companion volumes.
I began with nothing more than the skeleton of a plot involving a dispossessed monarch and the desire to set my story on a giant world rather like the one that Jack Vance envisioned in his 1952 novel, Big Planet. I intended, though, to carry the investigation of that world far beyond what Vance had chosen to do in that one relatively short book.
Big Planet takes place on a planet with a climate somewhat like India's that is divided into hundreds or thousands of independent principalities. Because its crust is devoid of the heavier elements, Vance's planet has “no metal, no machinery, no electricity, no long distance communication.” Therefore —despite its immense size, with a circumference seven or eight times that of Earth—Big Planet is a low-density world with a gravitational pull about the same as ours and a similar atmosphere, thus making possible human settlement.
Vance's novel is a lovely colorful romp. But, because SF books in the 1950s had to be fairly brief, it's only about fifty thousand words long, and merely nibbles at the infinite complexity of the planet on which it is set. Had he wished, Vance could have placed another dozen novels there without exhausting the territory. The only time he did return to Big Planet, though, was in the relatively minor novel Showboat World, so the notion came to me of creating a Big Planet of my own and exploring it more fully than Vance did his.
At first, for the sake of distinguishing my world from the tropical jungle wilderness of Vance's book, I envisioned a single tremendous city spreading thousands of miles in all directions, covering most of the land mass—the very opposite of Vance's concept. (Reaching for opposites is a good way to find story ideas.) But very quickly I saw the impossibility of that. If I wanted a population of many billions, I would need extensive agricultural zones to support it; and if I wanted (as I very much did) to create a host of fascinating plants and animals, I would have to have a variety of wild places.
So pole-to-pole urban development made no sense, and in the end I fell back on a model that was even more like a giant India than Vance's planet: a place of teeming cities surrounded by vast farming districts, and yet, nevertheless, having huge wilderness areas ranging from torrid desert to lush jungle to snow-capped mountains, surrounded by an ocean so enormous that no expedition had ever succeeded in crossing it. What I had in mind, in other words, was a planet so large that it could encompass a host of varying environments—jungles, interminable swamps, arid plateaus, great rolling savannas, rivers seven thousand miles long, cities of thirty billion people—without any sense of crowding whatever.
The astrophysical details didn't require much homework. Since I was beginning with the assumption that my planet had to be a comfortable one for human settlement, I needed a main-sequence G-type sun much like our own. (For a touch of exoticism I made it golden-green in color rather than yellow.) The planet's low-density structure accounted for a gravitational pull about like Earth's despite a much greater diameter. For human use the atmosphere had to be something close to Earth's 78-21 nitrogen-oxygen mix. By way of encouraging agricultural productivity I gave it a relatively minor axial tilt, thus avoiding sharp seasonal chang
es: some parts of Majipoor would be fairly dry, others rainy, but the climate would be benign everywhere except in the snowy polar regions.
Still, by employing the Vancean low-density planetary model, with its concomitant shortage of useful metals, I would have to veer somewhat from a strictly science-fictional mode of thinking, because without metals there could be very little in the way of machinery—no aircraft and no telecommunications system, for example. How, then, could I justify the existence of those cities with thirty billion people in them, with no rapid transit, no telephones, no elevators, indeed no high-rise structures? How could there be any sort of coherent central government, let alone the hierarchical and quasi-feudal monarchy that would justify a title like Lord Valentine's Castle?
I began to see that I would have to operate on that blurry borderline where science fiction shades into fantasy: a dollop of telepathy here and there for communication, a certain amount of vagueness about technology (an ancient civilization that has long ago used up its sparse metals and forgotten how its own mechanisms work), and some kind of ground-effect vehicles ("floaters") that didn't require internal-combustion engines or electricity to drive them. The lack of air transport, I figured, would work in my favor, adding to the sense of planetary immensity that was one of my primary goals: on Majipoor it would take just about forever to get from anywhere to anywhere. Distant cities would become misty, quasi-mythical places.
(I interject herewith that everything I have to say here about building worlds for science fiction novels applies just as well to fantasy. I regard science fiction as just one sub-set of fantasy, anyway. Everything in a fantasy novel, however it may contravene the laws of nature as we understand them, needs to have its own internal consistency, since, without the rigor of internal logic, plot problems can be trumped in any old arbitrary way for the writer's convenience and the narrative line will quickly collapse as one rabbit after another is pulled from the auctorial hat. So the writer needs a thorough understanding of how our own world's non-technological societies actually worked, and needs to follow those workings in all details save only the one speculative departure that generates the fantasy element itself. For further information on constructing fantasy worlds, I commend to you another Poul Anderson essay, “On Thud and Blunder,” recently republished on the Internet and easily findable there.
Asimov's SF, October-November 2009 Page 1
