Interstellar Flight Magazine Best of Year One

by Holly Lyn Walrath

  A year and a half out of college, I was still living at my parents’ home and working an hourly job in healthcare. It wasn’t so long ago that my parents married off my straight twin with all the love and affirmation he and his wife could handle. I wasn’t yet brave enough to tell them the truth out of fear for what that might mean for my health and safety.

  Mom and I made our own family while my dad worked in California. He was an occasional houseguest. I often made an effort to go into Mom’s room when I came home after going out. I was dating men for the first time in earnest, but I could only tell her what parts of my day I knew she could handle.

  Even though my parents sometimes complained about me living at home, Mom and I were each other’s anchor. My family had roots in the Southern Baptist Church, so I didn’t imagine my queerness would be received well. On top of still depending on my parents and feeling stunted in building my own family, even as my siblings had begun to form their own in college and married women soon after, I was living in limbo.

  Now, in 2019, Project Runway has moved back to Bravo with a facelift for Season 17. It features Project Runway winner Christian Siriano from Season 4 as the designer’s fashion mentor and another tall, blonde model, Karlie Kloss, as host. Episode 2 opens with the designers coming into their workspace with exhibitions from Simon Huck’s brand “A, Human.” featuring body modifications and flesh-colored protrusions on various parts of the body, each one with a design team of three to form a collection that showcases each strange difference:

  Glow Necklace, soft yellow lights embedded behind a flesh tone around the neck, famous for being worn by Kim Kardashian.

  Neck Ruffles, large ruffles that protrude like fleshy gills around the neck.

  Chest feathers, designed in partnership with Chrissy Teigen, flesh-colored angels wings in miniature across the top of the chest where cleavage might be.

  Shoulder horns, just like they sound, dark devil-like horns pointing inward towards their model’s freakishly symmetrical faces.

  Back Scaffolds, mirrored ridges centered on the lowered back protruding like many small spines.

  As with previous seasons, many of the male designers are gay in addition to the mentor Christian Siriano. We learn that Kovid and his boyfriend of many years had to leave their small village in India to make sure they were safe from persecution. In response to stress around his sexuality and presentation as a more feminine gay man, he engages in meditation in his native language each morning before they leave for the workroom. A nod to spirituality often left blank for queer individuals.

  Since it’s still early in the season, others are still unknown, but as they move into their co-living space, sexuality is revealed as they chose roommates. Different genders show different levels of comfort with other genders.

  In the finished runway show, back scaffolding gives way to backless dresses. Shoulder horns create an opportunity for bare shoulders. The glowing necklace moves the eye up to the neck of long, lean models. The designers in team neck ruffle use it as an opportunity to flare out their fashions below. Team chest feathers leave the top half of their styles open, though often poorly segmented down the middle, hiding the modification more than needed.

  Team neck ruffles stood out the most to the judges for their high-quality, cohesive work. Sebastian Grey pulled out a win with his sheer dress with ripples of off-white fabric that flow down his model as she walks down the runway. He is another gay designer this season, from Colombia, who wants to use his ambition to create a fashion brand that reaches beyond his native country’s borders.

  Team Neck Feathers falls short this round. When pressed, they say their work is for yet another wealthy white woman. Kovid makes his plea to the judges about his love of women as a more feminine gay man and wanting to celebrate them through fashion. His work acts as more of a cover for the body modification than an accent. He is one of two left at the end to stay or go. His other teammate, Frankie, who was on the bottom in the previous episode, gets told it’s her time to go instead.

  As I watched the most recent season of Project Runway, I realized that coming out is itself its own kind of body modification, as it changes the way others see you. Often with horns on your head instead of your shoulders.

  There isn’t a uniform for being gay. There isn’t a brand or line of clothing. I didn’t have the ability to modify my body to show my inward self.

  As I started dating men, I began to feel what my siblings told me about their romantic relationships over the years. I never experienced the feeling of attraction until my 20’s when it became harder and harder to hide. I felt happier, lighter; I was letting go of shame from an evangelical upbringing. I knew I was different. It was harder and harder to hide.

  When Mom and I were watching season 10 of Project Runway I saw these gay men working and crying and succeeding in a reality show. I watched her celebrate and enjoy the products of their labor. It made me feel like maybe, just maybe, she would one day accept me, too.

  One night, I came home from a date with the man who would become my first boyfriend. I was floating as I walked to my mother’s door, light creeping beneath it as I stood in the dark hallway and knocked. Her voice, muffled through the door, told me to come in.

  I lay across her king size bed and buried my face in her soft comforter. She wore a terrycloth robe and a white facemask with a white towel wrapped around her head after a long hot bath.

  “How was your night?” she asked.

  “It was great. I went on a date.”

  “How was she?”

  “He was great. I like him a lot,” I said, smiling into the folds of the bedspread.

  “He?” she asked. I could hear the tears forming in her voice as she reached down beside her nightstand.

  She pulled out a copy of a celebrity gossip magazine I recognized. My dad bought them at airports for her when he came home from California, a sign of love. She flipped manically through the pages to find the wedding announcements as she choked a question through her tears, “Is this what you want?”

  “Sort of,” I said, “but those are lesbians,” she was pointing to two smiling happy women with her manicured nail: Ellen DeGeneres and Portia De Rossi.

  I’d like to say that my mother accepted me as easily as she accepted the designers on Project Runway. From then on, I was treated as a broken thing to be fixed. If I had wings, they were bat-like and leathery, and whether I had horns depended on how I chose to behave. My choice to come out meant I had to choose between my family and the Southern Baptist values I grew up with, values that actively erased me—or embrace my sexuality like my straight parents and siblings had done to create a life that supported mutual flourishing as we moved through life together. It would look different, but it would be ours: foggy, amorphous, and unknown. I had to quit pretending my family and their vision of faith fit my world. That my body knew something my heart didn’t.

  That day I told my Mom the truth, I didn’t have a garment to show her I was gay. I didn’t have the ability to modify my body to show my inward self. There isn’t a uniform for being gay. There isn’t a brand or line of clothing. I didn’t even mean to tell her. It just felt so good to be alive as a gay man than it ever did to hide it.

  12 Spinning Tales, Chinese Embroidery, and Musical Composition

  An interview with Elizabeth Lim, author of Spin the Dawn

  by E.D. Walker

  I would write stories to accompany my short compositions when I was a kid, and that helped me stretch my imagination and gain confidence as a writer.

  Elizabeth Lim

  Elizabeth Lim is the author of Spin the Dawn, a sweeping YA fantasy about a young girl named Maia who poses as a boy to compete for the role of imperial tailor at court. She ends up on an impossible journey to sew three magic dresses, from the sun, the moon, and the stars. Part Mulan, part Project Runway, this immersive first installment of The Blood of Stars series released July 9, 2019 from Random House. In addition to writing novels, Lim worked as
a film and video game composer and holds a doctorate in music composition from The Juilliard School.

  INTERSTELLAR FLIGHT PRESS: Did you do any research for the tailoring and fashion portion of this book? (Just how much Project Runway did you have to watch?) Do you know how to sew yourself? Where did you get your inspiration for all the incredible court dresses and outfits that you describe in the book?

  ELIZABETH LIM: I actually didn’t watch any Project Runway while writing Spin the Dawn (shh lol). I’ve seen plenty of seasons though, so I didn’t need any help jogging my memory. A lot of my research came from my childhood memories: my grandmother was a seamstress, and my mother loves embroidery and all sorts of needlecraft, so I grew up around lots of sewing in the house. While I was writing Spin the Dawn, I also borrowed all the books from the library on Chinese embroidery and traditional dress and relied on my childhood hobby of fashion drawing to create the court outfits described in my book. The setting of my book isn’t Ancient China per se, but the fashion does draw heavily from historical dress (and was inspired by my visit to the Metropolitan Museum’s amazing exhibit “China: Through the Looking Glass” in 2015).

  IFP: I saw on your website that you’re a composer and a fan of movie scores. (I am also a huge movie score geek.) Do you have a favorite movie composer or film score? Do you ever compose music to go along with your novels? Does composing music use the same parts of your brain that writing does, or are different muscles in play?

  EL: I love this question! I don’t have a favorite movie composer or film score—I have too many to list! But the way I started out writing fiction was through music: I wanted to become a film composer, so I would write stories to accompany my short compositions when I was a kid, and that helped me stretch my imagination and gain confidence as a writer. And yes, I’m a firm believer that composing music uses the same parts of my brain as writing: I always try to pay attention to the harmony of my words as well as their rhythm, and the structure of my stories often relate to musical forms I learned in school.

  IFP: You mention on your website that you’re a new mom. Has that been challenging for you? Any tips for all the other working writer moms out there on “making it work,” to quote Project Runway?

  EL: I am still figuring this out! I’m not sure if I have any tips on how to “make it work,” but I’ve learned to be easier on myself and to allow myself to rest. When my baby was first born, I pushed myself to write whenever she was sleeping, and I got tired out very fast. Now I sleep when she sleeps, and I snatch whatever writing time I can in the mornings and evenings. It’s not the most ideal schedule, but I’m still working consistently, even if a bit slower!

  IFP: Book Two in The Blood of Stars series has been announced already. For fans of Spin the Dawn can you give us any news about what’s coming next?

  EL: Without giving anything away, you can expect a darker tale with plenty of new challenges for Maia. And there will be more Lady Sarnai!

  To learn more about Elizabeth Lim, for links to her work, and ways to purchase her books, check out her website, elizabethlim.com.

  13 Perception, Uncertainty, and Dread: The Horror of Perspective

  How do you make a novel frightening?

  by Caitlin Starling

  Horror movies have a hundred tools to create tension and fear in the audience: sound cues, lighting, the speed of shots, the suddenness of reveals. Visual and auditory content is powerful, immediate, and lends itself well to layering. Movies hold attention well and are short enough to be consumed in a single sitting.

  By contrast, books have less to go on: we can only somewhat control the pace at which our audience consumes the story through tricks of tension, chapter length, complexity or simplicity of prose. A novel is longer than a movie, and slower too, each detail taking more time to communicate. The chances of a reader devouring the whole book in one go are slim, and even in a best-case scenario, the early moments are divorced from the finale by many hours, softening the impact of parallelism and callbacks. And while length can be its own tool (would House of Leaves have been as effective as a snappy novella, instead of having long meandering footnotes that are suffused with atmosphere and throw confusion over the specifics of the plot?), it can also drag and delay and bore.

  Authors use prosody and character voice to create atmosphere, and little tricks of language to signal things are about to get bad. We can also borrow from the successful tactics of movies, with variable success. A jump-scare can be mimicked somewhat by the abruptness of a transition, but it’s just as likely to be confusing as frightening.

  Where books can shine in a way wholly their own, though, is in perspective. Just as a long tracking shot can summon up dread, the coldness or closeness of the narration can affect our perception of the actions going on in the story. And a book’s potential for intimacy in its narration can be turned and twisted to surprising effect.

  In The Luminous Dead, my first novel, we follow a young woman named Gyre down into a treacherous cave. She goes down alone, with only a high-tech suit and a voice in her ear to help her survive. The suit introduces as many problems as it does solutions. It keeps her safe from dangerous falls and manages any medications she might need, but it also requires surgical installation. It renders her environment via sonar in an attempt to keep her concealed from unknown threats, but in doing so introduces room for computer error or lost information.

  It leaves her completely at the mercy of her handler, Em, who can control Gyre’s body and influence—or completely change—what Gyre sees.

  Gyre experiences the cave at a level of remove that by its very nature introduces errors, misunderstandings, and omissions. The effect is quietly compounded as we, the audience, experience the cave by way of Gyre’s biases, weaknesses, assumptions, and fears. Here, the use of third-person narration plays a clever trick. If the book was written in first person, we would almost expect it to play with the unreliability of the narrator. But we’re trained to think of third person as being factual, accurate, a representation of the world as it is, with just the distance of the camera from the characters up for question.

  So when, in The Luminous Dead, Gyre finds incontrovertible signs that somebody else is in the cave with her, that her sensors also see, we default to believing that those signs are real. But when in the next moment that sign is proven to be impossible, and Gyre has no explanation for it and offers no explanation for it to the reader, it throws into question the very reality and reliability of what we’re reading. Was that bolt even there? Was there somebody else on that rope? Can we trust that Gyre would even notice one way or the other?

  And that’s the root of the horror of The Luminous Dead. There’s an omnipresent sense of dread throughout, heightened by the fact that even as Gyre can’t trust but must trust Em, we can’t trust Gyre but must in order to continue reading. Even as Gyre can’t see without the limitations of her headlamp, her sonar reconstruction, and the dubious help of Em’s computers, we can’t see without Gyre. We can’t see free of her paranoia, her anxiety, her delusions.

  We can’t see what lurks around the corner, but we feel like we should be able to, that in another book, we would be able to at least see the hint of what is coming.

  Instead, we’re trapped in the suit with Gyre, with no way out, and no relief.

  No breaks.

  There’s only Gyre, and the cave, and the constant dread and drudgery.

  14 Space Opera Is Having a Moment and We Love It

  Melodrama, space warfare, and romance, Oh My!

  by E.D. Walker

  I want to talk about space opera. Like many of you, I imprinted on Star Wars at a young age, and now any story emphasizing space warfare, melodramatic adventure, interplanetary battles, chivalric romance, and risk-taking must be consumed. Immediately.

  If the SFF books coming out over the next few months are any indication, space opera is having a moment and I’m beyond excited. Considering the new Star Wars trilogy, the popularity of The Expanse TV show
and, in the book world, the monumental success of Ann Leckie’s Imperial Radch series of space opera novels, this makes sense. If you’ve imprinted on Star Wars like me, you’re going to have a happy next few months until you remember you’re still stuck on Earth.

  Here are some upcoming new works that I can’t wait to read:

  Got a hankering for “melodramatic adventure?” Pick up Pure Chocolate (Angry Robot, 2018). It’s the second book in Amber Royer’s Chocoverse Series; the cover describes the story as “space opera meets soap opera,” and the author calls the book a “telenovela.” Chocolate is Earth’s last great export and everyone else in the galaxy is killing to get their hands on it. The heroine is a culinary arts student caught stealing chocolate who has to go on the run.

  Perhaps you need some chivalric romance? Try Polaris Rising by Jessie Mihalik (Harper Voyager, 2019). A space princess flees an arranged marriage and teams up with an outlaw. During their adventures through intergalactic space, they fall for each other. Does this couple sound a little bit Han and Leia-esque? Uh-huh. It’s one of my favorite ships, and I can’t wait to read this book.

  What about characters taking risks in space? Try Chilling Effect from Valerie Valdes, (Harper Voyager, 2019.) According to the author, her heroine makes risky decisions but all in service to save her sister! This book also has adorable space cats. How can you resist the adorable space cats? I don’t think I can.