Weightless Books

Interview: James Morrow on “Bible Stories for Adults, No. 37: The Jawbone”

by Spilogale Inc. August 13th, 2020

F&SF: How do you describe this story to people?

JM: Samson and Delilah, Cecil B. DeMille’s loopy and somewhat disingenuous 1949 movie adaptation of the famous Bible story, will always enjoy a warm spot in my heart and a soft spot in my head. With “The Jawbone” I tried to give readers something like the opposite of a guilty pleasure—call it a rollicking discomfort. It’s all about the depressing historical continuity between Samson’s consecrated jawbone and Wayne LaPierre’s sanctified assault rifles.

F&SF: You wrote several Bible Stories for Adults back in the late ’80s and early ’90s. What made you decide to return to the series now, more than twenty-five years later?

JM: During the interval since I published my last adult Bible story, “The Soap Opera” of 1992 (the subject was Job’s ordeal), the world’s power elites exploited the planet’s sacred texts as never before. Their slogan seems to be “better living through theocracy.”

I’m thinking of the ascent of Islamic fundamentalism, Vladimir Putin’s exploitation of the Orthodox Church’s proclivity for bigotry, and, of course, the enthusiasm of American evangelicals for the Republican Party’s bottomless malice. So I decided to reboot my Bible stories project. It can’t be said too often: our holy books are wholly human, and it’s utter folly to privilege them in our efforts to forge a more just society. You can’t argue with revelation, of course, but I’m going to try anyway

Also, there were certain Bible stories that I couldn’t get an angle on 28 years ago, but now I think I have.

F&SF: Calling these “Bible Stories for Adults” is deliberately provocative. What kind of reaction are you trying to provoke in readers?

JM: There must be a thousand books out there that employ bowdlerization and mendacity in the name of making Bible stories accessible to children. The joke is that, when it comes to issues of morality, decency, and knowledge, many of these narratives are already about as childish as you can imagine.

It’s worth remembering, for example, that the run-up to the Good Samaritan (which certainly has a noble sentiment at its core) finds Jesus pronouncing a fiery and murderous curse on the supposedly irredeemable towns of Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum. While the Gospels have much to offer, I would argue that the personality of their protagonist seems pretty unstable.

It occurs to me that all of my adult Bible stories turn on a challenge to myself. Show me a narrative from Scripture, and I’ll retell it in a way that either foregrounds its puerility or maps it onto some contemporary fashion in cruelty.

F&SF: What were the challenges of writing “The Jawbone”?

JM: The same challenges that confront me whenever I start grinding my ax on the theme of reason versus revelation. How do I stay ahead of an audience that already more-or-less agrees with me? How can I get this thought experiment to yield genuine surprises, as opposed to the superficial satisfactions of watching straw men disintegrate? How do I keep the reader from saying, “Hey, Jim, maybe it’s time to leave God alone”?

When I sat down to write “The Jawbone,” all I had in mind was deconstructing the Samson story, drawing largely on the nonfictional comeuppance he receives in Steve Allen on the Bible, Religion, and Morality. I assumed I would simply foreground the atrocities and absurdities in which Samson indulges.

But then I realized the hero’s cudgel could be used to satirize America’s gun fetish, and I was home free. The challenge was to keep the thing from becoming on the nose, as they say in Hollywood. Whenever I hit on a conceit like “the National Retailers of Assbones,” I made a point of throwing the gag away and not repeating it.

F&SF: Can you talk a bit about your writing process in general?

JM: For all the unsavory dimensions of Western civilization, I’m always prepared to celebrate the 18th-century Enlightenment’s insistence on unfettered, open-ended discussion when it comes to religious, political, and scientific matters. As a philosopher remarks in my as-yet-unpublished novel, Lazarus is Waiting, “I never met an idea I didn’t like.” She hastens to add that she’s met many ideas she detested—but each nevertheless helped her to hone her intellect.

I feel privileged that the gods have let me work within the medium of science fiction, the literature of ideas. I love taking grand philosophical and scientific speculations and reimagining them as fictive thought experiments.

F&SF: What are you working on now?

JM: A new Bible story, of course!

I’ve always been bothered by the incoherence of the Sodom and Gomorrah narrative. Yahweh in his generosity has promised Abraham that the presence of only ten righteous people in Sodom would deter him from exterminating the entire population. But we never see the deity or the patriarch actually performing the calculation.

Instead, the rest of the negotiations happen offstage, if they happen at all, and a great opportunity for suspense is wasted. My version, I hope, will give the situation its due. My working title is “Bible Stories for Adults, No. 24: the Twin Cities.”

—

You can find James Morrow at these places…

Website: http://www.jamesmorrow.info/
Twitter: @jimmorrow11

“Bible Stories for Adults, No. 37: The Jawbone” appears in the July/August 2020 issue of F&SF.

Order a copy of this issue…

 
…or subscribe and never miss a single story!

Print edition: https://www.sfsite.com/fsf/subscribe.htm

Ebook editions:

comments

Comments Off on Interview: James Morrow on “Bible Stories for Adults, No. 37: The Jawbone”

Interview: Mel Kassel on “Crawfather”

by Spilogale Inc. August 12th, 2020

F&SF: How do you describe “Crawfather” to people?

MK: “Crawfather” is one of my favorite titles I’ve ever assigned to a work, so sometimes I let it stand by itself and invite curiosity. Otherwise, I’m pretty literal about it: it’s a story about a Minnesotan family that fights a giant crawfish every year during their reunion.

F&SF: What were some of the things that inspired this story?

MK: So many of the stories I’m working on right now are about the conjoined appeal and danger of unquestioned ritual. Family, in particular, is a petri dish for arbitrary and often harmful ceremony. I wanted to interrogate longstanding family traditions, ideas of monstrosity, and generational divides in thinking.

The setting and some of the broader family attributes are borrowed from the annual trips my own family would take to Minnesota every year when I was young. Each little subdivision of my mother’s relatives would stay in its own cabin, and we’d gather to swim and fish and eat.

Gradually, I came to realize that we were the odd cabin out—we didn’t share the same fundamental worldview as the rest of the family. And as that schism became more and more clear, I became increasingly baffled by what seemed like their blanket opposition to change and newness. I wanted to try on that collective stubborn voice as it was confronted with a more extreme version of change.

I also just love crustaceans! They’re old and hardy and bristling with all these great appendages.

F&SF: Once you have all those pieces of inspiration, what’s your writing process like?

MK: I drafted this story at Clarion in the summer of 2018, so I only had a week to write it, but it was the most enjoyable bout of writing I had there. This was my “fun” story, one with a ridiculous conceit and a slightly atypical POV, so I just leaned into the novelty and humor of it. Creating specific family members for one-off appearances was entertaining—Hank (the childless accountant) is a favorite. Having the setting fully-formed in my mind also made the first draft breezier than normal.

I’m someone who edits as they go, which means I end up with polished beginnings and (very) rough endings. It took a while for me to clarify exactly how Nancy and Archie would take on the Crawfather, and how the rest of the family would react.

F&SF: Last year you won the World Fantasy Award for “Ten Deals with the Indigo Snake” (published in the Oct 2018 issue of Lightspeed Magazine). What was that like, and has it changed anything for your career?

MK: It was so wonderful to receive that award, and I was especially delighted to share it with fellow winner Emma Törzs. This is perhaps an obnoxious thing to say, but I earnestly didn’t expect it—I was at a screening of “The Lighthouse” in Iowa City while the ceremony was happening in California. I’d read the stories by the other nominees and been so impressed. I figured I’d just check the results after the movie and be content with the nomination. Instead, I had to quickly toggle from anxious bewilderment at the film to surprise and excitement at the win.

I view it as a lovely personal marker. I want my first story collection to have a grab-bag of cross-genre credits, and the award gets me closer to that goal.

F&SF: What are you working on now?

MK: Theoretically, I’m revising the group of stories that will become my first collection, and gathering notes for a novel. It’s a new frontier for me, this much revision and note-taking—it’s hard and I don’t like it. I’m also preparing to teach an undergraduate class on writing and reading fantasy fiction in the fall, which I’m looking forward to very much.

—

You can find Mel Kassel at these places…

Website: http://melkassel.com/
Twitter: @MelKassel

“Crawfather” appears in the July/August 2020 issue of F&SF.

Order a copy of this issue…

 
…or subscribe and never miss a single story!

Print edition: https://www.sfsite.com/fsf/subscribe.htm

Ebook editions:

comments

Comments Off on Interview: Mel Kassel on “Crawfather”

Issue 042 Author Interview: Hannah Frankel and “TheraBot”

by Luna Station Press August 11th, 2020

For those looking for more summer reading, our Issue 042 is still available! It has 12 stories by 12 fantastic women authors, including Hannah Frankel’s “TheraBot,” the topic of today’s author interview.

LSQ: This story strikes such a chord right now, in a time when it seems like so many jobs are being either done by machines and computers already, or where AI replacement is being investigated. Was there any particular incident that inspired you to write “TheraBot”?

Hannah: I was inspired by a genuine curiosity about what tech-augmented mental health looks

like, in a world that is (happily) clamoring for more mental health, but in the context of needing it to be more affordable for more people to have access. In our economy, affordability often comes from technology and/or scalability. What would therapy look like as a corporate product? Would that be a bad thing? What would it do to people like me who are very happy inhabiting the field as it currently exists?

LSQ: Velma was instantly relatable for me. Her observations of her colleagues and her interactions with them were so interesting and, at times, seemed painfully spot on. How concerned were you with accurately depicting this slice of the working world?

Hannah: The thread of this story that is closest to my heart was depicting a working person’s efforts at emotional survival in a deeply hierarchical setting that legitimizes itself as a meritocracy. And this is such a common workplace type for our time that I thought other people might be able to relate. In that kind of day-to-day existence there’s so much wearisome bullshit, that most of us censor speaking in daily life because it’s counterproductive to our needs and goals, and happens to get censored out of most stories that get told because we assume it’s universal to the point of being boring. I have always admired the people who work in those settings, like Velma, who are aware of the bullshit, but somehow also remain resolute in being decent and generous to others.

LSQ: This story was fascinating in part because it felt so realistic. Do you think we’re looking at a TheraBot future?

Hannah: I wish I had that crystal ball! We’re starting to see products like TalkSpace and BetterHelp in the last few years, decentralized tech-driven mental health packages that let you access therapy remotely and asynchronously (such as over text) but also require tradeoffs. Chief among these, from what I’ve heard, is that people have a harder time forming a relationship and trust with their therapist. That said, in the age of COVID many therapists are exclusively seeing clients over video telehealth platforms, and since we’re forced into getting lots of practice I’ve noticed myself and my clients are getting better at using the technology in a way that feels more focused and intimate.

For the most part mental health treatment works as kind of a decentralized cottage industry right now and while that protects practitioners like me, it keeps the product expensive and difficult to access. And yet, I believe I will do better work when I am allowed to do it on my own terms, in a way that I’m not confident I would if I were overworked and underpaid as a franchise worker. So it keeps it expensive, but it keeps providers healthy and able to give their best. The best solution to balancing everyone’s needs, however, is clearly not TheraBot as she appears in this story.

LSQ: Who did you think of first when you were doing characterization for this story: Velma, Angie, or JoyCE?

Hannah: Velma came first. I wanted to heroize an unglamorous working woman who tries to do the right thing with the system that she’s given. Someone with very little ego and very little interest in herself as a hero, and who deserves more recognition than she will ever get in her world. Good thing she is the heroine of a short story in ours!

Comments Off on Issue 042 Author Interview: Hannah Frankel and “TheraBot”

Interview: David Erik Nelson on “All Hail the Pizza King and Bless His Reign Eternal”

by Spilogale Inc. August 7th, 2020

F&SF: How do you describe this story to people? We mean, besides just telling them the title and letting that speak for you.

DEN: Oh, man, I’m terrible at synopsizing my stories; that’s the whole reason I formulate titles like this.

That said, when I hear folks talk about this story, they mostly characterize it as something like “a tricky pizza demon story” or “there’s a hellmouth in a pizza oven”—and then quickly add “it sounds ridiculous, but it works!”

That’s nice of them to say, but I don’t think of it that way really. In my head, this is a story about sisters, and about all the crap jobs that fall to women. I saw Joseph Chilton Pearce speak once, back when I was still a teacher, and he said something that’s stuck with me ever since: “Men are powerful, but women are immensely, immensely strong.” So this story is about that, too: About the difference between power and strength. To me at least. Probably I should listen to my readers: It’s a pizza demon story—that sounds ridiculous, but it works!

(As an aside, my current goal is to sell you a story that has a whole other story embedded in the title. I’m getting closer, Charlie. I’m gonna get there, sooner or later.)

F&SF: What made you decide to write this story right now?

DEN: I didn’t. I actually wrote this back in early 2018, completing the draft in just two weeks (which is maybe a record for me). But it didn’t really become the story it is now until late that year. I listened to every word of Christine Blasey Ford’s congressional testimony—which included her detailed account of being sexually assaulted by Brett Kavanaugh (who now sit on the US Supreme Court) when they were teens. I was in the kitchen, puttering, and something she said somewhere in the middle of her testimony stopped me dead, because it was a near perfect poem just as she spoke it. A poem like that, one spoken accidentally, hits you like lightning. It stops your heart. I wrote it down right then:

Indelible in the hippocampus
is the laughter,
the laughter,
the uproarious laughter
between the two,
and their having fun
at my expense.

And that’s when I understood what this story was really all about. It was a different story after I heard that poem, and so I rewrote it to be that story. The real monster isn’t the Pizza King and it isn’t Kip—it’s the two boys in that woman’s testimony, who appear in my story only briefly as the boot-grinding, laughing jackals in Lissa’s moment of clarity.

F&SF: What were the challenges of writing this particular story?

DEN: I feel like most of the content of this story is plagiarized from reality: Kip’s crime is basically lifted from the headlines (his real name was Kevin “Kip” Artz, of Jackson MI), the Pizza King is the Nain Rouge (more or less), and many details—names, phrases, cars, clothes, physical descriptions—are what my sister has characterized as “family-lore easter eggs.” The real writing challenge, to me, felt largely schematic: getting all of the details and incidents lined up and compressed properly so that the mechanism driving the story could actually function and folks could follow along. There are a lot of patient, patient people out there (yourself included) who gave me feedback I sorely needed in order to get this hooptie running.

F&SF: This is your fourth story for F&SF (the previous ones are “The Traveling Salesman Solution,” “There Was a Crooked Man, He Flipped a Crooked House,” and “Whatever Comes After Calcutta”). All of them have disturbing or unsettling elements, even when they’re not straight up horror. What’s the appeal or fascination with that mode of writing for you?

DEN: I’ve always loved horror. When I was small, I was equal parts fascinated and terrified by Schwartz’s original Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. I read my first Stephen King novel at 11 years old. The first stories I wrote were horror stories, as were the first ones I actually sold. I’ve tried going other directions in my writing, but despite what I thought, I never got far (e.g., I didn’t know “The Traveling Salesman Solution” was a horror story until I saw it pop up on Ellen Datlow’s recommended reading list for one of her Best Horror of the Year anthos). Nonetheless, I couldn’t have said why I was I was so drawn to horror until last year, when I saw Midsommar. This was the last film my wife and I saw in an actual theater. She didn’t much care for it, but I loved it, and in trying to explain to her why, I suddenly realized why I was so tangled up with horror:

Horror is the place where we most honestly explore how it is we respond to trauma. Some folks come through trauma—and are even stronger for it (all those “final girls.”) But many do not. Many are broken by what hits them. Even killed. And most of our art lies about this simple, brutal fact. Drama, romance, SF, comedy—even history!—feed (and feed off of) our optimism bias. “It won’t happen to me! I’ll come out OK! I’m one of the good ones, the strong ones, the Righteous Among the Wicked!”

Horror, in all of its over-the-top ridiculous histrionics, plays it straight in that one regard: It actually looks right into the eyes of the Worst Possible Outcome—the mass graves, the ovens, the lonely ditches, the morgues, the hospital beds, the single table setting, the blood in the gutter. And yet still, even looking in that grim place, it still shows us all the way folks cope and resist and fight, clawing their way back up for another gasp of air. They all find their way to the end, one way or another. I love the final girl, truth told. But I love the schlimazel that gets the axe in the head in the second scene, too.

I didn’t get all that just from watching Midsommar, of course (although it’s all there; that’s a helluva movie, in my humble). But it was in defending Midsommar, and thinking of the horror that had most sung to me over the last several years, that I realized why it was that I kept coming back to that well. Other stories that paved the way for me to see this in myself include the films A Dark Song; As Above, So Below; The Endless; and The Babadook; and Daryl Gregory’s excellent novella “We Are All Completely Fine.”

F&SF: What are you working on now?

DEN: The usual stuff: a music producer with special-needs son blunders into Lake Michigan cult, Jewish girl gone bad is pursued through forest by a church full of tentacles, skinheads demand their magic Torah back—all the old cliches.

—

You can find David Erik Nelson at these places…

Website: https://www.davideriknelson.com/
Twitter: @SquiDaveo

“All Hail the Pizza King and Bless His Reign Eternal” appears in the July/August 2020 issue of F&SF.

Order a copy of this issue…

 
…or subscribe and never miss a single story!

Print edition: https://www.sfsite.com/fsf/subscribe.htm

Ebook editions:

comments

Comments Off on Interview: David Erik Nelson on “All Hail the Pizza King and Bless His Reign Eternal”

Interview: Rati Mehrotra on “Knock Knock, Said the Ship”

by Spilogale Inc. August 4th, 2020

F&SF: How do you describe this story to people?

RM: I say it’s a story about how a super cool ship AI and a refugee save their captain and crew from murderous space pirates. If that’s not enough to hook them, I add that there are multiple knock knock jokes, all told by the ship.

F&SF: What made you decide to write “Knock Knock, Said the Ship”?

RM: It’s the child of a story I wrote a few years earlier. That one didn’t quite work, but it gave me the bones to build this one. I had the world and the characters in my mind for a long time. The basic plot developed from Deenu’s refugee background. But mainly, I wrote this story because I couldn’t resist the ship AI’s attempts at humor. Those jokes just demanded to be written. And the ship is someone I would personally love to meet.

F&SF: How was this story personal to you?

RM: Kaalratri, the name of the ship, is one of the nine forms of the Goddess Durga. The name literally means ‘darkest night’. She is regarded as a fierce form of the mother goddess, who chases away evil and destroys fear and ignorance in her devotees. I grew up hearing stories of the mother goddess, and it is this reference which makes the story most personal to me. I like to think of the ship as a protective and powerful, if not wholly understandable, mother figure – much like the goddess herself.

F&SF: Deenu and the ship have a great relationship and it must have been a lot of fun to write their dialogue. But what were the challenges of writing this story?

RM: Yes, I think I’ve had more fun writing this story than any other. My main challenge was giving a satisfying resolution to the plot. I had this great set-up, but it took a while to figure out how I could wrap it up in a way that felt deserved and natural.

F&SF: Can you talk a bit about your writing process?

RM: It varies. I am capable of writing five thousand words in a day when inspiration strikes – or when I have a deadline, which is its own kind of inspiration. I can also go weeks without writing a single word. I don’t like to plan ahead too much. I am definitely a pantser, not a plotter. This means that I often have to go back and revise or delete what I’ve written earlier. It’s not a very efficient way of writing, but it’s the only one that works for me. Once I have a complete draft, I’ll set it aside for a few days, re-read and revise, then request beta reads. Once I have feedback, I’ll revise it again. Only then will I submit the story to a market.

F&SF: What are you working on now?

RM: I’ve just finished the draft of a YA fantasy novel based in medieval India that I’m very excited about. It’s full of monsters and mayhem! Fingers crossed I get to share it with the world one day.

—

You can find Rati Mehrotra at:

Blog: https://ratiwrites.com/
Twitter: @Rati_Mehrotra
HarperCollins: https://www.harpercollins.com/blogs/authors/rati-mehrotra

“Knock Knock, Said the Ship” appears in the July/August 2020 issue of F&SF.

Order a copy of this issue…

 
…or subscribe and never miss a single story!

Print edition: https://www.sfsite.com/fsf/subscribe.htm

Ebook editions:

comments

Comments Off on Interview: Rati Mehrotra on “Knock Knock, Said the Ship”

Issue 042 Author Interview: Dana Berube and “The White Place”

by Luna Station Press August 4th, 2020

Welcome to another Issue 042 author interview, dear readers! Today we chat with Dana Berube about her story “The White Place.”

LSQ: This is a wonderfully intense story! What was the inspiration for it?

Dana: Thank you! So, Ti is one of the protagonists of a fantasy trilogy I’m writing. The idea for this story was sparked by a line in one of those novels, set many years later, where he grudgingly confesses to a friend, “I never sold myself…but I perhaps bartered a few times.” In that novel, Ti’s circumstances are improved, but he’s still trying to fill that empty place within himself. I wanted to explore how moments in his past led him to be the man he is in the present, where he desperately wants to connect with people but still struggles to do so.

I also wanted to explore a failure of intersectionality. In fantasy, prejudice against magical beings has sometimes been used as a metaphor for some other kind of injustice. I’ve never seen the point in keeping it metaphorical. Ti lives in a messy colonial empire that is churning with inequality, racism, sexism, homophobia, and anti-wizard hatred. As Ti reflects, his society’s prejudice against wizardry and homosexuality take different forms but stem from the same place. Logically, he and Berron should be allies. However, as we see in our own world, that’s often not how things work out. Systemic oppression grinds people down and keeps us fighting among one another for scraps. Berron isn’t a bad person; he’s just someone who found his own safe corner of an unkind world and never risked peeking beyond it. And for Ti, being both queer and a wizard just leaves him even more isolated.

I don’t claim to have any answers or lessons to share about these big issues. Most of my writing is me trying to work through it all for myself.

LSQ: There are a lot of interesting tidbits of a larger world sprinkled through this piece. Do you think you’ll write in this world again?

Dana: Absolutely! It’s a big world that I’ve put a lot of time and love into. I’ve got maps! As mentioned above, this story is a standalone piece that is part of a much larger project that includes a novella and a trilogy of novels, set years later than this story. In the novella, Ti’s past as the exiled scion of a wealthy family and his quest for love and stability again collide, but this time with a much bigger bang. His attempts to repair the damage he’s done spark the three books of the trilogy (and more broken hearts and explosions).

I am currently querying the first book in the trilogy, and I’d love to find a home for the novella.

LSQ: Ti is a fascinating main character, and his awkward relationship with Berron feels so relatable. How do you approach characterization? What was the first thing you thought of when you came up with Ti?

Dana: Ti has existed in my head in one form or another since I was in fourth grade (he was originally a cat-sized talking horse who could fly and do magic—yes, really). In his later incarnations, I’ve tried to take the archetypical strong, handsome, sword- and magic-wielding fantasy hero and deconstruct him. I’ve always been curious about the psychological scars that fantasy adventures would leave on the characters who live through them. And surely depressed and traumatized people can be fantasy heroes too? Ti is a powerful wizard who ultimately up-ends a kingdom, but he’s also deeply hurting inside.

In this story, he’s not yet a roguish hero, deconstructed or otherwise. He doesn’t have a sword. He doesn’t have anything. He’s just a hungry kid trying to outrun himself. One artistic choice I made to emphasize that was to have him think of himself as just “Ti” instead of his usual “Tiberius.” Those extra syllables are too heavy for someone who’d rather dissolve their sense of self into nothing.

I don’t have any set methods for characterization, but since I’m an artist, drawing the characters

is a big part of how I try to “find” them. Do they come out looking cheeky or haunted? Do they dress a certain way, and why? I tend to let projects marinate for years before I put a pen to paper, so by then I usually feel like I know the characters pretty well. Of course, sometimes I’ll think I have a solid grasp on a character, and as soon as Istart writing, the character flips the script. I’ve had bad guys turn into good guys, genders and species change, you name it.

LSQ: Tell us a bit about your other writing projects. 

Dana: Quarantine did something unexpected to my brain. After working on speculative fiction for the past twelve years and assuming that was my lane, my brain went, hey! Let’s write a realist fiction novella! It’s focused on the same themes I often write about—relationships, trauma, mental health struggles, and found family—just without any wizards (…yet). Writing non-fantasy has been funny because I keep accidentally defaulting to metaphors about swords and kings for characters who live in modern-day Boston. I don’t know if it will go anywhere, but if the novella does nothing other than keep me sane during these odd times, I’ll be satisfied.

I have a short story about a pair of near-future, empty-nester Mongolian herders who adopt a Chinese reconnaissance drone coming out in Zombies Need Brains’ MY BATTERY IS LOW AND IT IS GETTING DARK anthology in July. I’m incredibly excited to be a part of that with so many other great writers. I’ve also got a bunch of other ideas percolating, including some short stories set in this world and an unrelated fantasy novel about revenge, power, and linguistics!

Comments Off on Issue 042 Author Interview: Dana Berube and “The White Place”

Interview: John Kessel on “Spirit Level”

by Spilogale Inc. July 30th, 2020

F&SF: How do you describe “Spirit Level” to people?

JK: A ghost story where the ghosts are not necessarily the spirits of the dead. It’s meant to work within and against the tropes of classic ghost stories. Another way to think of it is as a story about trying to find a way to live beyond the regrets that haunt anyone who lasts into middle age.

F&SF: What inspired this story?. How is “Spirit Level” personal for you?

JK: In some ways it’s one of the most personal stories I’ve ever written. I have certain points of biographical contact with Michael, and have felt some of the things he has felt, though Michael is not me and his situation is not mine.

I started it nine or ten years ago, wrote a lot of words, then put it aside for many years. I had the character’s situation, but did not really know what the consequences after his initial ghostly encounter might be. In a way I wrote it as a warning to and critique of my younger self.

F&SF: We don’t want to spoil any aspects of the plot, but this takes several unexpected turns for a type of ghost story. What were the challenges of writing this particular story?

JK: I thought about the kinds of things one usually finds in ghost stories and then about what I might do a little differently. I can’t claim to any grand innovations, but it was fun to try my hand at a kind of story that I had never written. I wanted it to have some of the eeriness of classic ghost stories like Henry James’s “The Turn of the Screw” or “The Jolly Corner,” and like James use the ghosts to explore the character’s psychology.

F&SF: How has your writing process changed over the years?

JK: I don’t plan everything out quite as much as I used to before I start. This means I sometimes wander off into blind alleys and don’t always know what the story is about until I am well into it. It’s not as efficient a way to write, but the results are interesting to me; I eventually figure out all that I need and then can pull the pieces together. The shape of the story emerges more organically than it used to. This involves a lot more rewriting, but I enjoy rewriting until I get a story right.

Lately I have been returning to stories I started in the past but could not finish—something I almost never did earlier in my career—and have discovered that I see them better now. It goes a lot slower, but I’m okay with that.

F&SF: What are you working on right now?

JK: I’m writing a novella, a prequel of sorts to the novella you have already from me, “The Dark Ride.” “The Dark Ride” takes place at a world’s fair, the Pan-American Exposition, that took place in Buffalo, NY in 1901. In that story one plot thread deals with a “Trip to the Moon” fair ride that was inspired by H.G. Wells’s novel “First Men in the Moon.”

This new story takes place a year earlier, in England, during the period when Wells wrote “First Men in the Moon.” It involves other writers such as Stephen Crane and Henry James, with whom Wells was friends, and with Wells switching from writing scientific romances to becoming a public advocate for socialism and what some have called the first futurist.

I hope to write a third novella, set a year after “The Dark Ride,” in 1902, about the French film pioneer Georges Méliès creating his famous movie, “A Trip to the Moon,” which draws elements from both Wells’s novel and from the Pan-Am Expo fair ride.

I hope this tryptich of novellas will eventually make a book.

—

You can find John Kessel at these places:

Simon & Schuster: https://www.simonandschuster.com/authors/John-Kessel/2098446902
John Kessel’s website: https://johnjosephkessel.wixsite.com/kessel-website
His Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/john.kessel3

“Spirit Level” appears in the July/August 2020 issue of F&SF.

Order a copy of this issue…

 
…or subscribe and never miss a single story!

Print edition: https://www.sfsite.com/fsf/subscribe.htm

Ebook editions:

comments

Comments Off on Interview: John Kessel on “Spirit Level”

Issue 042 Author Interview: Michèle Laframboise and “Ganymede’s Lamps”

by Luna Station Press July 28th, 2020

Hello, dear readers! How is Issue 042 treating you? Have you read Michèle Laframboise’s “Ganymede’s Lamps“? We have an interview with her below that you won’t want to miss!

LSQ: Multiplying lava lamps, smart carpets, and moving walls⁠—this story and its setting are wildly imaginative! Where did you come up with these ideas?

Michèle: My first inspirations were from the mind-blowing pics of Ganymede and Jupiter taken by NASA, where the swirls and bands looked to me like a lava lamp. It became one of the first sentences in the story, and it stuck there, even when I computed the angular size of Jupiter in the

sky of a satellite in a locked down orbit (always facing its planet). The smart, litter-disposing carpet was not such a great stretch of imagination for anyone doing the chore of picking up litter. (Of course, make sure to choose a good setting if you want to keep your guests!) And the “stupid” walls blaring music and scrubbing the air were fun.

My way of finding ideas for setting is to look at annoying problems (like, flossing my teeth) and imagine solutions (like, the dental cleaner microbots featured in my first published novels).

LSQ: What was your favorite part about writing this story and why? What was the hardest part?

Michèle: Easier was finding the lamps’ characteristics and describing the little rituals of cappuccino coffee in social gatherings. I loved coming up with the formidable Big Martha as the head of the colony (I’m working on a story about her own difficult youth). It was fun seeing the relationship between Beth and the adults around her, and their mixed reactions to her gift. The hardest thing was computing the apparent diameter of Jupiter in the sky and justifying the characters’ extra digits. I loved writing the mind-boggling images first and then checking the feasibility later. In the story, Jupiter’s strong magnetic field clashes with Ganymede’s, so the settlers link their under-ice machines with insulated wires (and typing in hexa-code works faster with 8-digit hands).

LSQ: Are there any other projects you’re currently working on? If so, could you tell us a bit about them?

Michèle: Yes I do. I am currently working on a steampunk trilogy with a different style of narration for each one. The first novel is done and in revision. In editing I take the occasion to enrich the culture, the names, and the idioms used. It is a risky project but I love building that universe and

its inhabitants.

A second SF novel, in a different setting, is in French, and will be out in 2021. The story is about friendship, guilt, and hope among teens growing up on a weird and hostile world.

My own small company Echofictions reprints my short-stories and publishes fun and upbeat F&SF stories, and some semi-sweet stories.

Too many projects, too little time.

A lot of wonderful women in my life have been big women. They have had to cope with the social repercussions of not having the perfect silhouette. I love to put fat & savvy women in my stories. My short-story, “Women are from Mars, Men are from Venus”, follows a fat Martian scientist who lives through fat-shaming and overcomes her own difficult situation. I am preparing a short-story about Big Martha’s teenage days, the moral hazing and harassment she went through, and how she later went on Ganymede. There are people on the other Jovian satellites too, that should get their stories.

Comments Off on Issue 042 Author Interview: Michèle Laframboise and “Ganymede’s Lamps”

Issue 042 Author Interview: EJ Sidle and “Minor Mortalities”

by Luna Station Press July 21st, 2020

Tuesday again? No problem. Our interview with Issue 042 author EJ Sidle on her story “Minor Mortalities” is sure to get you through the day.

LSQ: Your story starts with quite the reader-grabbing line. Where did the idea for a necromancer-hitman come from?

EJ: The answer isn’t as exciting as you might be thinking! The idea for the whole story was sparked by a Springsteen song (“Atlantic City,” if anyone is curious!). The necromancer angle felt like a natural progression as it all came together; I liked the idea of a hitman who could just keep bringing his victims back. Plus, I’d been researching necromancy for an unrelated project, so I think it was just on my mind!

LSQ: We only see Theo and Alec in this story, but there’s major groundwork for a whole magical world here, especially with that cliffhanger of an ending. Have you written anything else set in this world, or do you plan to?

EJ: I’m really good at making plans to write more within a world, or to turn a flash piece into something longer, but I’m far less good at following through! I certainly enjoyed writing “Minor Mortalities”, and I think there’s more of Theo and Alec’s story to tell. I suppose that means I have vague plans to carry on, but no real idea of what those plans will actually be!

LSQ: What was the most enjoyable part about writing this story? The most challenging?

EJ: My favorite part of starting a new piece is always the characters. It’s exciting to have a new dynamic to explore, and I always end up having an idea of who I’m writing about before I get to the actual plot!

Most challenging was probably keeping the piece flash-sized. I wanted to make sure that the interaction between Alec and Theo came together in a way that felt plausible, but at the same time it needed to be succinct enough to allow the piece to keep moving forward without turning into a novel! It worked out in the end, but not without some heavy lifting on behalf of my amazing beta team!

LSQ: Who and what are your major sources of inspiration?

EJ: I’m a music lover, so often I get ideas for story aesthetics/character concepts from songs. Having the idea is only half the battle, though, so after that I think most of my inspiration to actually write comes from my critique partners and beta readers. Plus, I’m a member of an absolutely amazing writing group, and I think I get a lot of my long-term inspiration from sharing everyone’s trials and tribulations. It really does take a village!

Comments Off on Issue 042 Author Interview: EJ Sidle and “Minor Mortalities”

Interview: Madeleine E. Robins on “‘Omunculus”

by Spilogale Inc. July 15th, 2020

F&SF: How do you describe this story to people?

MER: A Pygmalion/RUR mashup with no romance. I think George Bernard Shaw would approve.

 
F&SF: What inspired you to mix Pygmalion with R.U.R., and how did you bring those pieces together to write this story?

MER: I think it began after having a discussion with one of my daughters about the shared responsibility of teachers to teach and learners to learn. Teaching isn’t just a matter of opening a student’s head and pouring the information in—but that appealingly robotic image may have been what started me thinking about the story. After all, Henry Higgins, egoist that he is, believes that all the effort is his; even the flesh and blood Eliza in Pygmalion is a prop in his experiment, rather than a partner in learning. Henry Higgins does not do partners (Col. Pickering, in the original, and Rossum, in “’Omunculus,” are merely higher-status props in Higgins’ story). So I’ve got Henry Higgins and an automaton, which meant, me being me, that I would have to hook Higgins up with Rossum (a character who doesn’t exist in Câpek’s play). Pygmalion debuted in 1913; R.U.R. in 1920, so I figured my story takes place before Rossum improved his automata and sold the business to the characters in R.U.R. With the two of them—and Eliza—in place, the rest while not precisely easy, was pretty much laid out for me by the structure of GBS’ play.

The other thing that appealed to me was that there is no possibility of a Higgins-Eliza pairing if Eliza is a robot (it’s not that kind of story). I could go back to Shaw’s original material with a clear conscience (I yield to none in my fondness for My Fair Lady, but GBS was adamant that Higgins and Eliza did not wind up together). Since there’s no chance of a Freddie Eynsford-Hill and Eliza romance either (really not that kind of story) that left me free to come up with an ending that also made use of those two redoubtables, Mrs. Higgins and Mrs. Pearce. I have a serious soft spot for tough old broads, no matter how well mannered.

 
F&SF: Besides the soft spot for tough old broads, is there anything in this story that’s personal for you?

MER: I’m sure there is… I suspect that most women have had the experience of being underestimated and undervalued by a man who saw them as a prop in his story. I would not say this is revenge—I am not the vengeful sort. But I am human, and writing the scene in the theatre where Eliza breaks down—intentionally? Not intentionally?—was very satisfying.

 
F&SF: How has your writing process changed over the years?

MER: I’m still either glacially slow or fairly rapid—it doesn’t seem to matter what the text is: some pieces just drag me along and some require unearthing. What hasn’t changed is that while I know the emotional destination I’m heading for I often have no idea how I’m going to get there until I look around and Hey! Presto! there I am.

I never used to outline, but these days on most projects I almost always get to a point about two thirds in, where I realize I need at the very least to make notes on what has to happen and in what order. I’m also a lot more comfortable writing what I’d call placeholder text when I cannot nail down the exact phrase or word I want. Making myself crazy trying to nail the mot juste for a first draft is a form of procrastination; better to plough ahead and come back and fix things in the edit, as my recording-engineer partner says. I’m also much more aware of the sensory surroundings of my characters than I was as a younger writer—I think that came, in part, from a work-for-hire gig writing a Marvel novel staring Daredevil, who is blind but whose other senses are heightened. Since I couldn’t describe anything visually, I had to think of what the smells, and textures, and tastes were. It was a great experience.

Oh: and in the very beginning I wrote sitting crosslegged with my typewriter on my knees (it was a Selectric, and weighed the earth). Nowadays I write on a laptop and while I still sit crosslegged, my knees are happier.

 
F&SF: What are you and your happier knees working on now?

MER: A fourth in my Sarah Tolerance alternate-Regency detective series (Point of Honor, Petty Treason, and The Sleeping Partner—all three can be found here), with a fifth beginning to distract me, which is not helpful. Also a fantasy novel set in contemporary San Francisco. And a challenge short story for my writing workshop. Sewing cloth masks for donation. And just at the moment, a loaf of sourdough bread. I am a Covid-cliche.

I have nothing coming out right now (see “glacially slow” above), but I am blogging at Treehousewriters.com, as well as at my own website, madeleinerobins.com.

—

“‘Omunculus” appears in the July/August 2020 issue of F&SF.

Order a copy of this issue…

 
…or subscribe and never miss a single story!

Print edition: https://www.sfsite.com/fsf/subscribe.htm

Ebook editions:

comments

Comments Off on Interview: Madeleine E. Robins on “‘Omunculus”

Issue 042 Author Interview: Rachel Brittain and “Moonlight Plastics”

by Luna Station Press July 14th, 2020

Comments Off on Issue 042 Author Interview: Rachel Brittain and “Moonlight Plastics”

Law & Authors: An Interview with Jacqui Lipton

by Luna Station Press July 8th, 2020

Jacqui Lipton has been writing the “On the Books” column for Luna Station Quarterly for a while
and, with her new book coming out, we thought we’d turn the tables and ask her some
questions about her own work this month. Editor Jen Gheller took the opportunity to reach out
and ask Jacqui some questions about her interest in publishing law and the new book, Law & Authors: A Legal Handbook for Writers.

LSQ: You’ve been writing your “On the Books” column for a few years now. What made you want to write about law as it pertains to creative folks like writers?

Jacqui: I’ve been both a writer and a lawyer (and a law professor, and now even a literary agent) and the more I emerge myself in the publishing world, the more I’ve realized how few truly accessible resources there are for writers who either can’t afford lawyers or, importantly, don’t know if they need a lawyer for the issue they may be dealing with. After writing the “On the

Books” column here at Luna Station Quarterly for a number of years, as well as other pieces for various writing organizations on law and the publishing industry, I had the idea to put it all together into a book and luckily my own agent, Jane Dystel, found a great home for it with Naomi Schneider’s imprint at University of California Press. There are a lot of common legal issues writers face, some of which are pretty easy to understand (like registering a copyright) and some of which can be more difficult (like figuring out what your publishing contract means). I believed a resource that gathered together common issues and presented them in a user-friendly way, using lots of pop culture examples, would be helpful.

LSQ: It seems that law can be a bit inaccessible and intimidating for those of us who aren’t law-savvy. Why do you think this is?

Jacqui: Some of the laws relating to publishing really are quite complex, even for lawyers. Copyright law in particular is filled with all sorts of confusing doctrines, including the fair use defense which is far from easy to understand and almost impossible to predict how it will apply in many cases. You could ask 12 different lawyers a question about whether a particular use is a fair use and get 12 different answers, most boiling down to some variation of “it depends”.

I think contracts can be intimidating too because the idea of putting your signature on a legal document is always scary, particularly if you don’t know all the ins and outs of what rights you may be giving away and what recourse you might have if something goes wrong.

Law does get a bad rap, though, because it can help authors as much as it scares us. That’s why it’s worth understanding the basics.

LSQ: What kind of research did you have to do for Law and Authors?

Jacqui: By the time I actually wrote the book, I’d given so many presentations and workshops and taught so many classes, and written so many blog posts that there wasn’t that much research left to do. The tricky thing with writing about legal issues, though, is making sure what you say is up to date because laws can move very fast, particularly laws relating to things like digital technology/digital publishing. The book also covers some comparative law issues (how American law differs on key points from laws in some other countries) and that took a bit of research.

LSQ: What are the biggest legal mistakes you’ve seen writers make when it comes to publishing?

Jacqui: Probably giving away rights without understanding the contracts. Publishing contracts can be complex and it’s important to understand that when you sign on the dotted line, you might be giving the publisher more than just the right to publish your book. You may be giving them rights in prequels, sequels, retellings, foreign rights, translation rights, and/or film and television
rights, among others. One problem is that people are so happy to get a publishing contract that they often sign without thinking too much about it or without fully understanding it. Nothing in the publishing world moves all that fast (at least if you’re talking about traditional book publishing) and you are completely within your rights to seek independent legal advice if you need it.

The other mistake that I sometimes hear about is authors paying an agent for work on a
manuscript the agent supposedly represents (often called “reading fees”). Agents generally work on commission; they shouldn’t get paid unless you get paid. Then, they get a percentage of your
royalties as commission. They shouldn’t be charging separate fees to read your work unless they’re doing it as a consulting package (say, at a writing conference) outside the author/agent
relationship.

LSQ: Can you briefly describe your journey in merging your writing life with your passion for law?

Jacqui: Two words: Midlife Crisis!

I’d been a law professor for many years when the writing bug bit. I started writing bits and
pieces myself, and then taking online classes, finally culminating in biting the bullet and
applying for an MFA degree. It was during my MFA program that I became aware of the larger
publishing world and realized that I was just as fascinated by the business and legal aspects of
publishing as I was by the craft aspects. I found myself asking my instructors questions about the
business/legal side almost as often as I was asking them for editorial comments on my work.
Given that I love to write, and that I love learning and teaching about the business of publishing,
writing about publishing seemed very natural.

A bit more about the book:
Law and Authors: A Legal Handbook for Writers, is an approachable, reader-friendly resource to help authors navigate the legal landscape of the contemporary publishing industry. Through case studies and hypothetical examples, Law and Authors addresses issues of copyright law, including explanations of fair use and the public domain; trademark and branding concerns for those embarking on a publishing career; laws that impact the ways that authors might use social media and marketing promotions; and privacy and defamation questions that writers may face.

Note: If you order direct from the University of California Press website, using discount
code discount code 17M6662, you receive a 30% discount).

Comments Off on Law & Authors: An Interview with Jacqui Lipton

Issue 042 Author Interview: Aimée Jodoin and “The Glitch”

by Luna Station Press July 7th, 2020

How’s your day going, dear readers? Are you ready for your weekly dose of Issue 042 author interviews? Today we’re satisfying your craving with Aimée Jodoin’s insightful answers to our questions about her story “The Glitch.”

LSQ: The concept of Rehabilitation is fascinating, as a sort of a time slavery. How did you come up with the idea?

Aimée: I adore time travel stories; they are to me a test of creativity and skill, plus they’re just entertaining. We often hear stories about people using time travel to change the past, but I am more interested in self-fulfilling prophecies, stories where people know that time cannot be changed and that they must make terrible sacrifices to maintain a time stream in which they are the victims in a power structure. While it doesn’t seem like it on a day-to-day basis, that’s the situation we are in: stuck in a time stream heading at the same pace in one direction with no way

to change it. I look at that as a beautiful thing in my personal life, but in stories it’s more interesting to show the dark side of that. I knew I wanted the time traveling in the story to be involuntary, like the time structure is in our lives; unfortunately, people in private prisons today are essentially treated like slaves, and I believe it wouldn’t be far fetched, if people from the future needed laborers, for prisons to send convicts in this way. That’s the sad, brutal truth of the current system. In terms of the content of the story itself, like many writers I took an image from a dream I had. Cliche, I know. I don’t believe in any of that dreams-tell-you-things business; it was just an intriguing image of a person walking through a sort-of door frame that I knew in the dream to be a time travel device, and the person losing an arm, which was left behind in the future. I wish I had a better origin story than a dream, but sometimes that’s just how it goes. It’s what you do with the dream, how you develop the idea, that makes the story what it is.

LSQ: The moral implications of the main character’s planned glitch are complicated. What do you think is the main factor that drives her to make that decision?

Aimée: Ultimately, she wants her husband back, and she’ll do anything to save him from the clutches of Rehabilitation. She disregards the fact that she’s risking hurting someone else in causing a glitch, and she ignores the fact that trying to save him and only him instead of attempting to dismantle the whole system is morally questionable. Would it be more effective in the long-run to expose the wrongdoings of Rehabilitation to the public and try to shut it down? Of course. But it’s hard for people in those types of situations to step back and look at the big picture when they’re so emotionally involved in the details.

LSQ: Your ending is somewhat ambiguous, but also terrifying in its implications. No matter what the outcome, something bad has happened. But also maybe something good. Did leaving it open ended heighten the sacrifice and risk?  

Aimée: Yes, that was my goal: heighten the sacrifice and risk. I enjoy open endings because they leave questions and make you think, so long as they fulfill the purpose of the story and don’t leave you frustrated. I think “The Glitch” shows that people are willing to risk their lives and livelihoods when they’re in a horrible situation, and I don’t think it was necessary to show what happened to Michael in order to do that. I know what happens next in the story in my head, and if I added that to this story, it would be another one hundred pages rather than one or two to bring closure to this tale.

LSQ: What about your story did you find to be the most interesting to write?

Aimée: From the start, the voice of the story was the hardest to get down. The main character is no-nonsense, doesn’t care about the details, just wants to get to the point. So that consistency of sharp language was difficult but fun to write. Content-wise, it was the minutiae of the time travel that was most interesting to me. I want to write a million different time travel stories that have different methodologies, different moral implications, different characters driving the action. There are so many ways to write a time travel story. I never get sick of reading them!

LSQ: Do you have anything else you are working on at the moment? Or do you have future plans? 

Aimée: I was working on a novel about a pandemic, but I’m taking a break from that for now considering our current situation. I have a few short stories in the works and a handful of novel ideas that may come to fruition at some point in the future. I have played around with continuing “The Glitch” from where it left off and turning it into a novel-length story; it’s an exciting but intimidating prospect!

Comments Off on Issue 042 Author Interview: Aimée Jodoin and “The Glitch”

Editor’s Note for the July/August Issue

by Spilogale Inc. June 30th, 2020

An editor’s note for the July/August issue seems almost redundant because this includes one of my rare editorials, just the third since I took over the magazine. (There’s a link to it down in the Table of Contents below.) On the other hand, some things have changed so much since I wrote it just over two months ago that rereading it today feels almost like traveling in a time machine to the distant past.

So I’ll let that stand on its own and tell you about the rest of the new issue instead! Starting with where you can find it. Here in the U.S., many bookstores and newsstands are still closed, so if you can’t find us where you live, come find us where we live online.

If you’re not a subscriber and you’d like to subscribe right now, here are some links!

* Paper subscriptions here: https://www.sfsite.com/fsf/subscribe.htm
* Electronic subscriptions via Weightless Books anywhere in the world here: https://weightlessbooks.com/category/publisher/spilogale-inc/
* Electronic subscriptions for Kindle US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004ZFZ4O8/
* Electronic subsriptions for Kindle UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B004ZFZ4O8/

You can also buy single copies of this issue:

* Paper copies from our website
* Electronic copies, available worldwide and in every electronic format, from Weightless Books, starting July 1.

Alan M. Clark‘s disturbing cover art (because, let’s face it, who wants stanky demon feet treading on the stones where your pizza’s going to cook?) illustrates “All Hail the Pizza King and Bless His Reign Eternal,” a new novelet by David Erik Nelson.

Three years ago, in our July/August 2017 issue, David Erik Nelson also had the cover story, that time with his novella “There Was a Crooked Man, He Flipped a Crooked House,” which readers are still sending us messages to tell us how much they loved it. His other stories for us include “The Traveling Salesman Solution” and “Whatever Comes After Calcutta.” Like any good pizza place, this new story delivers.

Let’s talk about fantasy. M. Rickert is here to escort us to “Last Night at the Fair.” James Morrow shares one of his “Bible Stories for Adults, No. 37: The Jawbone.” John Kessel explores being haunted and finding balance with “Spirit Level.” And Stephanie Feldman leads us to an unusual portal at the end of “The Staircase.”

Or we can talk about science fiction. Bennet North returns to our pages after a long absence with her space elevator story, “A Bridge from Sea to Sky.” Madeleine Robins mixes Pygmalion with R.U.R. to present us with “‘Omunculus.” And Brian Trent takes us to Mars to introduce us to “The Monsters of Olympus Mons.”

But we’d really like to talk about four writers making their F&SF debuts. Rati Mehrotra shows us that even spaceships can have a sense of humor, or at least try to, with “Knock, Knock Said the Ship.” Ana Hurtado invites us to Venezuela with “Madre Nuestra, Que Estás en Maracaibo.” Mel Kassel brings us along to a family’s summer outing at the lake so we can see “Crawfather” for ourselves. And World Fantasy Award winner Natalia Theodoridou joins us with a story about climate change and “The Shape of Gifts.”

We also don’t want to forget Mary Soon Lee, who offers up a sparkling bit of poetry with “A Quartet of Alphabetic Bubbles.”

Plus we have all our usual columns and features, which you can find linked in the Table of Contents below.

Enjoy!

C.C. Finlay, Editor
Fantasy & Science Fiction
fandsf.com | @fandsf

“Spirit Level” – John Kessel
“All Hail the Pizza King and Bless His Reign Eternal” – David Erik Nelson
“‘Omunculus” – Madeleine Robins
“The Monsters of Olympus Mons” – Brian Trent

“Knock, Knock Said the Ship” – Rati Mehrotra
“Last Night at the Fair” – M. Rickert
“Bible Stories for Adults No. 37: The Jawbone” – James Morrow
“Madre Nuestra, Que Estás en Maracaibo” – Ana Hurtado
“A Bridge from Sea to Sky” – Bennett North
“Crawfather” – Mel Kassel
“The Staircase” – Stephanie Feldman
“The Shape of Gifts” – Natalia Theodoridou

“A Quartet of Alphabetic Babbles” – Mary Soon Lee

Editorial by C.C. Finlay
Books to Look For by Charles de Lint
Musing on Books by Michelle West
Film: Darkness Visible by David J. Skal
Science: What the Heck is an Analemma by Jerry Oltion
Curiosities: The Contaminant by Leonard Reiffel (1978) by Thomas Kaufsek

Cartoons by Arthur Masear, Arthur Masear, Danny Shanahan, Kendra Allenby, Nick Downes, Nick Downes

Cover: By Alan M. Clark for “All Hail the Pizza King and Bless His Reign Eternal”

We hope you’ll share your thoughts about the issue with us. We can be found on:

comments

Comments Off on Editor’s Note for the July/August Issue

A Change at the Magazine

by Spilogale Inc. June 30th, 2020

Today’s interview with Richard Bowes marks Stephen Mazur’s last official act as Assistant Editor of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction.

After the writers and contributors to the magazine, the editor and publisher tend to get most of the credit for making it happen. But the truth is we couldn’t complete any of our work without the constant effort of a whole team of people.

Stephen Mazur has been a key part of that team since December of 2009, or just over ten and a half years. During his first five years on the job, he was the first line of contact for writers submitting to the magazine. Back in those days — it’s just a decade, but surely it feels much longer — F&SF only accepted paper submissions. Stephen opened the mail and read all those stories, writing thousands of rejection letters and helping to discover some new writers along the way.

When I became editor in 2015 and we switched over to electronic submissions, Stephen’s role gradually changed until he became my second reader, providing thoughtful and detailed notes on anything we were seriously considering for the magazine. If you ever got a rewrite request or a rejection with more detailed comments in it, chances are that Stephen’s hand was in that process somewhere along the way. In that role, he became an even stronger advocate for new writers and specific stories, sometimes arguing with me to give something he loved another look. He often ended up being right and I bought several stories only because of his intervention. He brought a sharp eye for great storytelling to his work, and there are many writers who will never know how much he did for them.

He was also one of the magazine’s main points of contact for the writers we did publish, primarily by conducting our blog interviews with them. Although he was based in F&SF‘s business office on the other side of the country and was responsible for many things in that of the operation, which consumed the majority of his work time by the end, I could not have been as effective in my role as editor without him, especially early on when I was still learning the ropes. He did a lot to help me build up F&SF‘s social media presence, acted as a sounding board for me when I was thinking about upcoming issues, was always eager to generate ideas to promote and develop the magazine, and served as an excellent ambassador for F&SF at conventions and in other venues.

Stephen is moving on to a writing-related job outside of publishing. His new employers will find themselves very lucky to have him. I suspect that he will come to think himself lucky too, as he can go back to reading fiction just for pleasure again. But the magazine, and I, in particular, will miss him. Please join us in wishing him good luck in his future ventures. Thanks, Stephen.

C.C. Finlay, Editor
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction

comments

Comments Off on A Change at the Magazine

Interview: Richard Bowes on “In the Eyes of Jack Saul”

by Spilogale Inc. June 30th, 2020

Tell us a bit about “In the Eyes of Jack Saul.”

“In the Eyes of Jack Saul” is an amalgamation of Victorian fiction and reality. Jack Saul was a real person and served, at one point, in a male brothel that was visited by several elites including Prince Albert Victor, grandson of Queen Victoria, for whom the era is named. The fictional inclusion was Oscar Wilde’s “The Portrait of Dorian Grey”, seen through the eyes of Jack Saul, as real a figure as the gay world has ever produced.

What was the inspiration for this story, or what prompted you to write it?

The Rent Boys and Mary-Ann’s in somewhat different circumstances appeared throughout my life. As a kid in Boston I realized that I wasn’t like the other boys. I sought out the attention of other men and found myself in situations not unlike Jack Saul’s. Later when I became a writer, I discovered that these experiences grabbed me above all else.

Was “In the Eyes of Jack Saul” personal to you in any way?  If so, how?

Gay material was fairly uncommon when I began writing stories like this one. People didn’t imagine there was much of a crossover between historical and gay stories. I knew it was working because it captivated me.

Can you tell us anything about your writing process, for this story or in general?

My writing process is this: I get an idea, I jump on it until I strangle it to death.

Why do you write?

It’s a bad habit, one I find hard to break.

Who do you consider to be your influences?

Many people write, I steal from my influencers. It gives me a jumping off place to begin my own stories.

What are you working on now?

Something I am calling “My Old Inner Life”. What that may amount to, I have yet to find out.

“In the Eyes of Jack Saul” appears in the May/June 2020 issue of F&SF.

You can buy a paper copy of the issue here: https://www.sfsite.com/fsf/toc2020-29.htm

You can buy an electronic copy of the issue here: https://weightlessbooks.com/format/the-magazine-of-fantasy-and-science-fiction-may-june-2020/

You can subscribe to the print edition of F&SF here: https://www.sfsite.com/fsf/subscribe.htm

You can subscribe to the electronic edition of F&SF at the following links:

Weightless Books (all formats): https://weightlessbooks.com/format/the-magazine-of-fantasy-and-science-fiction-6-issue-subscription/

Amazon US (Kindle edition):http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004ZFZ4O8/

Amazon UK (Kindle edition):http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B004ZFZ4O

comments

Comments Off on Interview: Richard Bowes on “In the Eyes of Jack Saul”