Summer 2007 Read online

  Winter 2007

  In this Issue:

  The following features are in this issue:

  • Column: An Interview with Elizabeth Bear, conducted by Sarah Monette

  • Column: Bears Examining #4 by Elizabeth Bear

  • Column: Lansdale Unchained #1 by Joe R. Lansdale

  • Column: Lansdale Unchained #2: ROBERT E. HOWARD AND THE WORLD OF ALMURIC By Joe R. Lansdale

  • Column: The Life and Work of Godfrey Winton: A Panel Discussion on One of Science Fiction’s Lost Masters

  • Fiction: Carnival Knowledge: a Lucifer Jones Story by Mike Resnick

  • Fiction: Snowball's Chance by Charles Stross

  • Fiction: An excerpt from One-Eyed Jack and the Suicide King by Elizabeth Bear

  • Fiction: Black is the Color by Elizabeth Bear

  • Fiction: Coat by Joe R. Lansdale

  • Fiction: Dispersed by the Sun, Melting in the Wind by Rachel Swirsky

  • Fiction: Make a Joyful Noise by Charles de Lint

  • Fiction: Stone Shoes by C.S.E. Cooney

  • Fiction: Unrequited Love by Gene Wolfe

  • Interview: Patrick Rothfuss By Alethea Kontis

  • Review: Race for the Rocket by Anne KG Murphy

  Reviews: THE SPACE OPERA RENAISSANCE and THE NEW SPACE OPERA: ALL NEW STORIES OF SCIENCE FICTION ADVENTURE

  Column: An Interview with Elizabeth Bear, conducted by Sarah Monette

  Q: New Amsterdam is an alternate history. How does that world diverge from our own?

  EB: Hah! That’s a good question. And one I’m going to sneak up on from a weird angle, starting with a non-answer. But please bear with me.

  It’s not really an alternate history. It’s a contrafactual universe, which is a bit different in a technical sense–an alternate history takes place in a universe that’s just like ours, except some thing turned out differently. In a contrafactual universe, the physical laws are different.

  Generally speaking, contrafactual universes are classed as fantasy and alt-hist is classed as SF, but honestly, there’s a good deal of handwaving in either. For example, you might try to write a rigorous alternate history, but this thing happens as soon as you start changing, where even the language and the people change. If there’s no American revolution, for example, a whole bunch of things change, and the same people are not important, only in different roles, a hundred years on. but of course one of the conceits of alternate history seems to be that you can take the same historical people and do ahistorical things with them.

  Unfortunately, a moment’s thought would show you why that wouldn’t work. Change one border, and you start a butterfly cascade effect: people just don’t get born. Different people get born. Kill somebody in a war, and so on…

  On the other hand, it’s a heck of a lot of fun to take, say, Marie Curie and stick her in an entirely different setting. Fun for writer and fun for reader: it’s a thought experiment. So, we are engaged in a collective suspension of disbelief to get her there.

  This is why I think that the pretense that alt-hist is somehow “rigorous” is a little disingenuous.

  So, anyway. New Amsterdam in contrafactual. The laws of physics are entirely different. Magic works, in certain limited ways–it’s a system of magic that Sir Isaac Newton would have been completely comfortable with, I suspect, codified and dare I say scientific.

  As a result of this, I arbitrarily decided that certain things would be different–that the Native peoples of North America would have been able to fight European settlement to a standstill, for example, because Mayan and Iroquois alliances proved too powerful for the colonists.

  Therefore, the European settlements are limited to narrow bands along the coasts. Also, the Dutch retained possession of New Holland–our New York State–until the equivalent of the Napoleonic wars, at which point they ceded it to England to avoid French conquest. Now, of course, I’ve admitted above that I am just making this stuff up. But I did try to make it logically consistent.

  All fiction is a tissue of lies, of course. It’s just even more evident to me when writing alternate history or contrafactual history than elsewhere.

  Q: What’s your favorite thing about writing in that world?

  EB: Oh, the ability to play. I can put vampires and sorcerers and ghosts into a society that codifies everything in rigorous and even closed-minded hierarchies, and watch the sparks fly. because of course one of the things vampires and sorcerers and ghosts–thematically–are about is overturning hierarchies. So I have these characters who are, by their very existence, an overthrow–a downfall–of the stratified society and scientific method… and they are engaged in using rigorous methods–forensics, deductive logic–to reinforce that

  society.

  It’s so much fun.

  Q: What are the influences on New Amsterdam, and what drew you to them? What made you decide to combine them?

  EB: Well, of course, there’s a basic debt owed to the work of Randall Garrett, the Lord Darcy mysteries. Which I have long loved, and my protagonist, Detective Crown Investigator Abigail Irene Garrett, is named for him. I had some reactions to the unexamined class issues in those, and some of what I was writing about grew out of that. I’m also incredibly fond of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes mysteries, and I tried to borrow some of the air of those. Abby Irene is Irene because of Irene Adler.

  And then there’s Sebastien, the Great Detective. Who also happens to be a wampyr. The classic Victorian monster, as recollected for us by Bram Stoker. Sebastien is not a particularly Dracula-esque wampyr, however. Once I had the forensic detective story, and the Victorian setting, he was a natural as an additional character.

  They seemed, in other words, to go well together.

  And in addition, because I had this scientific magic system in place, I could bring in all sorts of steampunk elements. Dirigibles, for example. Any excuse for dirigibles is a good excuse, I think.

  Q: The Promethean Age books are secret history rather than alternate history, and they’re also quite diverse. What is it that unifies them (conceit, theme, etc.)?

  EB: Oh, yes. I have five of these written and four of them sold. One’s in print, one more is coming out this summer, and then the next two in 2008 and 2009. And then, like Frodo and Samwise, we shall see.

  Tim Powers talks about the research that you do for secret-historical fantasy, and how as you start uncovering all these odd connections, your brain starts telling you, “Oh, wow, I’m not making any of this up.” And it’s true: the brain is a pattern-sensing machine. A pattern-manufacturing machine. It makes you understand how conspiracy buffs get that way: there’s a tremendous satisfaction, a dopamine rush, in that kind of problem solving. I suspect it’s the same satisfaction one gets from reading a good whodunit–the aha! function–or solving a tricky math problem. The brain rewards us for mastering new ideas, because it’s adaptive to do so.

  I don’t know if there’s a unifying theme in the series, beyond the unifying theme in all of my work, the ur-story, which seems to be something along the lines of “you’re not dead until you stop kicking, dammit.”

  The conceit of the series is that “all stories are true,” that narratives, in other words, have an objective reality. And that they are influenced by the way they are told, and how often they are repeated. The overarching conflict of the Promethean Age books deals with a conflict between the Prometheus Club, an organization of mages who are devoted to protecting human society from things that go bump in the night… and the things that go bump in the night.

  Each book or pair of books (there’s one duology) stands alone, completing a portion of narrative. And each one is told from different perspectives, and at different places in history. Some are modern, some
are historical. Some are from the point of view of the Faeries and other “otherwise” creatures, and some are from the point of view of the humans of the so-called Iron World.

  Behind it all is the idea that, like most conflicts, nobody really knows how it originated or who the good guys or bad guys are. Both sides are at fault.

  Some readers love this aspect. Some find it a little difficult to divorce themselves from anthropocentric thinking, and firmly take sides with humans. Some… are definitely not on our side.

  I find that fascinating.

  They’re meant to be pretty good adventures, too, and hopefully full of cool bits–dragons and Magi and warrior queens and Mythical Las Vegas and transformations and hopeless love and death-or-glory stands and betrayals and swordfights and abductions. If I do say so myself.

  Q: Las Vegas. Five minutes. Go.

  EB: You know, I lived there for seven years, and I’m still not sure what I think of the place. For a city that’s only a hundred years old, it has a rich vein of mythology and a hammerlock on a certain archetype in world consciousness, right now. Sin City, the beating heart of American capitalism and kitsch.

  But you know, a lot of people live there. And it’s hard for many of them to imagine a future outside of Las Vegas. It’s a city-state, in a lot of ways, very isolated–there’s desert on all four sides, after all–and so it develops a particular culture all its own.

  I had a very hard time living there. The climate was not comfortable for me, I ran across a lot of social assumptions that made me very unhappy, and my employment and personal situation frankly sucked. Now that I’m away from it, I have a better grasp on some of its good qualities, but while I was living there, I felt trapped.

  On the other hand, I think there’s nothing that inspires one to write about a place like being an outsider there. When you grow up in a landscape, you see it as a participant, not an observer. You’re inside.

  When you come in as an alien, you start thinking about how and why things are the way they are. You look for reasons, rather than assuming–that’s the way things are done.

  So Vegas really shattered my preconceptions about what society and people were like. I learned a tremendous amount about the entertainment industry, about relating to people with different backgrounds, and about the base assumptions of other people about New Englanders (we’re actually not like that at all).

  Las Vegas is a city in transition. A city of transition. It’s always reinventing itself, like a giant television set. It’s very unreal.

  In One-eyed Jack and the Suicide King, I call it a mirage. A ghost city. And in a lot of ways that’s true.

  Oddly enough, I kind of miss it now. Not enough to move back. But certainly enough to visit.

  Q: Let’s call science fiction and fantasy a single genre. How does SFF reward a writer?

  EB: It’s the ultimate playground, isn’t it? Once you start discarding, using, alienating, or subverting the genre conventions, there’s absolutely nothing you can’t do. You have to build your own frameworks to support the thematic and narrative structures you want to use.

  The best game ever.

  This is probably why I have this need to swipe elements from so many different subgenres–because for me, it’s not writing to fit the various patterns that entrances me. It’s how you can use those different narrative patterns as frameworks upon which to hang the things you really want to talk about.

  The thing I really want to talk about is human reactions to stressful situations, when it comes down to it. I am just a sucker for people who demonstrate unholy grit in the face of the inevitable, and pay unbelievable prices for it. I love the American folktale of “John Henry,” for example. People do amazing things, in extremis, and that there appears to be a biochemical circuit in our head that kicks in, in disaster, and triggers us to altruistic courage, doesn’t do a thing to diffuse my awe.

  Several people have opined that I write in too many SFF subgenres, but really, I only write in one. It’s just not any of the established ones, though I am happy to borrow their elements for plots.

  But all of my books have similar thematic and character concerns. (I call the style eco-Gothic, and a few other writers–Peter Watts, Chelsea Polk, Caitlin Kiernan–have adopted the term. But it’s not a literary movement: it’s just a description of a particular set of thematic concerns and stylistic elements. Stand on Zanzibar is sort of the Ur-text, if you’re wondering what I mean when I say eco-Gothic.)

  Q: How’s the state of SFF today, from where you’re standing?

  EB: The state of SFF today is thriving. It’s going mainstream. It’s all the heck over the place–on my television, in the movies, in mainstream literary novels.

  If you limit SFF to mean the genre ghetto, the answer might be different. We’re always hearing about how book publishing is in crisis… but we’ve been hearing that for twenty years, just as we’ve been hearing that SFF is dead.

  I think there’s an element within genre that very much wants it to stay a club scene, that wants to maintain control. Ownership, if you will.

  I submit that would be the best way to strangle the genre. As I think that drawing bright lines between SF and Fantasy and Magic Realism and Mythic Fiction is a great way to gerrymander speculative fiction and rob it of innovation and power.

  The real danger, I think, is navel gazing. Trying to duplicate the same stuff we’ve been doing since 1933, staying too close to the existing genre. Writing to the existing audience. That’s no good for anybody: it strangles innovation. It turns the genre into comfort food. And it’s the best way to stagnate and die out.

  Poetry grows through the broken places, you know? Through the cracks and interstices.

  Q: What have you got coming out in 2007/2008?

  EB: In May 2007, New Amsterdam — editor’s note: nearly sold out — from Subterranean Press. In July, Whiskey & Water (A Promethean Age book) from Roc. In August, Undertow from Spectra. And in October, A Companion to Wolves from Tor (written with a certain Sarah Monette).

  In 2008, another Promethean Age book, Ink & Pen (if it keeps that title), from Roc. And then there are two trilogies that will start coming out in 2008.

  The first is the “Jacob’s Ladder” books, from Spectra, which are science fiction–I keep calling them space opera, but they’re not: they’re gothic and overwrought, and the pocket description is Amber:Gormenghast::Upstairs:Downstairs… in spaaaaaaaaaace. This concerns the attempts of the remaining, highly physically modified crew to sustain a dying generation ship long enough to find a safe harbor.

  And the things that get in the way.

  It’s all about cascading failures and people not getting what they want.

  The first book is called Dust. It will be out next spring.

  And the second is a thing I’m calling “The Edda of Burdens,” at least until Marketing makes me change it, which is coming out from Tor starting next fall. It’s periApocalyptic Norse steampunk noir high fantasy.

  When I say periApocalyptic, I mean that there are three separate and distinct ends of the world in these books, and one that predates the narrative. It’s sort of super dark, and heroes become villains, and vice versa.

  It’s such a cool world. That series concerns the bad things (and a few good things) that happen between three mythic beings over the course of about 2500 years, from an early iron age culture to a post-spaceflight one, while the world they live in cyclically destroys and reinvents itself.

  Also, there’s a steam-powered cybernetic flying warhorse. What’s not to love?

  Q: And what about those mismatched socks?

  EB: You know, I always used to match by thickness, in high school. Then I got a real job, and they had to match.

  Recently, I’ve realized that my new job allows me to work in my pajamas, so matched socks are strictly optional… .

  Column: Bears Examining #4 by Elizabeth Bear

  Every time somebody writes Spock/McCoy, God does not kill a puppy (or) Oh, god
. Not this kerfuffle again.

  This week, I thought I might dip a toe into the current debates over fanfic-for-profit (possibly a nice idea, but the execution seems, um, exploitative) and eternal copyright (obscene) that are sweeping the blogosphere. But then, I found something related but even more frivolous to talk about.

  Recently, the estimable Cory Doctorow published an essay in Locus defending fanfiction. Cory is something of an Intellectual Property Rights Bad Boy, a freethinker, and opinions of him and his convictions vary.

  Needless to say there was outcry.

  Well, May is National Masturbation Month. I guess this is a suitable discussion to have now, on many metaphorical levels.

  I’m on the record as approving of fanfic, and have been for a long while. In fact, when I started defending fanfiction, I hadn’t ever written any. I was not active in any fandoms, media or print.

  I did not start writing fanfic, qua fanfic, until after I was a published–dare I say award-winning?–writer.

  In other words, I came to fandom as a professional interested in the kinds of storytelling they were doing over there, rather than coming to prodom as a fanfiction writer with a past to justify.

  I think that gives me a novel perspective on the genre.

  If you will forgive me a small and terrible pun.

  (I did write a certain amount of what I would now identify as fanfic in junior high, but it was in isolation, and I had no idea that anybody else did that sort of thing. I thought of it as practice, actually–I knew about spec scripts, and I knew about students repainting masters to learn technique. I guess Denis McGrath has never heard about that, or visited a major art museum and seen the baby artists with their easels pitched in front of an old master, copying, copying, copying.

  (I think it was John Gardner who made his writing students type out James Joyce’s “The Dead” repeatedly as an exercise, but memory is fallible. In any case, I’m far from the only pro writer who writes fanfic, although as far as I know I’m the only one who does it openly.)