Fantasy & Science Fiction magazine, originally titled The Magazine of Fantasy, was founded in 1949 by Anthony Boucher and J. Francis McComas…or was it? Describe, in 50 words or less, the secret origins of F&SF. Alternate histories, imagined conversations, and science-fictional (or magical) twists on the truth are more than welcome. Another welcomed element: funny.

Example:

Shirley Jackson and Theodore Sturgeon leave a little basket on the doorstep of Anthony Boucher with a tear-stained note: “Please take care of our baby. Raise it as if it were your own.”

You have six chances to rewrite history before midnight EST, May 28th. Send your entries to carol@cybrid.net.

Please remember to include your telephone number and snail-mail address.

PRIZES: First prize will receive a subscription to F&SF good for the next sixty years along with a copy of The Diamond Jubilee. Second prize will receive advance reading copies of three forthcoming novels.  Any runners-up will receive one-year subscriptions to F&SF. Results of Competition 78 will appear in the Oct/Nov. 2009 issue.

Judges are the editors of F&SF, and their decision is final.  All entries become the property of F&SF.

“A Foreign Country” is about a third-party presidential candidate who inexplicably wins with huge majorities. Then he sits behind his desk and apparently does nothing but eat. He says he likes the food here. Crime stops, criminals (among others) disappear, peace and quiet descends, and a lot of people lose chunks of their memories. But they’re happy in an impaired kind of way. Of course, there’s a little romance, attempted assassination, madness… the usual. The story is told from the point of view of a very ordinary, unimaginative pool reporter who trails the candidate around, goes to the White House with him, and spends most of his time being bewildered.

What’s the genesis of the story–what was the inspiration for it, or what prompted you to write it?

Two identifiable sources: First, the question, “What if a flaky third-party no-chance candidate won?” And, second, a mean-spirited party game called “Extermination,” where the goal is to reduce the population of the earth by half (or a third or whatever—it’s all approximation) by selecting groups (with no exceptions within that group) that will cease to exist, like people who have killed other people (soldiers and policemen have to be included here), people who’ve killed anything for fun, etc. But how I got from those two things to the final story is a mystery to me. It’s no mystery to me that the ancient Greeks believed the muses whispered their poetry into their ears.

Did the writing of this story present you with any significant challenges (i.e., was it particularly difficult to write, etc.)?

Once I discovered who was going to tell the story, it wrote itself. There were so many possibilities it was only a matter of deciding what to leave out.

Most authors say all their stories are personal. If that’s true for you, in what way was this story personal to you?

Some of the people in the story are friends, acting like they really act and saying things they’ve actually said. They find this amusing.

After spending several decades teaching people how to write, it was a lot of fun writing like a beginner—like someone who went to the thesaurus too often and came up with “Cryptic, sphinxlike, perplexing, and conundrumatic” and “I felt disconcertedness and indeterminate emotions.”

What kind of research did you have to do for the story?

I had to scour a thesaurus.

Tell me a bit about the technology and science and/or worldbuilding used in the story.

My stories tend to wreck our current world, rather than imagine new ones. However, the presidential candidate is the one who has built our world and is watching it develop.

What are you working on now?

Two stories are on my HD: "Instruments of Torture and Delight" and "Nihilism and Threatening Mania." The first is 90% finished; the second is about half done.

Anything else you’d like to add?

A local publisher has a novel, Earthrise, that could come out in the next six months—as if all the world needs is another novel.

“Arkfall” is a story about three inadvertent explorers who find themselves on a journey across the undersea depths of an ice-bound planet. Osaji is a dutiful young woman who secretly rebels against the social demands of her communal society; Jack is a raging individualist haunted by his past; Mota, Osaji’s grandmother, is a gentle old lady slipping into dementia after a lifetime of self-sacrifice. The three of them end up on parallel, but not identical, journeys of discovery.

What’s the genesis of the story—what was the inspiration for it, or what prompted you to write it?

Stories never have just one inspiration for me; they need several. In this case, the story evolved from a daisy chain of speculations, starting with the setting. I was reading about Europa, a planet-sized moon covered by a global sea that is capped with ice, and I naturally thought, “What if there are deep sea rift zones there, as on Earth? Couldn’t life evolve there as it did here, based on the heat and minerals from deep-sea vents rather than photosynthesis from sunlight?” This was before we knew about Enceladus, which almost certainly does have volcanic activity under the ice, since it spews out eruptions of water vapor laced with organic compounds.

That first speculation led to: “What would it be like to live in such an environment?” As I thought about it, it seemed like life under an ice-capped sea would be claustrophobic and cautious, so I invented the sort of society that would be needed to cope with such an environment. But it also seemed to me like a failure of imagination to assume that residents of such a world would stick with our mechanistic technologies. So I posited a type of technology that doesn’t start with physics, but with biology. Rather than building habitats and ships inspired by the brittle clockwork mechanism, this society would invent things modeled on the pliable living cell. That is where the idea for the arks came from. They are essentially giant cells in which human beings live like resident mitochondria, drifting on the cyclical currents of the sea.

All of this added up to an interesting setting, but not to a story. The story came from more personal experiences—watching my family members cope with the old age and death of my grandmother a number of years ago. In traditional science fiction adventures, characters are magically isolated from the normal responsibilities of family and community. I wanted to write a story where people still have obligations like caring for elderly relatives—but manage to make discoveries and have adventures all the same. Although, as I think the story makes clear, I don’t think it would be easy.

Did the writing of this story present you with any significant challenges (i.e., was it particularly difficult to write?)

It took me years to write this story, because some parts of it were very hard to get through. If it had just been a straight adventure, I could have whipped it off in no time—but I was also working in some very personal territory, and it was hard to achieve a detached perspective and get the balance right. I have files stuffed with material I cut out.

What kind of research did you have to do for the story?

I read a lot about deep-sea vents and submersibles, but also about dementia and Alzheimer’s. I am aware that I have fudged some of the real technical challenges of living on the sea floor, but I didn’t think readers would be interested in long-winded explanations. At some point you just have to say, “They solved that problem. Let’s move on.”

What are you working on now?

I have a two-volume novel manuscript for sale to a good publisher, and some other short fiction in the works. But my biggest upcoming project is a nonfiction history book about the American Revolution on the frontier—the theater of the American Revolution no one knows about, between the Appalachians and the Mississippi. It is a dramatic and Shakespearian story with some characters I would love to have invented.

Anything else you’d like to add?

I have been thinking a lot about the literature of exploration and discovery. In this story I wanted to redefine the boundaries of exploration for myself. Much as I would love to experience the mysteries and wonders my characters do, my explorations will probably be in more personal and interpersonal arenas. So this story is about those, too.

I suppose I could say “Run! Run!” is about unicorns, but that would be simplistic. I could say it’s also about family dynamics and religious oppression, but that would make it sound terrifically pedantic.

Ultimately, it’s about the opportunities you missed in life. Things happen, and you can never go back and choose differently.

The other thing, and I don’t know if this will make sense until you’ve read the story, is that in the final paragraph Mary doesn’t even know what she has missed. The culture in which she lives has so impoverished her that she only has a dim, flickering sense that maybe things could have been different. That dim, flickering sense — those are the unicorns.

What’s the genesis of the story–what was the inspiration for it, or what prompted you to write it?

I had been reading fantasy stories, and noticed a trend toward starting a story as if it’s mainstream and then sneaking the fantasy element in through the side door when the story is about halfway along. This is not a bad way to write a story — I’ve done it a number of times myself. But on this particular day I was in a contrary mood. I felt it might be fun to write a story that proclaimed loudly, in the very first paragraph, that it’s fantasy.

So I wrote the two opening paragraphs of “Run! Run!”, ending with the description of what unicorn droppings look like (something I don’t believe Thurber ever mentioned, though the idea of unicorns eating flower petals out of your hand is Thurber’s, not mine), and then I had to come up with a story to go along with the opening.

One of the useful ways of generating a story from an initial idea is to ask, “Who is having a problem?” In this case, who could possibly have a problem with unicorns? The first people who came to mind were the people who want Harry Potter taken off the shelves of school libraries because it’s about witchcraft. Those people really do seem to want to drain the magic out of life. So I made them the villains.

The business about Christianity having triumphed is as much a fantasy as unicorns, but it’s their fantasy, not mine. I once played in a Christian music concert (I got paid good money, too — I wouldn’t have done it for free), in which the singer/songwriter had a lyric about looking forward to the day when the entire world would kneel before Jesus. These people really do believe that will happen someday.

Did the writing of this story present you with any significant challenges?

No special challenges. A woman at a cocktail party once asked Robert Frost (in a gushing tone, we can assume), “Oh, Mr. Frost, you must tell me: Is it hard to write poetry?” Frost answered, “Madam, either it is easy or it is impossible.” I wouldn’t dream of trying to improve on that.

On the other hand, another magazine just bought a story of mine that went through 12 drafts. “Run! Run!” was a stroll in the park by comparison. The business about the key to the gun cabinet — that just came to me. I did not sweat over it.

Most authors say all their stories are personal.  If that’s true for you, in what way was this story personal to you?

I don’t care much for Christianity. Given the choice between one fantasy and another, I’ll take the unicorns every time.

What kind of research did you have to do for the story?

When I was 22 years old I lived for a couple of years in upstate New York, not too far from Elmira. I had the fields along Mecklenburg Road outside of Ithaca very much in mind as I wrote this.

What are you working on now?

It’s difficult to keep myself psyched up to produce more stories when the market can’t absorb the new ones I wrote in the first half of the year. I’m amazingly grateful that F&SF picked up this story (and also “An Elvish Sword of Great Antiquity,” which I hope will be published soon — and boy, is there a story about how that one came to be written! I hope we can talk about it when the time comes), but I currently have four or five other stories languishing in in-baskets here and abroad.

The state of the publishing industry — feh. Don’t get me started on that topic. I’m not griping about my personal situation, I’m just saying, “It’s tough.” Tough for everybody.
I write a lot for nonfiction magazines. I’m very involved in professional music technology, primarily synthesizers and recording software. What I’m working on this morning is thrashing out a column topic for Electronic Musician. The nice thing about these magazines is that (with only one exception in the past six years out of a couple of hundred submissions), they buy what I write. I never have to shop anything around.

Three years ago I wrote a very long fantasy novel called The Leafstone Shield, but my agent (Howard Morhaim) didn’t feel it would be viable in today’s market. He felt it was too long, but my personal opinion is that “too long” is agent-speak for “not exciting enough.” He’s probably right.

The prospect of rewriting it, or writing another novel from scratch — why would I want to beat my head against that wall again? If somebody offers me an advance based on a chapter and outline, that would be different. But it would have to be a nice advance. And nobody is going to do that.

***

“Run! Run!” appears in our September 2008 issue. To learn more about Jim Aikin, visit his website at www.musicwords.net.

Laidlaw came up with Gorlen Vizenfirthe in his teens, when he was under the spell of Jack Vance. “Originally, I wrote a full Gorlen novel, a clumsy picaresque ‘Cugel the Clever’ pastiche entitled Mistress of Shadows,” he said. “This went through several iterations until, in my mid 20s, it struck me as too adolescent and derivative to deserve even a shadow life; instead of trying to fix it, I destroyed it.”

He never forgot about Gorlen, though–any more than he got over his love for the work of Jack Vance. “I also missed the sort of freedom that fantasy gives one to simply luxuriate in language,” Laidlaw said. “A number of years ago I started thinking about Gorlen again, and decided to try picking up his story after the events of Mistress.  Gorlen has a rich backstory, but it’s never been fully disclosed to readers.  I thought I might eventually get around to rewriting that original novel, but now I think I’ll gradually reveal his history in such a way that it makes that old book irrelevant.  Every few years I get the urge to look in on Gorlen, to see how his life might have progress in parallel to my own.  He’s like an old friend now.”

Gorlen Vizenfirthe is your basic fantasy bard. “I remember when the Alaric stories appeared, James Turner (of Arkham House, whom I was bombarding with crappy Lovecraft pastiches) pointed them out to me as the finest sort of writing in the field; and I was despondent because I knew I wasn’t going to come up with anything that serious and affecting,” Laidlaw said. “Eventually I came to terms with that.  Gorlen is more of a joker, despite his…affliction.  The primary thing that distinguishes him from other fantasy bards is his right stone hand, a graft from a gargoyle who was countergrafted with Gorlen’s flesh hand.  So although Gorlen appears to be aimlessly wandering in the grand bardic tradition, he’s actually aimlessly tracking his nemesis.”

“Childrun” came easily and all at once after a long period of having written very little. “I was blowing cruft out of the pipes, in a way…having fun reacquainting myself with my tools,” Laidlaw said. “I hope readers will detect and respond to the fun I was having in writing it.  As a result of this exercise, two more Gorlen stories followed quickly.”

Laidlaw has lived with Gorlen for about thirty years, so he feels a lot of affection for the character.  “I like the way he talks, the way he makes his way through the world, and I enjoy the kind of trouble he gets into,” he said. “I don’t have any other characters like this in my repertoire.  I always envied the writers who did.  How awesome for Fritz Leiber to always be able to hang out with Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser!  I wanted some friends like that.”

Since Gorlen is a bard, it seemed important to finally bring music into his stories somehow, so when writing the story, Laidlaw thought of the Pied Piper. “I think future episodes deserve more music themes, if only because it’s a huge part of his character, and its always good if stories have something intrinsic to do with the people who star in them,” he said.

Childrun is basically a detour or an aside, reintroducing readers to this forgotten character. “It doesn’t really add anything to Gorlen’s main quest, and for that I heartily apologize,” Laidlaw said. “The next story, ‘Quickstone,’ is a significant event for Gorlen—right up there with losing his hand.  And the one after that, ‘Songwood,’ is my favorite of the three—even though it is also very much a detour from Gorlen’s main course.”

Laidlaw reports that he has an idea for the next Gorlen story, and maybe the one after that.  “One of them might require the scope of a novel…it’s still too early to tell,” he said. “I figure eventually I’ll have enough short pieces to collect into something vaguely booklengthish, but I’m not quite there yet either.  Like Gorlen, I tend to pursue my prey rather aimlessly.”

For more about Laidlaw and Gorlen, visit Laidlaw’s website at www.marclaidlaw.com.

Here’s the whole table of contents:

NOVELLAS

• Arkfall – Carolyn Ives Gilman

NOVELETS

• Pump Six – Paolo Bacigalupi

SHORT STORIES

• Search Continues For Elderly Man  – Laura Kasischke
• Picnic on Pentecost  – Rand B. Lee
• Shed That Guilt! Double Your Productivity Overnight! – Michael Swanwick and Eileen Gunn
• Salad for Two  – Robert Reed
• Run! Run!  – Jim Aikin

DEPARTMENTS

• Editorial – Gordon Van Gelder
• Books to Look For – Charles de Lint, covering You Call This the Future? by Nick Sagan, Mark Frary, and Andy Walker; Echo, by Terry Moore; The Born Queen, by Greg Keyes.
• Books – Elizabeth Hand, covering The Invention of Everything Else, by Samantha Hunt; Sway, by Zachary Lazar.
• Coming Attractions 
• Curiosities – Dave Truesdale, covering Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft, by Sir Walter Scott (1830).

CARTOONS

• Joseph Farris, Arthur Masear

COVER

• Cory and Catska Ench for “Arkfall”

The story is a sequel to Finlay’s Hugo and Nebula Award-finalist “The Political Officer,” a space opera spy novella originally published in our April 2002 issue.  “Even before I finished the first story, I knew I wanted to write more about Max, but take it out of spaceships and down to the planet Jesusalem where he lived,” Finlay said. “What would a culture look like that feared change, trying to hold on to parts of the 20th century the same way the Amish hold on to the 17th century? Especially after the religious power structure breaks down.”

The protagonist, Maxim Nikomedes, is the ultimate insider in his culture. “He’s a double agent within his own government, who spies and kills secretly for the old regime while working on the surface for forces committed to change,” Finlay said. “He’s invested his whole life in this political process, feeling both pride and creeping shame at what he’s done.”

“The Political Prisoner” ended up being a very hard story to finish. “I had a rough draft done in 2003, when Gordon asked me for a sequel after ‘The Political Officer’ made the Hugo and Nebula award ballots,” Finlay said. “But Gordon always says that one of the biggest problems he sees as an editor is stories that are rushed out too soon.  I didn’t want to do that.  So I workshopped it as part of a novel at the Blue Heaven retreat in 2004 and fixed some things but still wasn’t happy with the reclamation camp scenes, which are essential to the story.  I rewrote it again in 2006, workshopped it with Paul Melko and Tobias Buckell, who are super smart critiquers, and then revised it in 2007.  Even then, Gordon made me do another rewrite before he bought it.  So from start to finish it took five or six years, but I’m glad I took my time.  I needed to mature as a writer to make it a better story than the first one.”

The themes of the story–what does it mean to be human, what are our obligations to strangers, how can we do right in the face of persistent evil, is right even possible–are core themes for Finlay. “It’s the kind of thing that keeps me awake at night, if I let it,” he said.

Much of the research for the story came from Finlay’s college years. “I went through a phase in college where I read and reread concentration camp survivors like Tadeusz Borowski (This Way For the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen), especially, and Primo Levi (Survival in Auschwitz),” he said. “There’s also a writer named Isaak Babel, a Russian Jew who survived a pogrom only to serve in the Russian cavalry with the Cossacks during the invasion of Poland. I deliberately avoided rereading those books, because–aside from adapting Levi’s distinction between the drowned and the saved to drowners and swimmers–I didn’t want be overly influenced by them.  But they were definitely part of my background.”

He also read up on planet formation and terraforming. “Robert Scherrer, who’s written stories for Analog, helped me out in the early drafts, telling me about the availability of uranium on the surface of young planets and that sort of thing,” Finlay said.

Finlay is currently working on book three of a novel series for Del Rey about witches fighting in the American Revolution.  “A short story about Proctor Brown, one of the witches caught up in the fighting, is scheduled to come out in F&SF sometime soon,” he said. “I also have a third Maxim Nikomedes novella outlined where he gets exiled to Adares, the technologically advanced planet he’s been fighting his whole life, and I’ve written thirty thousand words of a novella prequel, a very rough draft about his life as a boy on the planet leading up to the civil war.  But it could be years before I get around to finishing either of those.  The last Max story took a long time to gestate and I’m focusing my attention on novels right now.”

To learn more about Finlay, visit his website at www.ccfinlay.com and his blog at ccfinlay.livejournal.com.