Interview: Deborah J. Ross on “Among Friends”
- Tell us a bit about “Among Friends.”
I call it my Quaker steampunk story, although the time period is just before the Civil War (1848). More seriously, I’m interested in the question of what happens when an entity (machine, animal, human) is treated as if it had moral authority – does it then acquire the ability to make ethical decisions because of how we have treated it? And what does it do to us if we treat the entity in that way, or if we refuse to do so?
- What was the inspiration for this story, or what prompted you to write it?
The original impetus came from a Book View Café anthology project. Back in 2009, Café members put together an anthology called The Shadow Conspiracy, which had as its central premise that the “Frankenstein” process paved a way for the preservation of a human personality in a perfect, immortal body. After two anthologies, the timeline had advanced from around 1816, when Byron, Shelley, and Mary Shelley, among others, gathered at Lake Geneva, Switzerland, to the 1840s. As we were tossing about ideas for a third Shadow Conspiracy volume, the focus shifted to New World. I wanted to step aside from the concerns of the first two, Europe-centered volumes and the use of automata solely as a way of extending the lives of rich and powerful men. As I wrote, I found that my own tale was developing in quite a different direction, from mechanical devices as instruments of immortality to the relationship of flesh to consciousness and consciousness to what truly makes us human. The original project has persisted, like the vermiform appendix, in the reference to the Lake Geneva Trading Company.
- What kind of research, if any, did you do for this story?
Research came from two sources. One was my own personal experience with modern unprogrammed Quakers, who still strive to find “that of God” in every human being. Many of the phrases I used in the story are in current usage today, and the description of settling into silence and letting ministry arise from the promptings of the inward light are as valid now as they were 150 years ago. Although I am not a Quaker myself, I’ve been awed and humbled to be part of a community with people who dedicate their lives to integrity, simplicity, equality, and peace. Their activism comes not from an intellectual belief but from valuing the divine in each person. It seems to me that in our writing as well as our society, we all too readily idealize violence as a method of problem resolution. It behooves us as lovers of speculative fiction to bring more creative strategies to our stories.
The other source of research, specific to this story, was more traditional delving into the histories of various Quakers involved in the Underground Railroad, notably Thomas Garrett. A native of Delaware, Garrett was an ally of Harriet Tubman and assisted somewhere around 2,000 escaped slaves to Pennsylvania. He and fellow Quaker John Hunn were charged and tried in very much the manner I’ve depicted, including the hour-long ministry and the apology from the jury member. I find it quite amusing that there is some question as to whether Garrett was left penniless by the resulting fine or whether his hardware business languished because he spent all his time following the leadings of the Spirit.
- What would you want a reader to take away from “Among Friends?”
I would hope, a really good story, and whatever conclusions they want to draw. I read this story aloud at one of the famous potlucks at our local Meeting and was intrigued to see how it was received an audience that was sophisticated in Quaker history and traditions but unfamiliar with science fiction. This story is a door that swings both ways, bringing a rich and challenging subculture to F & SF readers, while inviting members of that culture to explore the equally rich and challenging world of speculative fiction.
- What are you working on now?
I have two novels coming out shortly:
May: Collaborators (as Deborah Wheeler) (Dragon Moon Press): A crippled Terran spaceship makes orbit around Bandar, a planet whose gender-fluid native race teeters on the brink of international war. As misunderstandings mount, violence escalates. Ultimately, it is up to the people on both sides who have suffered the deepest losses to find a way to reconciliation. About Collaborators, acclaimed writer C. J. Cherryh wrote, “This is first-rate world-building from a writer gifted with soaring imagination and good old-fashioned Sense of Wonder.”
June: The Seven-Petaled Shield (the first volume of an original fantasy trilogy) (DAW – mass market PB): Eons ago, a great king used a magical device — the Seven-Petaled Shield — to defeat the forces of primal chaos, but now few remember that secret knowledge. When an ambitious emperor conquers the city that safeguards the Shield, the newly-widowed young Queen, guardian of the heart-stone of the Shield, flees for her life, along with her adolescent son.
- Anything else you’d like to add?
Special thanks to Gretta and Jacob Stone of Doylestown PA Monthly Meeting and all my dear friends at Santa Cruz Monthly Meeting.
“Among Friends” appears in the March/April 2013 issue of F&SF.
Interview: Elizabeth Bourne on “What the Red Oaks Knew”
- Tell us a bit about “What the Red Oaks Knew.”
This story is the only piece on which Mark and I collaborated. Mark was from Arkansas, and always wanted to write about his home state. Through him I came to appreciate Arkansas’s beauty and quirky personality. We had almost finished a first draft when he wanted to go back to the two novels he had been working on, so we set the story aside. After Mark died, I found this incomplete draft in my writing files and decided to finish it for him. That was very important to me. It took me about a year to write, most of it involved making sure the voice matched. I didn’t want anyone to be able to see the seams, so to speak, and I’m pleased that so far, no one has been able to tell what he wrote from what I wrote.
- What was the inspiration for this story, or what prompted you to write it?
Mark and I came across Red Star (it’s a real location) traveling the Pig Trail from Fayetteville to Russellville where Mark’s family lived. We arrived at a mountain crossroad and saw an abandoned airstream, a dead raccoon, and a dirt trail disappearing into the misty woods. A sign proclaimed this to be Red Star. No population. We fell in love with the mystery of it. There are a number of locations in the Ozarks famous for ghost lights, and UFOs, and of course, the Boggy Creek monster, also called the Southern Sasquatch. It seemed natural to develop a story set in the mountains of Arkansas where anything, and more importantly, anyone, could live safe from the larger world.
- What kind of research, if any, did you do for this story?
We visited Arkansas several times a year, and traveling the less-known routes became a pleasure on every trip. I don’t think we specifically thought of it as research, but our conversations as well as our feet often led us back to Red Star. We knew who lived there, and why, and the landscape was as familiar to us as Seattle. We developed many characters we intended to write about, in fact, I have an outline for Beulah Welbe’s story. She’s Midas’s mother and the supervisor of the Tyson chicken plant’s kill floor. Beulah’s a woman old as the Ozarks with some unwholesome cravings, as is discovered in the story.
- Most authors say their stories are personal. If that’s true for you in this instance, then how is “What the Red Oaks Knew” personal?
This story is a piece of Mark and my history. It’s special because we worked on it together, we traveled to Arkansas together, many of the characters are based on people Mark grew up with, and that I came to know. It’s a few thousand written words from days of conversations, and I kept our times together in mind as I wrote the story. It’s full of wood smoke and foggy drives and the scarlet leaves of the red oaks that blanket the Arkansas mountains. It’s Mark’s Arkansas, a place that was special to him and became so for me.
- What might you want a reader to take away from this story?
That life is complicated in ways we can’t anticipate and sometimes in ways we can’t comprehend. The fact that it can be painful, and surprising, and a struggle doesn’t mean anything more than that. It’s how we choose to deal with our experiences that carves us into the people we are, for good or ill. And sometimes, a shot of bourbon helps.
- What are you working on now?
There are two things actively in the works. A second world novel about the city of Titianmar, where luck is as real as money and far more valuable. Around the first anniversary of Mark’s death I began writing a guidebook to a non-existent city as a way of holding grief at bay. I soon realized that I was in love with Titianmar, and the story of Madka, a powerful onietsin, or luck artist, who can channel the city’s luck through her art. Several political factions try to kidnap her, so Madka decides to discover who she is, and why she’s important. There’s politics, and romance, and a mystery. I’m having to invent a whole world and it’s huge fun. But of course, I got distracted. I kayak Seattle’s urban waterways, which is an alien world completely unlike the day-to-day city, and a story sprung to mind about the city above, and the city below, which is inhabited by trolls, and what happens when they intersect. Originally I intended a super short story of about 1500 words, then I was asked to make it longer and write about what happens next. I thought it was going to be a short story, but it really wants to be a novella, so what can a writer do?
“What the Red Oaks Knew” by Elizabeth Bourne and Mark Bourne appears in the March/April 2013 issue of F&SF.
Interview: Sean F. Lynch on “The Cave”
- Tell us a bit about “The Cave.”
A man and his son have lost their way in an immense cavern. They discover another passage. Hoping it will lead to the cave’s exit, the boy bravely volunteers to explore it while his father rests. In addition to the physical obstacles presented by this subterranean predicament – darkness, narrow crevices and drop-offs – something else seems to be taking place. In more ways than one, time is running out.
- What was the inspiration for this story, or what prompted you to write it?
I don’t want to undermine the experience for anyone who hasn’t read it. In other words, “spoiler alert:”
Upon waking in the morning, I occassionally scribble in a notepad before getting out of bed. About four years ago, I jotted something that began: “For as long as he can remember, a younger man has been following an older man through a never-ending cave. . . ”
That was the genesis. I started developing it slowly, a few hours a month, sometimes shelving it for weeks at a time. In the beginning, “The Cave” took place in present day North America. Later, I changed it to an earlier period, perhaps the mid-1700s. I wanted it to be dream-like, a fairy tale for adults. About a third of the way through, I thought I’d never finish it. I then had an epiphany, to break a rule I’d learned years earlier in a writing course. The rule was that a short story, being brief, should only have one point of view. I’d been telling the story through the father’s eyes. I realized I needed the boy’s point of view for the second half. So, in a section in the middle (that may be transparent to the casual reader) I began telling the story through the boy’s eyes. The rest came fairly quickly.
- In addition to its fantasy setting and unsettling tone, “The Cave” seems to experiment with notions of time, and I was wondering if perhaps you could speak to that idea at all.
The journey the protagonists take on some level could be representative of how time and memory work. I have twin sons and can remember holding their hands walking down the sidewalk when they were two years old. Or walking into their bedroom when they were four and having a conversation with them, and one of them saying, “We’re talking to daddy, now, this is interesting.” But as anyone with kids knows, the years pass quickly. One wants to remember every laugh, every hug, every daydream our kids have, but it’s just not possible. We remember some things and forget others. In a way, to remember anything is to bend time, at least for the moment one is experiencing the memory.
- Most authors say that their stories are personal. If that’s true for you in this instance, then in what way was “The Cave” personal?
This particular concoction– for better or worse – has mainly male characters, and exploits a relationship with my Y-chromosome. Before my kids were born I published a short story based on an evening with my father. It’s a dynamic that intrigues me. Also, I’ve explored several caves, from a scary steep one in Santa Cruz to a huge beautiful cavern in Utah.
- What might you want a reader to take away from this story?
A bad night’s sleep (wink, wink).
- What are you working on now?
I’ve dabbled in a few ideas over the past several months, most recently a space-ship voyage with characters that might’ve come out of a P.G. Wodehouse novel. I’m a slow writer and also work full-time. We’ll see what happens.
I took a writing course once from a great teacher named Clay Morgan. He read part of his novel in progress about smoke-jumpers. Fifteen years later I ran into him and asked about it. He said he never finished it, “Life got in the way.” I later discovered he’d written some other books and his wife went up in the space shuttle.
- Anything else you’d like to add?
I’m VERY grateful to Gordon for selecting this, and the editing staff at F&SF. I was also delighted by Lois Tilton’s review and some other blogs I’ve read. It humbles me to be in a mag that’s featured Bruce McAllister, David Gerrold, and other greats. Thanks for the experience!
“The Cave” appears in the March/April 2013 issue of F&SF.
Interview: Desmond Warzel on “The Blue Celeb”
Bill and Joe are a couple of old army buddies who run a barbershop together in Harlem. They’re good guys who genuinely care about their neighborhood (even if Joe drinks too much); their best customer is Frank, a cop who used to patrol the area and still comes by to get his hair cut. Their attention is caught by a Chevy Celebrity (the “Celeb” of the title) that’s been abandoned in front of the shop with the keys in the ignition. Odd things begin to happen, apparently when the car is tampered with, and our three heroes are left to puzzle it out–and just when they think they have, a new wrinkle is introduced, and the logical and moral conclusions they’ve reached are suddenly called into question. (I’m being deliberately vague here; I’d hate to spoil it too much for those who still haven’t read it.)
This is my debut with F&SF, and is also the longest work of fiction I’ve published so far.
I have an unusually specific answer to this question: an old New York Times human interest piece by William E. Geist (which I ran across in Geist’s 1987 collection City Slickers) in which he recounts the tale of a car abandoned on the street with the keys inside, and the awe and near-reverence it inspires in the neighborhood’s residents–largely because it’s gone so long without being stolen. That’s all well and good for New York, I suppose, but where I come from it takes more than ordinary human decency to rise to the level of the miraculous. I got to wondering just how much more, and my imagination was off and running.
Quite. The setting is Manhattan (Harlem, to be specific), and while I’ve had the good fortune to visit New York several times and explore it a great deal, I can’t claim any legitimate expertise (when I specify an urban setting in a story, it’s usually Cleveland–see 2010′s “Fields” or 2009′s “On a Clear Day You Can See All the Way to Conspiracy”). The exact street or neighborhood weren’t vital to the story, so I felt free to keep it vague. As a result, most of my research involved incidental details of New York life: the command structure of the NYPD, the specifics of trash collection and street-cleaning, the number of a particular bus route that might pass near the barbershop. Fortunately, these days such information is a mouse-click away; I can only imagine writing this story twenty years ago, and the lengths to which I’d have had to go to ensure accuracy. In any case, I think I got it right, and the only way anyone would know otherwise is if they lived in New York (hopefully not many people do…).
On characters: this is indeed a character-oriented story (a thing many editors claim to want, until they receive one), but it’s only on rereading the tale in the finished magazine that I realize to what an enormous degree this is so. I was struck not only by how many of the key events take place completely offstage, but by how much of the story is simply people standing around talking. I enjoy this sort of thing when it’s done well: see Dial M for Murder, for instance, which contains only one scene in which anything actually happens and is all the more effective for it; or see some of the strongest (in my opinion) Twilight Zone episodes–”Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?”, “The Obsolete Man”, “A Game of Pool”, “Death’s-Head Revisited”, “The Masks”–which consist mainly of conversation.
In “The Blue Celeb”, Bill, Joe, and Frank bear all of the narrative weight; there’s very little we know that isn’t directly told to us by those three, which was why I strove to make them likeable characters–people with whom I myself would enjoy spending time. That sort of thing isn’t necessarily fashionable these days, but in my opinion, that was the least I owed the reader; who wants to be trapped for thirty-three pages with a jerk? There’s a time and place for protagonists with no redeeming qualities–and that time and place is the 1970s (after a decade of Death Wish, Dog Day Afternoon, and Taxi Driver, is it any wonder Star Wars caught on the way it did?).
I can’t really say why I chose Harlem in particular, except that in a tonier neighborhood, an unauthorized car might have been towed right away and I wouldn’t have had a story. The main corollary to this decision is that most of the characters are black. I didn’t set out for this to be the case, but it’s a natural consequence of the setting, and I figured I could pull it off. I’ve yet to hear of any complaints. You never know, though; there’s a small but vocal cadre of professional takers-of-offense whose ire one risks drawing when one writes characters outside one’s own broad racial category. There’s no beating them–they’ve a complaint for every occasion–but, trading as they do in the unfalsifiable, there’s no need to take them seriously. With all the real troubles in the world, who needs such tsouris over a simple little story? In any case, my aim was to write a couple of nice guys who readers will like and remember, and if the reviews thus far are any indication, I’ve mostly succeeded. It’s quite gratifying.
As I’ve noted, the actual plot, setting, and so forth are outside my direct experience, but a few of the tiny details are drawn from life. Often, when I need to flesh out a character and make him seem more alive, I’ll give him a memory or characteristic of my own. For instance, late in the story, Bill mentions having tinnitus; his affliction is my affliction, exactly as written–it’s like a continuous smoke alarm going off in my ear, but I’m so accustomed to it that I only notice it when I’m reminded of it (like right now). I have to parcel out such tidbits sparingly, as my life isn’t that interesting. Likewise, I’ll have to remember that I’ve already used tinnitus so I don’t repeat it in a future story.
I recently completed a sword-and-sorcery novel, loosely based on an older short story of mine, with hopes that it eventually sees the light of day in one way or another. Since then, I’ve been completing some stories that for one reason or another have gone unfinished. This has two benefits: it quiets the part of my mind that bristles at leaving things undone, and it buys me time and keeps me busy while I work up the nerve to begin another novel (which doesn’t seem to be any easier the second time).
Like “The Blue Celeb,” my other recent stories are also in a slightly-dark, slightly-fantastic vein, and I’d be denying my true nature if I didn’t take the opportunity to call attention to the anthologies Love and Darker Passions (Double Dragon Publishing) and Blood Rites (Blood Bound Books), and my work therein.
On a less commercial note, I’d like to thank those people (both professional reviewers and casual readers) who have read and liked the story and have taken the time to say so. (A particular thrill was receiving the much-sought-after imprimatur of “Recommended” from Lois Tilton of Locus Online. She also deemed me “a newer writer to watch.” Is everyone watching? All right, then. See that you do.) Thanks also to Gordon Van Gelder and his assorted cohorts, associates, and underlings for buying thirteen thousand words from a guy nobody’s ever heard of and sandwiching them in among some of the finest writers working today. Appearing in F&SF–the home of Roland the gunslinger, Harrison Bergeron, and Algernon–means a great deal to me, and I’m elated to have made it to the show.
“The Blue Celeb” appears in the Jan./Feb. 2013 issue of F&SF.
Interview: Judith Moffett on “Ten Lights and Darks”
Tell us a bit about “Ten Lights and Darks.”
The story is told from the POV of a fortyish reporter, Mike Ward, who is assigned to do a feature story about pet communicators. He hates the assignment, considers the subject preposterous, but can’t wiggle out of it. His workaround is to turn the feature into an exposé. During the research process he meets a woman called Charlie, whom he’s very attracted to, but whose take on the subject of pet communication is more open-minded than Mike’s. Besides these two characters we also have Hortensia Feely, the local pet psychic Mike picks out to interview, and Charlie’s scaredy-cat Labradoodle, Raven. The treatment is lighter than is usual for me, but the subject seemed to demand to be treated humorously (mostly).
What was the inspiration for this story, or what prompted you to write it?
In 2010 my younger standard poodle, Feste, was diagnosed with immune mediated hemolytic anemia. After three months of treatment, during nearly all of which it was unclear whether he would survive or succumb, he finally died. He was a delightful dog, and only seven, and I took it very hard. So did my surviving older poodle, Fleece. They were very bonded. At first she had seemed all right, but she gradually slipped into depression, virtually stopped eating, lost weight, and appeared to take pleasure in nothing. While I was worrying about her to my massage therapist one day, she mentioned that there was a pet communicator right in town–we’re talking about a small town here, a wide place in the road–and she didn’t know whether I was open to this but would I want to consider calling her?
I didn’t know whether I was open to it either, but I was worried and stressed enough that I went to the communicator’s website to see what I could see. What I read there was far from encouraging, and if I’d had to go to any trouble I wouldn’t have pursued it, but the woman was right there in town, didn’t cost that much, and made house calls. So I phoned her and she came out.
The details in my story of how Mike’s pet communicator behaves and what she says about Raven’s problems are lifted directly from the notes I took after my communicator left. (Nobody could make that stuff up!) I won’t mention her name here, for fear that Google might alert her if I do, but trust me, it’s every bit as weird and outlandish a name as Hortensia Feely.
What kind of research, if any, did you do for this story?
Beside my true-life adventure into the field (see answer to previous question), I did what Mike did: looked at websites and perused Amazon’s list of books on the subject of pet communication. For later in the story I revisited my CD of Jane Goodall’s When Animals Talk, to refresh my memory of what Goodall actually says there. I also consulted Rupert Sheldrake’s website, where there’s a lot of relevant information.
What are you working on now?
For this coming spring and summer I’ll be wearing a different literary hat to revise my book-length memoir-in-manuscript of the poet James Merrill, who died in 1995. If I finish in good time I have an idea for an alternate-history story set on my hundred-acre recovering farm in Kentucky.
Anything else you’d like to add?
Only that without planning or anticipating this, I seem to be writing hybrid stories that are essentially science fiction but with elements of fantasy woven in, as in “Space Ballet” (forthcoming from Tor.com) and my 2008 novel The Bird Shaman, or in the present case a fantasy story with elements of sf worked into it. I know this weakening of genre boundaries is disapproved of in some quarters; but, as with most authors, the story is driving the bus when I’m writing it, and that seems to be where the bus has usually wanted to go in recent times.
Incidentally, Rupert Sheldrake is a dream source for this kind of hybrid science/fantasy fiction. He turns up in “Space Ballet” too, a very different sort of tale.
A final note. The main question I wanted to put to my pet communicator was: Did Fleece want us to get her another dog? The answer, predictably, was yes. Feste, said the PC, had already taken care of that from heaven and we would find the dog he had picked out for us when the time was right. She described this dog: he would be older, 7 or 8, and silver-gray. She also recounted what Fleece was telling her about how Fleece herself would die (none of that dragged-out shit for Fleece, she would be fine one day and gone the next, after having taught the new dog how to take care of me). Not one word of what’s verifiable in all this turned out to be true. Getting another dog was the cure for Fleece’s depression–she did a 180 almost as soon as we got him–but I shouldn’t have needed a psychic to tell me that. She died of cancer this past December, aged 13 years 5 months, seemingly without having taught Corbie thing one about how to take care of me. What she did, and she did a great job of it, was teach me how to take care of Corbie and herself. We miss her terribly.
“Ten Lights and Darks” appears in the Jan/Feb 2013 issue of F&SF.
