Trans/plant/portation

Author’s Note: I’m doing my own mini-McSweeny’s, running pieces of fiction that received multiple rejections from semi-pro or professional paying markets. This story has come close to acceptance half a dozen times but I need to move on to other ideas. I hope you enjoy it for what it is.

Ze lifts the small crystal cover with one finger and pushes the red knob underneath it. With zir other hand ze holds down a metal knob and turns the instrument clockwise one, two tight clicks, waiting for the trickle of memories to start flowing through zir headpiece. Ze braces zir arms on the counter, the room lights kept low because receiving memories is still painful, even if they get easier to acquire over time.

The sessions with Dad went too far. Well. Really ze doesn’t know what went wrong. Ze only sometimes recalls expressions on people’s faces from before the time on ship. So ze—I—sneak back here and try unlocking another piece. When the other me isn’t busy living a hellishly boring existence.

Ze—I, I, I—I will merge us.

Soon.

After the scandal and the election some people said it’s the memories that are gone, cauterized by the pulse of this evil, wild device. But ze wonders if maybe just the pathways are gone, and it can rebuild them, like a new bridge, or a portal. I have to try.

He only thinks he is happy.

Zir finger hovers over a green button. Sweat has lined up across my forehead and the back of my neck. I feel a Pavlovian lump in my throat. Before ze can change its mind, I turn the knob two more clicks. This is going to hurt. Read More…

Nobody writes a sullen woman like Susan Jane Bigelow. Don’t get me wrong; they have their reasons for their moodiness. Stuck on something of a forced sabbatical with their repressive family in a repressive country, girlfriend unreachable, this corner of the galaxy about to get into an interplanetary war—there are a lot of stresses on young women like Marta Grayline. Bigelow settles us into the tension almost immediately with two quick flashes of prologue, and then we’re immersed in Marta’s world, a familiar story for some of us, even in this far-future science fiction setup: can I hide my queerness while I’m spending time with my relatives?

Marta has tried in full earnestness mode to find her place, even if her choices began with an intense need to leave her home country, Gideon, on the gravity-heavy planet Nea. It’s almost as if it took so much energy to get distance from her preacher father and smothering family that Marta doesn’t have much left for self-confidence. And yet it’s that very sense of self that Marta needs to make a difference in the war between Nea and Adastre. And maybe conversely, it’s the painfulness of coming from a closed family in a closed country on a less-than planet that fuels Marta’s drive. Bigelow does a great job of layering on the sadness and strife that come with the legacy of paternal choices made for an entire people.

Marta finds herself commanded to join her planet’s forces in the war effort, and her little sister Beth worms her way in as an enlistee. Beth is a great foil for Marta: we’re not sure of her intentions for a good long while, and although she’s certainly from the same building blocks as Marta, she seems to be making different choices than her big sister has. There are a few warning flags as they find their way out of Gideon, but Marta is so excited to be back in her element that she overlooks them. Bigelow gives us just enough in the way of tone and word choice that we should be worried for the sisters, because of course outer space during war is not the same as piloting a trade ship in peacetime. Soon enough Marta’s ship is destroyed and she finds herself a captive on a space station, a clear prisoner of the crew there. And now the alien Abrax who were responsible for the Earth’s demise and who have been unseen for hundreds of years, make their reappearance. Bigelow does a great job of touching these presumably distant points back together—what does one young woman’s legacy, one man’s decision made once upon a time, one family’s grip on a made-up tradition all have in common?

Read the book and find out. Highly recommended. The Daughter Star will stick around in my head for a long while.

Throw a stick at any bookstore over 2,500 square feet and you’ll hit at least three books on surviving the zombie apocalypse. Weapons guides and DIY, symptoms to look out for, protective clothing, how to shop for your garden variety gas mask, it’s in print and readily available. But there are other factors that can affect human survival, and seasonal shift is often overlooked as one of these. So let’s take the seasons in turn, starting with spring, and help uncover methods of defense that we can use no matter when we’re fighting for the future of our species.

SPRING

Fortunately the days are getting longer, so there is less opportunity for zombie hordes to accumulate in the dark of night and make mob attacks. There are also no tall crops at this point in the year, unless a region has been growing winter wheat, so it will be harder for zombies to make their way quietly through crop fields (of course this matters not at all in urban areas). Spring also comes with a new generation of wildlife, which can be observed to help identify where bands of zombies may be hiding out. But be warned; depending on the kind of zombification that’s happening, mammals in general may also be zombies, so you may need to pay special attention when litters of new small animals are underfoot, because they may not be very clever defenders against the undead and will become a new source of infection for humans. BONUS FOR MOUNTAIN AREAS: Spring also often means strong river runoff from melting snow, which can be used to wipe out zombies, carrying them away in streams and creeks, where they can be rounded up downstream. Also keep an eye on frozen lakes, because as the season progresses these can be used to take out whole groups of zombies by luring them to thinner areas where they can fall into the icy water and get trapped. Read More…

At some point, any zombie apocalypse had to move into a new phase–zombies eventually run out of human brains to eat, humans find a way to reverse zombification, thus beginning a new chapter in humankind, or humans defeat the zombie onslaught. Of course there was another option–people dying out completely. But human history has shown us capable of responding to almost any threat, and so we found a way of succeeding even when all seemed lost. So many theories about surviving zombie attacks have focused on battling zombies, avoiding zombies, and discerning whether a loved one has become a zombie, it has largely slipped through the cracks of culture that even zombie doomsdays must end.

And then, if any humans have made it unscathed, it will be time to start living again. Read More…

I’ve been fascinated by the concept of the humanoid robot, or android, as long as I’ve been reading science fiction, and fortunately there are loads of examples out there for people who find themselves fascinated by such things. Although at first it may seem like androids make a simple statement about our humanity—or lack thereof—I think there are different ways that androids play into a commentary on our species. And in terms of narrative, they’re characters, sometimes even the protagonist, they’ve been used as themes, reflections, and on occasion are the plot itself. So with a fondness for the non-carbon community, let’s look at some messages in popular culture that come from how androids have been conceptualized. Read More…

This post originally appeared over at GayYA.org.

I write speculative fiction, usually somewhere between soft science fiction and magical realism, and often, though not exclusively, with LGBT themes and characters. I suppose I could write more mainstream stories, but I like to twist things up and mess with the universe, and besides, I’m a genre geek. I swear this is less from a God complex perspective, and more about playfulness and political intent. Metaphors for transition, coming out, family acceptance, and the like can replace a description of the real thing, and in so doing, open up some space away from angst so more time can be spent appreciating some of the other aspects of these moments.Personally, I’m over angst, having racked up enough of those moments through two whole puberties! But as a writer for young adult and crossover audiences, I’m invested in finding ways to depict all of that cortisol-inducing stress, especially as it relates to LGBT themes. So I opt to find a different geography, a reinvention of time, nifty gadgets and alien species to push, instead of resolve, tension. Read More…

Even small towns as isolated as Walla Walla, Washington, may fall prey to a zombie outbreak at some point, especially given the global nature of travel and commerce. Although only two state highways connect to the city, it does receive regular cargo shipments by truck and by rail, and it does house a working airport with connections to Seattle, a major seaport and airport on the West Coast. Looking at the nature, history, and geography of Walla Walla can help identify concrete strategies for defending against and surviving a zombie attack when it comes to the area. Strengths and weaknesses of the region, and specific tactics will be the subject of the rest of this brochure. Read More…

Like a flailing restaurant patron who has a chunk of beef stuck in his windpipe, I write speculative fiction. It’s a messy process, of combing through research so I retain a kernel of accuracy in the story, say of physics or history, of plot points and character sketches, scratched out, erased, and written over in my notebooks. There are many notecards and scraps of paper tucked into my journals, so many that I tend to break the bindings of lesser-made books. Don’t forget this detail, that sub-theme, this one scene that keeps popping up in my daydreams. I go back, rewrite, reconceive, get frustrated, re-execute, finally feel satisfied.

It could very well be that all of my energy is in vain, and none of it is any good. I think it’s healthy for writers to drink a cup of hubris with a side of humility every so often. There is so little that keeps us honest. Writing is supposed to be sellable, and to make it to the commercial market, it needs to be definable—what’s the synopsis, who’s the audience, is it like any other bestseller out there, what’s the genre? It had better not fit in too many boxes, or the marketing department at the publisher will implode like an old Vegas casino.

Octavia Butler was one of those writers who defied pretty much everything in publishing—its tightness on genre categories, certainly, but also its expectations around audience appeal, topics that could be covered in fiction, and what bestselling authors should look and sound like. Read More…

This is an occasional series on popular culture tropes and narratives. Previously I looked at doomsday narratives.

It could be that vampire popular culture is on the wane, and if so, I for one am good with it. I’ve had it with evil-possessed, remnants of humanity’s whimpering stories, or the good-girl-meets-renegade-vampire paranormal romance. There are loads more creatures, myths, and epic battles to create and explore. But underneath the cult favorites of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Twilight, and True Blood, what do these monsters say about our fears? Our culture? I’ll try to come up with some possibilities.

So in the spirit of the Halloween season, here is a non-exhaustive list (I’ve left out aliens, androids, and machines for another post) of the beings that go bump in the night, and why they haunt us. Of course there are more ways to interpret these creatures, so if you’ve got another take on it, please let us know in the comments—I’d love to hear people’s thoughts!

Read More…

This is the first in a series on narrative deconstruction, looking at tropes.

The other day on NPR, they were talking about Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Seriously, public radio hosted an hour of discussion that sounded more like a promo for a movie and its expected series of new films than journalistic reporting. I need to dig a little now and see if NPR has received any money from 20th Century Fox, the attention on the film’s production and narrative was so all-encompassing.

At some point they got to conversing about why we have a fascination with this idea of our ancestors uprising against us. Is it a narrative about anxiety, or tension about our place in the world? Cultural control issues? Read More…