Pretty Dust

Wait, it’s tonight? Already? How the hell is it September? And how do I suddenly have so many deadlines looming?

Anyway, I’ve got some picks for the Hugos, though to be honest they don’t diverge very much from my picks for the Nebulas, some of which I got but most of which I didn’t.

Novel : I’m still a huge fan of Jo Walton’s Among Others, and it wasn’t a tough choice for me this time. I haven’t read A Dance With Dragons, but I’ve read the rest, and as far as I’m concerned, China Miéville is her only competition. That said, other people liked Deadline a lot more than I did.

Novella : Of the nominees, I’ve read all but “The Ice Owl”, and Catherynne M. Valente’s “Silently and Very Fast” is still my favourite. I love that story. It didn’t win the Nebula, but I’m crossing my fingers for the Hugo.

Novelette : I was able to read so few of these I can’t say I legitimately have a preference. That said, I haven’t read it but I’m a huge fan of Geoff Ryman.

Short Story : And once again, none of the nominees have been able to surpass E. Lily Yu’s “The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees” in my heart. Though I wouldn’t be disappointed if Nancy Fulda or Ken Liu took it either.

I’ve been doing a whole lot of reading lately, partly because I’ve spent the last week up at the cabin sitting in the sunshine and doing nothing else, and partly because I wanted to try to read all of the nebula-nominated stories and novels before the nebulas were awarded, which is…tonight.

I almost got there, too. The only novel I didn’t read was Jack McDevitt’s Firebird, because it was part of a series I haven’t read and there just wasn’t time for that, and I read every one of the stories that I had or that were available online, which was all of them except for five (most of which were published in Analog or F&SF, which I haven’t picked up in a while). So basically I’ve been gorging myself on good fic for the past few weeks. I don’t have predictions (well, okay, I have one) but I do have some favourites.

Novel : I think this is probably the toughest one. This is a good field, generally (though I’m not particularly well read this year). But ultimately, I would like to see this one go to Jo Walton’s Among Others. It’s at once a very grounded tale of fairies (as opposed to fairy tale) and a love letter to science fiction, and it stays with me. Although Genevieve Valentine’s Mechanique: A Tale of the Circus Tresaulti is hot on its heels, for entirely different reasons.

Novella : I love novellas, in general. What a wonderful length. But I digress. I’ve only read four of this six, but I can’t imagine this going to anything other than Catherynne M. Valente’s “Silently and Very Fast”. That story is a work of art.

Novelette : Of these, I only managed to read four of seven, and I can’t say I actually fell in love with any of them, though they were all quite good, but I think of those I would go for Ferrett Steinmetz’s “Sauerkraut Station”. Which earns an extra point for introducing me to Giganotosaurus, which I had not read before.

Short Story : This one is a toss up for me, between Nancy Fulda’s “Movement” and E. Lily Yu’s “The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees”, but I think I have to give it to Yu on sheer originality. It was a wonderful story.

Next up, Hugos. But at least I have the rest of the summer to catch myself up. I love having so much to look forward to.

Home
(140 words)

His body was threaded with microfiliament wires, a long-range transmitter nestled near his spine and feeding off his nervous system. He was filed in every database, pictures of his face, his body, his teeth, his bone structure, his retinas, his fingerprints and his DNA. She knew the names of his friends, his friends’ friends, his acquaintences, his classmates, his classmates’ parents. She knew where to find them.

A long time ago, people used to leave home and cross continents and be lost to their families forever. Technology brought everyone closer, for a little while, then flung them farther from one another than ever.

Maybe he was only twelve years old now, but her son was going to leave home one day, and it was a very big universe out there. She wanted to always be able to find him again.

Last summer I packed up my life, loaded it all into a moving truck and headed west…never to be heard from again. Or at least that’s what it feels like. The problem with working in arts administration, is that in the process of facilitating other people’s artistic endeavours, your own get a little dusty with disuse.

But slowly I’ve been clawing my way back to productivity, adding words here and there until the other day I realised I have a small body of work ready to do something with. Such as edit. Such stealthy progress makes me feel like Microfiction Mondays are within the realm of possibility again, starting next week! (And I’m not going to let a tiny thing like a potentially dislocated thumb get in my way. I have not had a good week.)

Unexpectedly, I ended up moving across the country for a new job these past couple of weeks, so forgive the radio silence. I haven’t written a word since May so believe me, I’m jonesing for a fix.

In the meantime—and I almost missed this because it went up right when I was hopping in a moving truck and heading out—JoSelle Vanderhooft, one of the editors of Hellebore & Rue, has made some jewelry inspired by the stories in the anthology and is holding a contest to win them. Up first is my “Bridges and Lullabies”, and you can find out the contest details at her site. Act fast, though—because I wasn’t on the ball about this, there are only two days left to enter!

Lest I forget, a print edition of Hellebore & Rue was released this week by Lethe Press! Links to purchase are on their site, and for my fellow Canadians, you can also buy it from amazon.ca, which is delightfully convenient.

Oh, I so had the best of intentions to never miss a week! But sometimes like goes awry on you. On the bright side, a number of new and exciting projects in the works.

The Best Man
(195 words)

The latest outbreak passed thirty percent incidence the morning of Beth’s wedding, though she was too busy wrapping herself into her dress and rushing out the door to the church to notice. After all, everyone knew that once it hit about twenty percent, the climbing numbers just didn’t make that much difference anymore.

She met Will thirteen days ago in the first aid aisle at the pharmacy. They were engaged within the week.

“I, William Noah, take—”

A drop of blood fell from Will’s nose.

Beth knew the persistent drip and dribble of infection, the smell of disease and the signs of incipient demise. The vein in Will’s throat bulged first, then he began to tremble. By the time his eyes began to protrude, Beth had already stepped back out of the debris zone.

As they carried the pieces of Will away, Billy stepped up to the altar to take his place.

“I, William Noah, take you, Elizabeth Chloe.”

Billy was fresh; he’d be around for a while. And if Beth herself didn’t survive the honeymoon, well, Liz and Betsy and the rest were waiting back home to take her place.

The Naming of Things
(156 words)

It’s inexcusably arrogant to call this place mine, but it’s all I’ve got left, and no one will ever know. They take everything when they come and get you. They take your home. They take your things. They take your name. They take your death.

I know I earned this fate, the full beginning, but the scope of it is unimaginable until you’re in orbit, staring down at whites and blues and greens and browns and knowing you’re looking at your endless future alone.

No one has ever finished. Most go mad.

But I will be different. I look down at this planet that is mine and I start my Sisyphean task before we even land. I name it.

That’s one.

They’ll come back for me when I’m finished, justice served. I wonder if I’ll remember who they are when they do.

A hundred million things to name, and nothing but time.

I’m pretty sure the most difficult thing about writing is finishing. It’s certainly not a shortage of ideas—anyone I know who writes regularly has more of those than they know what to do with—but knowing what to do with those ideas and how to make them blossom into a complete story, of any length.

I am, right now, looking at a bevy, a plethora, an abundance of unfinished projects, both recent and from the distant past, and trying to decide what I want to do with them. Which ones are ready to be finished? Which ones just never had enough fuel to launch? Which ones need a little bit more marinating time, and which ones are only there because I haven’t had the discipline to sit my butt in the seat and write them through to the end once the furious glory of the first few pages of an idea was over?

No matter how much I might love an idea or a story, and no matter how much I can’t wait to see it done, butt in seat is hard. It requires filtering out the distractions of life and even then, when I’ve got my cup of tea and the window’s open and my email’s put away and the TV-substitute’s off, it requires focusing on one thing at a time in a sea of fun ideas and working through the hard parts of a story, solving the problems, without letting a new shiny take over my time.

This is part of the reason I’ve been putting out a weekly microfiction. Part of it’s an editing exercise, finding the core of a story and cutting away everything that isn’t that, choosing every single word carefully because every one of them has got to count. But part of it is that it’s a finished project, a very small one but a finished one nonetheless, and the value of a creative project isn’t dependent on its size. There’s something satisfying about finishing something and being able to say, “I made that!” but there’s also something very motivating about it.

Finishing one project gives me every reason to believe that I can go on and finish the rest.

Loop
(247 words)

Mitchell has been fighting this war since he was seventeen years old, holding a Stinger to his family’s front window to hold off the first guerilla assaults, then later, when they’d been moved underground, joining the forces and heading for the front lines.

He’s twenty-five now, but he feels twice that. It’s a forever war.

“We have a special mission for you,” says General Valentine, and Mitchell doesn’t ask any questions, just says “Yes, sir.”

Carver’s always claimed he’ll call a truce as soon as they hand over the soldier responsible for the death of his daughter. No amount of negotiation, no number of casualties and no attempts at deception have ever satisfied him. He’s holding firm.

“This is experimental technology,” says Valentine. “It will take you back to the moment Carver’s daughter was assaulted. You’ll catch this man.”

Mitchell thinks It’ll do what? Take me where? and says, “Yes, sir.”

He drops out of the sky two feet above the sidewalk on a busy street in Santa Tonia and stumbles into a woman in a red dress.

“I’m sorry,” he says, and reaches out his hand to help her up, but she’s already tripped off the edge of the crumbling pavement and into oncoming traffic.

“You pushed her!” he hears, and when he looks up it’s into the eyes of a younger Carver as the bus throws his daughter across the intersection onto the hood of a sports car the same color as her dress.