Galaxy's Edge Magazine Page 18

  I’m very grateful I haven’t heard from anybody giving me the opposite. “Your books made me run out and do evil things.” No. Haven’t heard of that. So, let’s avoid that and have more of the helping people. So claiming the one as a consequence of my books means claiming the other. The potential downside and I don’t think I really want to do either one. The books are out there and this is what people make of them and that’s their responsibility. But, you know, but it’s cool that my books were the occasion that they found for help. It makes what otherwise would seem a tenuous and sullied way to make a living seem more valid. It’s a validation, I guess. I mean, I make and sell daydreams. How, how fuzzy is that as a way to make a living?

  JW: If you weren’t making and selling daydreams what would you be doing?

  LB: I have no idea. Some, some job, I suppose.

  JW: No backup plan?

  LB: I had no backup plan. This was part of the reason that I really worked on this. I was working without a net. These days I could probably get an editing job. Because I know enough now, I could edit. Or do some other writing publishing peripheral tasks which I could learn.

  JW: Has there been a time when you’ve thought about stopping the daydreams? Just leaving and saying, I’m out the door.

  LB: I don’t know how you turn off your brain. You know, the brain has always worked like this. You know, sometimes there are slack periods. Um, when I was heading into my 60s and thinking what does retirement mean for me as a writer because I’m self-employed. It so doesn’t fit, a standard plan of that life period that they set out for people in the financial planning stuff, for example. Um, you know, it’s like, okay, do I stop? I could stop. I don’t have to do this for a living anymore. Um, I could do something else. I could do nothing else. I kind of went through a little period there, I was kind of backing off and trying to think, What do I do now that I can do anything? Or nothing. So I did nothing for a little while. I got bored with that. I finally decided that I was going to recreate my writing career as my hobby and do just the parts I liked and skip the parts I didn’t like. Sort of like a smorgasbord of all my favorite desserts.

  So it turns out to be I like the writing. I like the self-publishing. And no more book tours. No more of the high stress things. No more conventions. So getting rid of the PR tasks. Which, this is one, but I somehow wasn’t able to exclude you guys. Saying no to nice people who like me is really hard to learn how to do. Particularly when they’re also the people who send me money. But, but they would eat you, if you let them. Cause if I had convention invitations every other week I’d be flying out of here all the time and I would never write anything because I would be fried.

  I, delightfully, do not know where I am going. I basically freed myself from all prior constraints. I can add some of them back in, if I want. But I don’t have to. What I have been doing for the last two years, actually, is working on a novella series, which are self-published e-books. As original fiction, not as reprints. Most of my things that we’ve been talking about here have been reprints of previously published books, professionally published books. That’s been fun. That’s been doing fine financially, and I’ve liked being able to do a length other than a novel. The main publishing market is really geared up for novels, and preferably fat novels. There are reasons for this. I think it’s kind of the publishing equivalent of those restaurants where they heap the plate with food so they can charge you enough so they can cover all their other costs. The food is the least of it. If they give you a big fat book they can put that twenty-seven dollar price tag on it and you’ll hold still for it.

  JW: What is it about science fiction? Cause it always comes back to science fiction and fantasy as a writer?

  LB: There’s a jockeying for position thing (between the two): “Oh, we must be on the important side! Science fiction must be more important than fantasy.” “No, fantasy sells better. We’re more important than you.” Stop worrying about your importance and just read the damn books.

  It’s an ego flame war. Ego driven flame war. How many more of these do we need? There’s enough. There’s a whole Internet full of them. If it floats your boat, go for it. But do it over there. But I understand that when it is fear-driven if I do not, if my book is dissed. If I get a bad review my career is going to sink. Nobody’s going to read my stuff. The world is ending. Writers can really wrap themselves around the axle with this kind of negative thinking. I have done it. Some people get into that. Somebody challenges my worldview or what I think, and I must fight back because otherwise, what? That’s kind of noise.

  JW: What is it about science fiction/fantasy that keeps bringing you back?

  LB: I really am not sure I can say. It’s so embedded, ingrained in me by this time. Part of my identity, I guess. Speaking of identity. That it’s just the normal way I think about things or the usual way I think about things. I don’t know how you can live in the twenty-first century and not have some of that mindset. You’re going to have to ask the kids who don’t remember a time when there wasn’t an Internet how they’re processing the world. I bet it’s different. It’s just more interesting. It asks more interesting questions. It does more interesting things. It gives better escape hatches. If you want to get out of the world today and be somewhere else for a little while. I think escape literature is under-rated. Whatever it’s that du jour in certain reviews and the critique side tends to revolve around political issues. People will seize on this or that particular book because it validates their political. The book is not a piece of art in itself. It is material to prop up whatever theory is being promulgated by whichever critic has gotten off onto it. It’s fine for them. That’s not what I’m doing. This discussion with historical fiction versus the kind of fantasy that uses historical materials for its world-building. I’m not writing a PhD thesis and I am not writing historical fiction with the serial numbers filed off. What I am writing when I do alternate worlds, pre-industrial fantasy worlds, is it’s like found art. I’m taking history and using it the way someone uses old electronic parts to sculpture a horse. It’s got nothing to do with, or very little to do with, the history. I’m not out to critique history or say things about history or say things about the present through history. I’m, I’m making this horse out of this interesting material. You know, isn’t it cool? Found art.

  It’s a lot more elbow room. I’m not constrained. I’m less constrained by what actually took place. Most of which is always hideously depressing. I can make it less depressing. There’s that.

  What I want is to put out stories. It’s not this other stuff. It’s like, “No, I don’t want to say anything. I want you to read the story. Here. But don’t let me distract you.”

  JW: You write about identity and the search for identity, and becoming.

  LB: A lot of the current heated political arguments are in the arena of group identity. Identify with this group. This group becomes you. Now the group parasitizes you for its needs. There’s a lot of interesting opportunities and dangers over on that side. Personal identity partakes of group identity but is not the same thing. It travels independently. It’s biologically routed. Biology is universal. So whenever I’m looking at these questions, I sort of like to push away all the accidents and look for the essence, which is underneath. It’s biological. What are, what are our biological drivers. It’s like the difference between hunger and cuisine? Everybody experiences hunger. Cuisine is the way we satisfy it, and there’s a thousand different ways to do it. Identity is like that; everybody has these needs. We need status. We need connections. We need family, perhaps. We most certainly need parents. This isn’t negotiable. We need mentors. We need all kinds of things. But there’s a lot of different ways to satisfy those needs. But the needs are universal. So I want to look at those universal things to sort of work up from there to the particularities. Rather than being distracted by the group identity politics, which is all about politics, which is all about status stru
ggles, ultimately.

  Status should not be trivialized as a term. I use it, you know, because it’s the most generic, the most under-rooted thing that has no particularities to it. But if you think back about what status meant in the state of nature. If you were in the small group living out in the edge in the Paleolithic time. If your status was low in the group, you were the first out of the lifeboat. You were the one that was left behind. You were the one who didn’t get fed. So there’s a lot of really good reasons for status to be a driver in our back-brains as much as hunger or, sex, or any of the things that get more biological needs. And I keep wondering why that is.

  JW: How do you want to be remembered as a writer?

  LB: How do I want to be remembered? I would like to be remembered fondly. I would like people to still be reading my stuff and getting some pleasure and enjoying the characters, dreaming those daydreams long after I’m gone. That would be cool. I would like to be read with some degree of understanding and pleasure in the far future by readers.

  Copyright © 2018 by Joy Ward

  SERIALIZATION: DAUGHTER OF ELYSIUM

  (part 4)

  by JOAN SLONCZEWSKI

  Trade Paperback: 356 pages.

  ISBN: 978-1-60450-444-6

  Phoenix Pick Edition, 2010

  Daughter of Elysium copyright © 1993, 2010 Joan Slonczewski. All rights reserved.

  Joan Slonczewski has won the John W. Campbell Award for Best Science Fiction Novel, twice. In 1987, for A Door into Ocean, and in 2012, for The Highest Frontier. Her fiction shows her command of genetics and ecological science as well as her commitment to feminism.

  DAUGHTER OF ELYSIUM

  (Part 4)

  CHAPTER 10

  At Hyen’s staff meeting the heliconians flitted upward as always, but Verid barely noticed. She was tired of reporters asking if she still supported the Prime Guardian, despite the growing scandal. Meanwhile Flors had won acclaim for his settlement with the L’liites, despite his embarrassing performance in Alin’s logathlon. Now, he was triumphantly summing up the final points for Hyen.

  Why, Verid wondered, had the L’liites settled on such terms? Decrepit ships of emigrants with their last bit of fuel had limped off L’li for decades; why would L’li agree to stop them now?

  Hyen was nodding to Flors. “With any luck, we’ve heard the last of L’liite loan scares.” The grace period would last into the term of Hyen’s successor. “I’d say that about wraps it up, Flors.”

  Verid looked up at the rustling leaves, full of chewing caterpillars. “What did you give them, Flors?” She spoke without looking at him. “What did you promise?”

  “Read the settlement,” he replied in a condescending tone. “You have to be tough with foreigners.”

  Since Verid did not reply, Flors moved on. “Next item: We’ve let the Urulites make fools of us again.” The word “we” had a particular emphasis, “Verid will explain.”

  Verid sighed. “As you know, Guardian, the Urulites have actually accepted the Helishon’s invitation for a visiting children’s exchange. They even called Foreign Affairs for visas.”

  “The invitation was never approved,” Flors told Hyen, his voice raised. “How could this have slipped out?”

  Flors did not know that the invitation had been Hyen’s idea in the first place. Why did Hyen have to put his staff through such a charade?

  “It was not a high level concern,” Verid murmured. “A matter for shonlings after all.”

  “A matter for shonlings? Dealing with the most bloodthirsty world in the Fold?” Flors shook his head. “This represents a serious lapse in judgment.”

  Hyen shrugged. “We can still refuse permission, or set impossible conditions. Our shonlings’ safety would have to be guaranteed, after all.”

  Flors looked at him incredulously. “You’d actually let our children go? It’s madness. I’d resign.”

  If only he would, Verid thought. Why had Hyen kept him on so long? But she knew why: Flors was no threat to Hyen. Hyen always kept his more able assistants at arm’s length.

  “Of course we can’t send our children,” Verid said. “Not as our relations stand—that is, nonexistent.” She paused, then added casually, “Who contacted you, about the visas?” It must have been Zheron, she thought hopefully. Who else would have the nerve?

  Flors waved his hand impatiently. “One Urulite or another, they’re pirates all the same. You forget the Valan cruiser they blasted. They never even acknowledged responsibility.”

  “Zheron did acknowledge it,” Verid insisted. “It was a mistake, a tragic one.”

  “So he told you, in private. Did they pay reparations?”

  “How can they afford reparations?” Verid asked, more loudly. “Their economy is worse than the L’liites’. If they asked, you’d approve loans to them, too.”

  This unusually frank outburst actually silenced Flors. To Verid’s surprise, Hyen did not intervene as he generally did. The Prime Guardian was watching the butterflies shimmering amidst the sweet blossoms, abstracted in his own thoughts. Was he losing his grip? Verid wondered. Nowadays Hyen seemed to spend too much time in his own inner world.

  “Let’s not reply,” Hyen said at last. “Tell the generen that the bureaucracy is working on it.”

  Satisfied, Flors nodded and moved on. “The Sharer World Gathering is just a month off. Unfortunately, we will have to respond to the alleged noise pollution. You needn’t have given in on that, Verid; another year, and our pest control would have eliminated those flies.”

  So we’re no more responsible than the Urulites, Verid thought, but she kept it to herself this time. “We also need to work on the Fugitive Law,” she said. “If Sharers start counting servos as fugitives ...” It was hard to imagine just what might happen.

  Hyen raised an eyebrow. “Servos as fugitives?”

  “Another escapade of that Bronze Skyan translator,” Flors explained contemptuously. “By Helix, Verid—you trust those murderous Urulites, yet you fear our mindless machines.”

  Afterward, in public, Verid tried to hide her frustration. She left the Nucleus early to meet Iras for dinner, to celebrate her release from the Palace of Rest. But just as she was leading her trainsweeps out of the nuclear reticulum, the Guardian Loris Anaeashon caught hold of her train. “A word with you, Verid, in private,” the man said, slightly breathless. “I’ll pay the fee.”

  Loris had been Anaeon’s elected Guardian for the past nine decades. Verid could guess what was coming. Nevertheless, she accompanied him to the nearest butterfly garden, where a private corner could be found.

  “You know I share your feelings, shonsib,” Loris told her sympathetically. “We Anaeans can’t bear to see incompetence. And Hyen is heading for a fall. Will you support me in a call for early rotation?”

  The post of Prime Guardian was not elected but rotated among the twelve shons each decade. The Guard could, however, hold a vote of no confidence and call for an early rotation. This term, Anaeaon came next.

  “Your support would do it,” Loris explained. “The Guardians know it’s you that holds Foreign Affairs together. If you come out for me now, I’ll back you for the Guard when my term is up.”

  Verid smiled. “You are too generous, Loris,” she observed ironically. Were she elected to the Guard ten years hence, after Loris’s term as Prime, she might wait over a century before the top post came around again.

  “Think about it. We both want what’s best for Elysium. If Hyen falls,” Loris added, “you don’t want to fall with him.”

  “If Hyen’s fall is imminent, then you hardly need my support. But thanks for your concern.”

  The next day Hyen called her in unexpectedly.

  Hyen’s office was as different from Verid’s as one could imagine. Its interior was mostly “virtual,” like the chambers of the Palace of Rest that had bored Ir
as so. Today Hyen had programmed a darkened concert hall, with musicians playing the ancient instruments. It was a lovely concerto, and the violin’s melody soared exquisitely.

  It was her taste, certainly—not his. Hyen must want something of her, rather badly.

  As if he read her thoughts, Hyen chuckled. “I don’t know what turns you on about catgut and horsehair. And you find my inclinations distasteful.” His round face shone like a moon above the distant concert hall.

  “A fine simulation,” Verid admitted. “How do I know you’re not a simulation, yourself?”

  “Would it matter if I were? I could pipe in simulations of myself to run the show, and never leave Houris Hall.” One of his more disreputable haunts. “Look, Verid, it’s time to take Urulan out of Flors’s hands, don’t you agree? The trouble is, Flors is correct on the face of it. We can’t possibly negotiate in the open with such a pariah. Even if we tried, reporters from four worlds would stomp all over us and mess it up. So it has to be secret.” Hyen leaned forward, sounding excited. “Zheron will meet with you in private, on a satellite orbiting the planet, to protect security. We’ll confer in secret, and coax Urulan to open its doors to us. When that happens, it will mean a new era for the Fold.”

  Verid considered this warily. If her secret dealings failed, there would be no loss to Hyen—and if word got out, Hyen could deny responsibility.

  “Why not?” Hyen insisted. “You’ve had private talks with Zheron before.”

  “Always with the approval of my supervisor.” Verid was tired of dealing behind Flors’s back.

  Hyen leaned forward and clasped his hands. “Verid,” he began, his voice lowered. “You’re entirely too straight for your own good. I’m the Prime; I direct you to do this. It’s time you dared to reach out and capture the moment.”