SFS Spring 2017: Talking Back to the SF Pros

Welcome to the official blog of Speculative Fiction Studies! 

Here's what that means for you, gentle reader:

The forty-five students whose writing makes up the May 2017 block of postings are the proud and oft-befuddled members of my two Speculative Fiction Studies classes at The Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy. All of them gifted STEM students, all of them self-professed lovers of sf/f (or at least sufficiently curious about it to endure a semester of play in the  genres), they spent eighteen weeks reading from H.G. Wells to Brooke Bolander; from H.P. Lovecraft to Sam J. Miller, from Asimov to Zelazny and back to Beagle and uncounted points between. They used their knowledge of STEM fields to identify ideas for their own hard or soft sf worlds and write stories set within them.  They learned sf history from the Gernsback Ghetto's earliest days. They read literary theory from Samuel R. Delany and Ursula Le Guin.

Their challenge, as a final assignment for the term and a final tribute to the sf reader culture, was to compose a blog post where they responded to one of six questions posed by five different sf professionals working at various points in the creative chain: three authors (Max Gladstone, Naomi Kritzer, and Carmen Maria Machado), a literary agent (Bridget Smith of Dunham Literary), an editor (Rene Sears of Pyr). The prompt I gave the professionals to help them devise a question of their own was:

"Based on your specific involvement in speculative fiction, what's the thing you'd most like to ask gifted, high school-aged genre readers? What question could they answer that could help you do what you do 'better'?"

Here's what the various professionals playing along gave us. Below, you'll find some biographical information from each, and the question asked of the IMSA Speculative Fiction Studies Students:

Max Gladstone

Max Gladstone has been thrown from a horse in Mongolia and nominated twice for the John W Campbell Best New Writer Award. Tor Books published FOUR ROADS CROSS, the fifth novel in Max’s Craft Sequence (preceded by THREE PARTS DEAD, TWO SERPENTS RISE, FULL FATHOM FIVE, and LAST FIRST SNOW) in July 2016. Max’s game CHOICE OF THE DEATHLESS was nominated for a XYZZY Award, and FULL FATHOM FIVE was nominated for the Lambda Award. His short fiction has appeared on Tor.com and in Uncanny Magazine. His most recent project is the globetrotting urban fantasy serial BOOKBURNERS, available in ebook and audio from Serial Box, and in print from Saga Press.

Max's Question:

“Writers and readers sometimes describe the thing that makes a text 'sit' with them -- the themes, images, scenes, and ideas from a story they can't shake -- as a 'narrative kink.' What kind of story moments tend to be 'narrative kinks' for you? What makes them resonate with you?”

Naomi Kritzer

 Naomi Kritzer won both the Locus Award and the Hugo Award for Best Short Story in 2016 for her story "Cat Pictures Please." Her short stories have appeared in Clarkesworld, Asimov's, Analog, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Lightspeed, and Apex, as well as many other magazines and anthologies. She has a short story anthology forthcoming in July 2017 from Fairwood Press, and is working on a YA novel for Tor Teen about a cat-loving AI and its teenage friend. She lives in St. Paul, Minnesota, with her husband, two kids, and (currently) three cats.

Naomi's Question:

“What is something that's present in your life or the lives of your friends, but never (or rarely) reflected in fiction, that you wish you saw in fiction more often?

I am actually in the process of writing a YA novel based on ‘Cat Pictures Please’ -- so this is an actual burning question that I've been asking teenagers as the opportunity presents itself. I'd love to hear your students' thoughts!” 

Carmen Maria Machado 

Carmen Maria Machado is the author of the story collection Her Body and Other Parties (forthcoming in 2017) and the memoir House in Indiana (forthcoming in 2019), both from Graywolf Press. She is a fiction writer, critic, and essayist whose work has appeared or is forthcoming in The New Yorker, Granta, Tin House, Guernica, Electric Literature, The Paris Review, AGNI, NPR, Gulf Coast, Los Angeles Review of Books, VICE, and elsewhere. Her stories have been reprinted in Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy, Best Horror of the Year, Year’s Best Weird Fiction, and Best Women’s Erotica.

She holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and has been awarded fellowships and residencies from the Michener-Copernicus Foundation, the Elizabeth George Foundation, the CINTAS Foundation, the Speculative Literature Foundation, the Clarion Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers’ Workshop, the University of Iowa, the Yaddo Corporation, Hedgebrook, and the Millay Colony for the Arts. She is the Artist in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, and lives in Philadelphia with her partner. 

  

Carmen's Questions:

• When you're deciding what to read, outside of school, what compels you to pick up a particular book? And once you've started, what's the worst thing an author can do? What makes you decide not to finish something?
• When do you first remember telling yourself stories? Do you still do it? Why or why not?

           

Bridget Smith

Bridget Smith is an agent at Dunham Literary, Inc., where she represents middle grade, YA, and adult novels, with special interest in fantasy & science fiction, historical fiction, and women’s fiction. Her tastes run to literary and character-driven novels. She is the co-host of the podcast Shipping & Handling with fellow agent Jennifer Udden. She has also studied anthropology and archaeology, worked as a radio DJ, performed an experiment at NASA, and fenced on her college team.

Bridget's Question:

  “As the people who will be reading and writing the future of SFF, what would you like it to look like?”

Rene Sears    

Rene Sears is the Editorial Director of Pyr, an imprint of Prometheus Books. She has had short stories published in Cicada, Daily Science Fiction, and Galaxy's Edge magazine. She attended Duke University, the University of Edinburgh, and Savannah College of Art and Design. She can be found in Birmingham, Alabama, with a husband, two children, and a brown dog that may or may not be part Belgian Shepherd. She may usually be found with her nose in a book.

Rene's Question:

“What are books you've read where the story and language work in tandem to enhance each other? What are books where you felt the language impeded the story, and why? (For my husband, this was Still Life with Woodpecker. For me, this was the number of times a Cullen had golden eyes in Twilight--I started counting and it really interfered with immersion.)”

You may notice me commenting on their posts in critical fashion -- that's just part of my job, I'm afraid. I encourage you to comment on their work as you see fit. . . but remember these are students, bright and well-intentioned, and they deserve our best treatment.

Best regards,
Tracy Townsend

Yugan Sakthi: "To Carmen Maria Machado: An Author's Responsibility is a Reader's Choice"

An Author’s Responsibility is a Reader’s Choice

By Yugan Sakthi

Often times stories that other people—my friends, classmates, teachers, my aunt—adore are ones I can barely stomach, much less read all the way through. In grade school, for example, many of my friends kept telling me that the Hardy Boys series was the best they had ever read, but I became bored of it fast.

To answer the first part of Maria Carmen Machado’s question – what makes you pick up a book? I turn to my reading of fiction as early as I can remember. Apart from being read to by my parents, the first series I read of my own volition was Magic Tree House by Mary Pope Osborne. Starting with Dinosaurs Before Dark, I worked my way through their enthralling (at the time) adventures through time. To me, the captivating factor in these books was the sense of wonder and imagination I could get from reading them. They weren’t just books I read. They were books I thought about.

In school, I’d stare outside the window at the woods in our yard, wondering if one day a treehouse would appear there to whisk my away into the lands of Avalon, or 1940s Brooklyn, or the prehistoric ages. I hoped that I could just say a few words and the mundane everyday life of homework and afterschool piano lessons would change into a better world, one with magic and samurai and knights. 

It’s not a new idea; J.R.R. Tolkien mentions the three elements of fantasy as escape, recovery, and consolation. And in a way, Magic Tree House was all three to me.

Using Magic Tree House as a springboard, I dived into reading other stories. I found books in one of two ways: the first would be by its cover (you heard me right. If I thought the cover looked interesting, I’d read it), and the second was by recommendation, either by my friends, teachers, librarians, or anyone else. 

And to this day, those two remain the two primary ways I start reading a book: either by recommendation, or by its cover (and, of course, the back-cover synopsis). I have never been one to care about reviews, whether they be online or in magazines. Reading about reading was never my style, so my selection in books still is about gut feeling, and that’s it.

Once I pick up the book, though, it’s a very different story. I rarely, if ever, don’t finish a book, even if it is like chewing through a wet towel. That aforementioned idea of capturing not just my attention, but also my thinking, is my answer to the second part of Machado’s question: what’s the worst mistake an author could do? If the book I’m reading doesn’t make me think about it intensely outside of reading it, then to me the author has committed the equivalent of literary homicide. 

And that doesn’t mean the story needs to have intricate subplots or puzzling story structure. A simple narration of events is sometimes my favorite story, if the underlying themes and messages are truly impactful. George Orwell’s 1984 is a prime example of this. Although quite well-written, the book itself is pretty straightforward, and narrates through the eyes of Winston Smith a story of thought control, “socialism,” and love.

Yet it is a book that I still think about to this day, a year and a half after reading it. The implications that book had on society—the dire consequences it foretold of increasing government power—were enormous, and I could spend days thinking about how those consequences might play out in our own society. 

On the other hand is the novel The Fault in our Stars by John Green, widely acclaimed to be a gripping tale of love and death, yet which to me was little more than well-written story that made me smile or frown every 50 or so pages. To me, there wasn’t much to think about, and even though Green was a powerful writer, his story just didn’t seem to have an impact on me.

But in the end, I’m a fan of most books that I read. As bad as one may be, I always make sure to finish, if for nothing but to learn for myself what kinds of books I don’t like. As I keep hunting for more material to read, I know I’ll broaden my horizons and be a little better at choosing—and judging—stories.

Faith Mejias: "Dear Max Gladstone: The Power of Perspectives"

Dear Max Gladstone: “The Power of Perspectives”

By: Faith Mejias

Growing up, I often roamed around freely outside my home. When I finally picked up a book at the age of eight, I found that I was drawn to the imaginative worlds only found in books. In these worlds, I could be a time travelling magician who befriended fairies and demigods; it was exciting to take on the persona of each character. However, as I matured, I realized that it wasn’t specific speculative fictional elements that grabbed my attention but over-arching themes or vivid imagery. These “narrative kinks” helped ignite my passion for reading. Although it is difficult to truly articulate what about these books had such a lasting impression on me, I will try to give you a glimpse of how I think. The only stories that still stay with me even though many years have passed are Kite Runner, Tuesdays with Morrie, and Animal Farm. Recently, I have included “Super Toys Last All Summer Long” and “Fondly Fahrenheit” in this list of memorable stories. I found that each of these works propelled me to continue reading.

The structure, implications, and impact of books such as Kite Runner, Tuesdays with Morrie, and Animal Farm made me want to keep reading. Reading Kite Runner allowed me to broaden my horizons to look beyond troubles that plague a daily American’s life and see it through the eyes of a character full of faults. It allowed me to accept that you can’t always run away from past mistakes while showing me something new about the life some children experienced in Afghan. An image that caught my attention was when the main character, Amir walked away from his friend, Hassan, when Hassan was being raped. Another hauntingly captivating image was of the children in the orphanage when the caretaker had to give up one of the children, Sohrab, to provide for the rest of the group. It was unnerving to see just what humans are capable of when they are placed in an unwanted situation. 

Animal Farm allowed me to view the topic of Russian Revolution in a new light. The unique element of animals that represented actual human dictators made the story more compelling than if it has been written with human characters. It was able to clearly demonstrate what people are willing to do for power. While Kite Runner and Animal Farm reveal the flaws of human society in terms of selfishness, fear, and drastic actions, Tuesdays with Morrie showed the underlying courage and strength an individual can have even in the face of inner struggle. It was the first book that truly showed me that it’s okay to walk away from the majority if it does not benefit you or make you happy. The image of a simple man smiling in the face of ALS gave me the courage and hope I needed to face my own smaller struggles.

In both “Super Toys Last All Summer Long” and “Fondly Fahrenheit”, there was the underlying notion that the story was not what it seemed. The fact that I couldn’t take things at face value captured my attention and made me curious about how the stories would end. I was able to piece things together as the story went on. However, the twists in the end made me fall in love with the stories. Although both stories differ remarkably, I was drawn to both novels due to the author’s ability to surprise me. In “Super Toys Last Summer Long”, it was mind boggling to see how toys can create their own definition of “realness” that excluded humans while in “Fondly Fahrenheit” I enjoyed how the narrator exposed the greater dangers of humans in comparison to androids.   

These five stories have a common thread of revealing something about power. Animal Farm and Kite Runner showcased the corruption of power while Tuesdays with Morrie showed it in a more positive light. Morrie taught others to stray away from the majority and instead seek genuine happiness. While “Super Toys Last All Summer Long” and “Fondly Fahrenheit” had a power play between electric beings and humans that made it interesting. Overall, I enjoyed reading these stories because they not only had a fascinating theme but they also compelled me into their world. Whether I am an ALS patient, an android or an animal, I am constantly learning new perspectives.

William Tong: "To Mr. Gladstone: A Sexy Narrative Needs a Sexy World"

To Mr. Gladstone: A Sexy Narrative Needs a Sexy World

By William Tong

The first time I picked up The Lord of the Rings, I was pretty hyped. Fresh from my adventures There and Back Again and surfing the waves of a fantasy high, I plopped down on my special reading couch, savored the cover material with solemn delicacy, and proceeded to read. Before long, I was deeply, wildly, overwhelmingly! -- asleep.

No offense to Tolkien, of course. He’s a whiz with invented languages, built a beautiful world, revolutionized modern fantasy, etc., etc., but to be absolutely honest, no reader could possibly stomach pages upon pages about Hobbit marijuana, even if Tobold Hornblower of the Southfarthing’s Longbottom family really did grow the first true pipe-weed in the days of Isengrim the Second. Don’t get me wrong--the details where great and everything--but sometimes, I’d be hurting for a little Gandalf-sorcery-magic-awesomeness before getting slammed with a short novel’s worth of talking heads and background minutiae. To be fair, it was a pleasant read and tickled my geek-bones. But in the end, it took me somewhere in the ball park of seven or eight tries before finally, like Sam and Frodo wrestling the One Ring up the last few steps of Mount Doom, I (almost) finished! -- needing only a well-timed bite from Gollum (in this case, a Speech Team coach) to bring the darn thing home.

So I suppose, in summary, I liked The Lord of the Rings. I just didn’t like reading it.

Ironic as that sounds, when I think back on LotR, The Hobbit, and (especially) The Silmarillion, I don’t remember how mind-numbing the books could be. What I do remember is the allure of the setting, the intrinsic magic of the world. At the end of the day, the specifics of the prose and choices in pacing don’t matter nearly as much as the peace of the Shire, terror of Mordor, fading richness of Lothlórien, and revitalized glory of Gondor. Reading the Lord of the Rings, in that sense, not only provided a surefire cure to the hardiest strains of insomnia, but also offered a chance to trek across a world at once recognizable yet perhaps infinitely more wondrous than my own.

So to answer the question, the single most important feature of any narrative that makes it “kinky” for me is the quality of the world. A story could have a breathtaking plot, perfect pacing, prose so clean you can eat off it, but unless it’s got a setting and premise to match, it slips through my mind like sand through a sieve.

To draw examples from class readings, consider the perennial SF favorites Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and Lord of Light.

 For me, reading Dick’s novel was a thrill ride. There was fighting. There was killing. There was trickery. Heck, there was even taboo sex with a manufactured lady. I finished DADES? in just a couple breathless sittings, enjoying surges of adrenaline from the comfort of the sofa.

Zelazny’s story, on the other hand, took a far more mellow route. He took his time, meandering around the world, exploring the intricacies of the politics, taking care to convey a measure of culture, stripping away enough of the religion to reveal tantalizing glimpses of the technological machinery whirring underneath. In short, he developed a vibrant world replete with neat mechanics, complicated relationships, and--most importantly--the illusion of depth and the sense that it could really exist in some far off, magical dimension. While reading Lord of Light was not nearly as edge-of-seat gripping as Androids, thinking back months later on the two stories, it’s Great-Souled Sam wandering beneath the Bridge of the Gods I remember and ultimately enjoy more, much more than Deckard and his guns.

Ultimately, I read stories to escape Bolingbrook, Illinois for a little while and adventure across Middle Earth, the surface of another planet, or someplace wilder, more magical still. I don’t really need the action-packed plots or heart-thrumming story-lines (that’s what Netflix is for). What I do need is a rich, deep, engaging world--and that’s something I can find only in a sexy narrative.