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