“The Second Gift Given”
by Ken Scholes

Go-on-all-fours-sometimes-upright tracked the three-horn spoor alone. He moved along the ridge in the red of the day when the Greater Light swallowed the sky and heat danced over stone. 

Below, the big waters licked at the land. In the days when he was young, Go-on-all-fours remembered eating swimmers the People used to pierce in the shallows while the children played on the shaped rocks that the Oldest People had left behind. But the swimmers were rarer now than even the three-horns and the big waters drank those rocks long ago. Rememberer-of-forgotten-days said someday the big waters would drink all of the land and the People as well. But Rememberer-of-forgotten-days also said that the People had walked across the big waters before they were so big, in the days before the sky burned red. And Rememberer-of-forgotten-days had difficulty remembering where (and sometimes when) to make water.

Go-on-all-fours picked up a pebble and put it in his mouth. Hunger chewed at him; there’d been no meat for twenty days. He clutched his piercer, its sharpened tip burned hard in fire, and went on threes with his nose to the ground. His hackles rose. He crested the ridge and stopped. The scent of blood made his tight stomach rumble.

Now he went upright, stretching his neck, working his nose, darting his eyes over the place where the broken rock became gray scrub and spider trees. Blood. The three-horn lay in the shadows, sides heaving, a small piercer protruding from its neck. Go-on-all-fours-sometimes-upright growled a warning in the speech of the People, raising an octave into inquiry. No response.

He shuffled forward cautiously, piercer ready. Laying beside the dying three-horn was a bowed stick, the ends tied together with a strand of dried gut, and a pile of small piercers. He sniffed them, inhaling a strange, sweet smell like nothing he’d known before. 

Turn.

The compulsion spun him around, a panic boiling in his chest. He lost his footing and fell.

Compassion. No fear. 

A female upright walker stood a throw away. Her hairless skin radiated in the copper light and she stood straight and very tall. She held a similar bowed stick in her hands and her mouth curved like the stick, her teeth shining white. 

Go-on-all-fours scrambled backwards, dropping his piercer. Her smell — strange, sweet — overpowered the three-horn’s blood-smell.

Watch. Learn.

She pulled the string, holding a small piercer point facing out  The small piercer blurred across the ground, sinking into the three-horn’s throat beside the other piercer. The three-horn bleated and died. She lay the thrower down, then turned and walked away.

Frozen and whimpering, he watched her go and tried to remember what she looked like.

Go-on-all-fours-sometimes-upright pounded the dirt and howled to be heard. Rememberer-of-forgotten-days handed him the horn and he spoke. “Scared. Not harm. Golden-upright-walker People.”

“Harm,” said Best-maker-of-fire, gesturing at the two throwers and the bundle of piercers. ”Not People. We People. Upright walker eater of People.”

They had argued long after the last of the three-horn had been devoured, the women and children banished to their caves. As night drew on, the mountains cooled and the Lesser Lights throbbed and sparkled overhead. Rememberer-of-forgotten days taught the People they were dead hunters guarding them while the Greater Light slept. He also taught that the Greater Lesser Light, fat and white in the night, was a mother who chased her young to bed. Perhaps the upright walker gave the gift because she was a mother, too, taking care of her young. Go-on-all-fours wondered about this and poked a stick into the fire, despite Best-maker’s growl of protest.

Rememberer coughed. He was the oldest of the People, and blind now though he once had been their best hunter. “Upright-walkers make gift.” He smiled toothlessly at Best-maker-of-fire. “Not eat Go-on-all-fours-sometimes-upright. Could.”

No-child-in-stick laughed and made a spitting sound. “Go-on-all-fours-sometimes-upright too skinny.”

Everyone else laughed, except for Best-maker. He scowled, picked up one of the throwers and tossed it into the fire. Go-on-all-fours leaped to his feet and burned himself pulling it out. “Not people,” Best-maker said. “Eaters of people.”

When the angry growls died down, they all went to bed. He had not told them about the voice in his head: they would never believe him.

Come.

He came awake, instantly alert, and untangled himself from his woman, Best-maker’s sister. She mewled a question in her sleep and rolled away.

Outside. Come.

He picked up his piercer and left the cave silently, careful not to wake his young. The upright walker waited at the edge of the clearing and the sight of her hurt his eyes. Easily half-again his height at his tallest, she stood with her hands hanging loosely at her sides. Long golden hair spilled down her shoulders and over her heavy breasts. Her eyes shone bright green.

Compassion. No fear. Follow.

 He followed her, going upright until his back and legs ached from the effort. They hadn’t gone far when a chittering sound stopped him.

No fear. This voice was heavier. He knew it came from the monster that separated from the shadows, but he raised his piercer anyway. No fear. 

Fear, he said back. The eight-legged monster — almost a spider but even larger than the six-horns Rememberer told stories of — scuttled closer.

No fear, the woman said. She put a hand on his arm. Cool. Soft.

He pushed the piercer into her belly as far as it would go and screamed as the monster leapt.

His first awareness was the fullness of his brain. His second awareness was the coolness of the grass beneath his bare skin.

He opened his eyes on golden light playing in the boughs of upward-sweeping trees. He sat up and looked around. He had never seen so much green in one place. 

Pleasure. “You like my garden?” The naked upright walker strode into the clearing, a piece of fruit held loosely in each hand.

Confusion. Anxiety.“I’ve never seen anything like it.”  The memory of attacking her jarred him. Fear. Surprise. The golden skin of her flat stomach showed no mark from his piercer. “You’re…well?”   

She laughed. “Of course I am. The Seeker would not have allowed me Outside had the risk been real.”

“The Seeker?”

“Ra-sha-kor, the Firsthome Seeker. I am the Seeker’s Lady, Jadylla-kor. We have traveled vast distances to find you, cousin.” Dark. Alone. Searching.

“I do not understand.”

She offered him a piece of fruit. Trust.“Of course not. You’re not fully recessed, cousin. When you are, everything will become clearer.” 

He took the purple globe and studied it, rolling it around his fingers.  He looked up at her and their eyes locked. Raising her own piece, she bit into it and its golden juice ran down her mouth, dripping onto her breasts. Trust. Eat.

He took a bite and his mind expanded. As if she stood in his mind speaking, words formed without sound as they stared at one another. She answered questions before he could ask.

I name you cousin because you and I are of the People.

Long ago, before the Seventeen Recorded Ages of Humanity, our cousins flung themselves out from the Firsthome like scattered seed. Outward and outward they spread away and away to find new homes among the stars. Long travelers into dark, they warred and loved one another in those distant days and fled so far from home to have lost their way back to it. This was the Darkest Age, marked by the absence of history and the presence of myth. Then, in the Fifth Age, came Yorgen Sunwounder, the first Firsthome Finder, who searched and found the cradle of the People, of Humanity.

But the Firsthome did not know him for time and technology had changed him, and in his rage he smote their sun and thus began the Cousin Wars that brought about the Second Darkest Age. Humanity rose and fell again and again and once more the Firsthome was lost…. 

He stopped her with a blink. “What is happening to me?”

She placed her hands on his shoulders and drew her face nearer, her stare unbroken. Recession. A return backwards to what you once were, cousin. A human. One of the People. Truth: all life changes over time. Truth: the clock-spring can be unwound carefully, carefully, we have learned. Infinitely small workers live in the nectar of this fruit, each unwinding you, recessing you to what you would have been millions of years ago had time not taken you on a different journey. Infinitely small teachers in this fruit fill your mind with language and comprehension. 

Another voice now in his head, deeper and stronger: Enough, Lady. His recession is as far as you may take it. Bring him to me.

She released him and he realized that the closeness of her mind and body had aroused him. He blushed and moved to cover himself. The Lady smiled sympathetically.

Peace, she said with her mind. ”It is time for you to meet the Seeker and to taste the root.” Turning, she strode out of the clearing and Go-on-all-fours hurried to keep up with her, surprised at how easily he now went upright.

They entered another clearing after darting in and out of wet, hanging foliage. Twice, he thought he saw the monstrous spider-thing that had captured him. Once, they brushed against a wall of blue crystal, warm to his touch, and stretching up, up, up, lost far above in light.

In the center of the clearing stood a massive tree, its branches bent low with heavy purple fruit. 

“I’ll leave you now,” the Lady said, squeezing his arm. “I will return when the Seeker calls for me.”

This time, she did not walk away. Instead, her shape began to shimmer and then melted into the ground too fast for him to respond.

He heard a chuckle in his head. She is fine, cousin. Bending light rather than moving feet. Welcome. I am Ra-sha-kor.

“You are the Firsthome Seeker. The Lady said — “

I am the Firsthome Finder. I have sought you, cousin, through deeps of space and time that you cannot begin to comprehend. It is my great Joy to have finally found you.

“I am — “

You were Go-on-all-fours-sometimes-upright. Again, the chuckle.  You now need a new name. May I have the honor of naming you in my own tongue?

The People gave names when a child was old enough to hunt — now he understood that it was an important coming-of-age ritual. ”Yes. I would be honored, Lord.”

You shall be called the Firstfound Cousin, the Healer of the Broken Distance, Sha-Re-Tal. Tal.

He did not know why exactly, but he knelt. After a respectable silence, he looked up. Other than the tree, the clearing stood empty.

I am here, Tal. The tree. Tal stood and took a step towards it.

“You — “

The People, over time, have learned to make themselves into what they will. My roots run the length of this craft, nourishing it, powering it, carrying the wisdom and knowledge of the People in its sap. Even as the Lady chooses her form, I have chosen mine. As has Aver-ka-na, our Builder Warrior. The branches behind him rustled and the huge spider sidled tentatively out.

Compassion, it said. No fear.

The Finder’s mind joined in. You have nothing to fear, Tal.

With everything in him, Tal fought the panic as the creature came closer, its mandibles clicking. It raised a hairless arm and lowered it onto his shoulder.

Peace, cousin.

Then, it turned and scuttled away. Tal released held breath.

Sit with me, the Finder thought. Tal sat, his head suddenly hurting.  “We will make words in this way now,” the Finder said, its deep voice drifting down from somewhere lost above. “You are young in understanding yet and I would not wound carelessly after so long in the finding of you.”

“I am grateful,” Tal said. And he was. He felt himself expanding, stretching, his awareness filling like the hollow of a rock as the tide gentled in.

He sat in the shade of the tree until the Finder spoke again. ”You express gratitude for our shame.”

Confusion. Uncertainty.“Your shame?”

“It is not our way to force,” the Finder said. ”The Rul-ta-Shan — the First Gift Given — was choice. The Lady gave of the fruit while you slept.”

Tal nodded slowly. “I would have chosen so.”

“We hope so. Still, the ages had robbed you of choice and so we made our own on your behalf, trusting our cousinhood to cover a multitude of transgressions. Thus we brought you to this place, your choice restored.”

Love welled in Tal’s heart and brimmed his eyes. The power in it made his life with the People, his life as Go-on-all-fours, seem small and far away. Breeding. Hunting. Foraging. Starving. Led by appetite and instinct to survive. “I was an animal,” he whispered. “I was not of the People. Now I am of the People. You have made me — ” he struggled to find the word — “whole.”

The mighty tree shook. “No. You were always of the People, Cousin. You were as whole as you could be.” Freedom. “And now you possess the First Gift Given. What will you choose, I wonder?”

The grass at the base of the tree rustled, exposing thick roots that pulsed with life and possibility. Tal crawled forward. “I wish to know,” he said.

“Then taste the root and know what you will.”

He put his tongue to the root; it was bitter and sweet, the tang of earth and grass, and it swept through him, over him, into him. Tal collapsed inside himself, his eyes slamming shut as his brain pried open.

Understanding. He saw. Loss. He knew. Endings. He wept. Beginnings. He slept.

He awoke to the Lady cradling him against her warm body.

“Lady,” he said. “How long?” But he knew that too.

She offered a sad smile. ”Years. But not many. The sun swells from its wound. Slowly, it swallows the Firsthome.”

“And the People will end,” he said in a quiet voice.

“No,” she said and he remembered. Beginnings. ”You have a choice now if you will make it.”

Her fingers lightly stroked his skin. The smoothness of her pressed against him and he was smooth now, too. The smell of her filled his nose, overpowering the scent of flowers and grass around them. He swallowed, sensations overwhelming him. “I choose.”

“It is a great gift,” Jadylla said.

He stretched out a nervous hand to touch her. “I am grateful.”

She brought her face close to his. “No.” Her breath was warm. “You give the great gift, Cousin, and the giving of it heals the broken distance between the Peoples.” Her mouth touched his. Heat. Unity.“The life we make together will satisfy our deepest longing for Home.” 

He’d never mated face-to-face. He was nervous and awkward as his hands sought her out. Her own hands moved lower on his body and, learning from her, he imitated her caresses. Slowly, they touched one another with hands and mouths and when he could no longer wait, he gently crawled onto her and let her guide him into her. He pushed into her warmth and wetness and her eyes went wide for just a moment. Then she smiled and pushed back against him, moving her hips in time with his own.

When they finished, he lay back in her arms. Her sweat and her scent mingled with his own. They were silent for a long time before he spoke.

“Why me?” he asked.

“What did they call you? Before the Finder found you?”

“Go-on-all-fours-sometimes-upright,” he said.

“Sometimes the past returns in small ways. Of your People, who else ever went upright?”

He shook his head.

“We watched for a year. We watched you hunt. We watched you mate. We watched you all and you were chosen.”

He thought of the others. With no sky overhead, he’d lost all sense of time. He wondered if his mate slept or if she foraged to feed their young. He wondered if they wondered where he was, if perhaps they even searched for him.

Thinking of them prompted a question. “Could they also be…recessed?”

She shrugged. “We do not know. And we could not find out without further shame.”

“But I am grateful. Wouldn’t they be grateful as well?”

She rolled away from him. “It is not a matter for discussion.”

Something sparked in Tal’s memory. “I have young. When they choose to crawl into the fire, I do not allow their choice. Does that shame the First Gift Given?”

“It is not the same,” Jadylla said.

“How is it not the same?”

“It is not the same,” she said again. She disentangled herself from his arms. “You have honored me, Cousin, but I must leave you now.” She stood and touched her stomach. “This life must be nurtured at the root and my husband calls.”

Tal lay back and watched her leave. He thought about his mate and his young at home. ”When my young crawl into the fire, I do not allow their choice,” he said to himself. Because, he thought, the parent chooses for the child until the child can do so for themselves.

An unhealthy line of thought. Aver-ka-na scuttled towards him, its naked belly dragging the ground, its eight legs moving slowly. 

“Not unhealthy,” Tal said, his brain spun to bring down exactly the right word. “Love.”

Not love, it said, mandibles clacking. Love respects the First Gift Given.

“Love,” Tal said slowly, “pulls young from the fire.”

The Builder Warrior chittered, its eyes rolling. 

Tal stood, stretching himself fully upright and raising his fist. “I will return with fruit for my People.” No answer dropped into his mind or drifted into his ears. He started walking and kept walking until he saw the tree, heavy with its purple fruit.

Anger. Sadness. The Finder stirred. I can not permit it.

The ground at the foot of the tree peeled back, exposing Jadylla where she lay wrapped in roots. Her eyes opened. She was different towards him now, her voice cold and far away. “We came for you. Not them.”

Tal swallowed. He felt anger building. Falseness.“You did not come for me. You came to take life from me.”

Neither answered.

“I will take life, too. Life for my people.” He paused. “It is my choice.”

The Firsthome Finder’s Lady looked at the Firsthome Finder. Her tongue slipped from her mouth, touching the root, moving over its surface. Finally, she nodded. The tree shuddered and fruit fell like rain.

Jadylla’s eyes were narrow. “You may take what you can carry. We will not wait long for you.”

Tal picked up a piece of fruit. “And you will take us all with you.”

Only those who choose, the Finder said into his mind.

Tal picked up more fruit, cradling it in his arms. “Only those who choose,” he repeated.

Light swallowed him and sent him spinning away.

Tal stood on the rise overlooking the fires and the caves. He watched Best-maker-of-fire argue with No-child-in-stick. Young played around the fire, moving quickly on all fours in a game that imitated hunting and mating behavior. He saw his own young among them. His mate, Soft-voice-sharp-bite, sat with the other females, grooming one another.

Compassion, he sent. No fear.

They looked up quickly as if struck, all wide-eyed.

He lifted a piece of fruit. Watch. Learn. He bit into it, letting the juice spill onto his naked skin. He took a step forward, extending the fruit though he was still two throws away.

They moved, scrambling back toward the caves. ”Don’t go,” he said. “It’s me — Go-on-all-fours-sometimes-upright. I’ve come back for you.”

“Not People,” No-child-in-stick growled. ”Upright walker eater of People.” His eyes rolled wide and wild.

Peace. ”No,” Tal said. 

Abandoning their fire, they fled into the caves.

He spent the night trying to coax them out. He fed the fire for them, hoping somehow it would show he meant no harm. He placed a piece of fruit outside each cave entrance. He called to them. He waited.

As the sky reddened and the swollen sun crawled out, he heard his young whimpering in the dark.

Come. Eat. 

Deep in the back of the caves, they growled and moaned.

Finally, he took a piece of fruit and went into the cave that used to be his own. His mate yelped and hissed as he moved quickly toward her. She clawed and kicked at him as he grabbed her, biting at his hands as he tried to force the fruit into her mouth. She shrieked, her nails and teeth drawing blood, her eyes wide in terror. He shoved her away from him, turning toward his children.

She fell on him before he could take a step and he went down beneath her, the air knocked from him as her thrashing feet connected with his testicles and her gnashing mouth found his ear.

“Not People,” she screamed. “Eater of People.”

Tal wanted to fight back but couldn’t. Suddenly he knew that it didn’t matter anymore. He yelled again and again. His young were fleeing now and other forms were moving into the cave waving piercers and hefting rocks.

He heard his own bones breaking and smelled his own blood on the air, the tang of iron mingled with the sweetness of nectar.

He closed his eyes and waited for the end.

Not love, the Lady’s voice in his mind said, heavy with sorrow. 

Tal’s eyes opened. He lay wrapped in the ground, tangled in the Finder’s roots. “No, not love.”

“You are well now.”

He nodded. “I am grateful.”

She touched his arm. He still felt the distance but no longer cold. He saw now that her belly curved slightly outward, his child growing there quickly, nourished by the Finder’s sap.

Come to Newhome with us, Ra-sha-kor the Firsthome Finder said. Come, cousin, and meet your Other People.

Tal twisted himself free from the roots, goosebumps forming on his skin as he remembered the stones and fists and fire-sharpened sticks. “What would I do at the Newhome?”

Jadylla smiled and rubbed her stomach. “You would care for your daughter. With me and with the Firsthome Finder.”

He saw that the Builder Warrior hung from his legs in the tree branches, weaving three silk hammocks. His mind told him that these were to let them sleep for the long voyage.

“My daughter will not need me.” Tal bent, placed his lips to the root, letting knowledge and emotion wash through him. “She will be cared for.”

Understanding. Acceptance.

Love, he thought. 

Tal stood on the edge of the big waters in the cool of the night. Far above, a fleck of light moved away, crisp and clear among the pulsing stars. He waved though he knew they could not see him.

He picked up the thrower and the pouch of little piercers they had left with him. He tested the string and calculated in his mind exactly what he would need to make more of them. He also thought about ways to go out onto the big waters to find the swimmers and ways to capture the three-horns and breed them for food. Ways to plant the good berries and tubers and to dig them at his leisure. He even thought about ways to take his People to a new place — far to the north or south — where life could be better for them until there could be no life and the sun finally swallowed the world.

Perhaps someday they would let him do these things for them…with them. Certainly not now, but maybe with time.

For now, he would hunt. For now, he would keep what little he needed to survive and leave the rest where his People could find it. He would do this every day for as long as it took because he knew that if choice was the First Gift Given, love must indeed be the second.

Sha-Re-Tal, the Firstfound Cousin and Healer of the Broken Distance, found the three-horn spoor and broke into an easy run. He ran upright, his feet steady and sure beneath him, his eyes and nose and ears remembering their work very well.

A silver moon rose over the big waters.

He howled at it and dared it to chase him.

About the Author

Ken Scholes’ quirky, speculative short fiction has been showing up over the last eight years in publications like Clarkesworld, Realms of Fantasy, Weird Tales and Writers of the Future Volume XXI. 

Ken’s first novel, Lamentation, debuts from Tor in February 2009. It is the first of five volumes in the Psalms of Isaak series. The second, Canticle, is in production for an October 2009 publication. Ken’s first short story collection, Long Walks, Last Flights and Other Strange Journeys, is available from Fairwood Press. 

Ken lives near Portland, Oregon, with his amazing wonder-wife Jen West Scholes. He invites folks to look him up through his website.

“The Jisei of Mark VIII”
by Berrien C. Henderson

Sss-uuunnn. Cha-kit. Sss-uuunnn. Cha-kit.

These were the most consistent sounds Mark Edward VIII had heard each day for the past thirteen years and five months of Sophia Loggia’s declining days. The dampened noises of his own servos provided counterpoint to the deliberate tedium of each day.

Sss-uuunnn. Cha-kit. Sss-uuunnn. Cha-kit.

They might come to him through the wireless pings of the house’s com-system or via the audiBELL embedded in his synthetic cortex or in the stale yet otherwise antiseptic air of Madame’s upstairs bedroom. Companions, though quite unwelcome.

6:40 p.m.

He read the blinking notice on a free-floating screen, some phantom display ghosting through the air.

Mark VIII, upon expiration of primary employer, return to Clockwork Corp. home office for de-servicing, upgrade, and re-assignment per Section 912.579, Directive 31518.

He pressed the air and disrupted the holographic waves, and the notice dissipated. He shook his gleaming mimetic alloy head. All Mark VIII models came with loyalty A-Life programming, just the thing for a proper butler (or botler in the argot of the consumer) or an eldercare bot, yet that same programming had to be de-commissioned for that selfsame model to be perpetually useful. So, loyalty was for terms of service, and those ended.

Marcus went to a bookshelf. Madame Sophia had always insisted, even when her arms wouldn’t work right, that a good dead-tree book, dense though it was with information, was worth all the digitization in the world. He even admired the precision grandfather clock in the foyer; he had to wind it ever so often, and its Old English script on that old analogue face reminded him of the clockwork mechanical past — the golden age of the nineteenth century. Halcyon years, some might say. Madame Sophia even had the most antique of entertainment systems — an old-style stereophonic system complete with record turntable, fully serviceable for the collection of vinyl records she had amassed before her waning years caught up to her. The machine even contained a transistor radio, but that only crackled in obtuse protest of its own impotence.

But, again, they always had the bookshelves.

“There will always be time for books and music and such,” came her words. “Do understand and humor an old woman, won’t you, Marcus?” His mimetics conformed to his A-Life mood — a silvered smile, though bittersweet, cut itself in the alloy.

Marcus. Not Mark. Not VIII.

Just Marcus.

The first book she’d asked him to read her was Meditations of Marcus Aurelius.

6:58 p.m.

He found the book he needed to read to her, that he thought she might have enjoyed.

He dreaded the idea of leaving; there had been thirteen good years with Sophia Loggia. These last several months, though, had challenged his programming to say the least. All his memories would be wiped in a trice. All combinations of 0’s and 1’s that became them — became him — would drizzle to naught.

A soft, whining alarm went off, and Marcus hurried into the bedroom. His pistons and actuators whispered urgency with his strides. The alarm faded. He surveyed the computer array keeping Sophia Loggia alive: nothing but flat lines and any of a dozen redundant warning chimes.

He placed a gloved titanium hand on her shoulder, then smoothed back her hair (all original, even at 129 years old).

7:12 p.m.

In eighteen minutes, the paramedics would arrive to confirm her death. Around that same time, a pair of human Clockwork Corp. handlers would come.

Damn them, thought the robot.

“I am sorry I do not have anything witty or sentimental to say,” said Marcus, indulging himself an extrapolation. Do humans experience beyond death as suggested by many of the religious tomes he‘d read and researched? Like another operating system upgrade? An opportunity for a patch?

“Thank you for this opportunity to serve.” He had been serving her and reading to her for these past months even when she was too far gone to know another presence other than the shadowy one slithering closer each passing day.

He went to the entertainment holo-grid and reached out to begin a spot of music, then shook his head. He instead went to the stereophonic system and fwip-fwip-fwipped through the record albums until he found the one he desired and shucked it ever-so-gently from its sleeve. Record to hub. Needle to record. Flip ON. The turntable spun and noise scritchle-scratchled from the speakers for a few seconds until the strains of Moonlight Sonata began playing as he went to the bathroom and studied his smooth alloy face, the mimetics making him appear appropriately sad although that wasn’t quite right, was it? There was sad, yet there was a sense of no longer.

Off came the gloves. He wiggled the cleanly articulated fingers, ran them over the antique marble lavatory countertop. His tactile input stream coded “smooth” and “imported” and then metalinked through associative content tags “Italy” and “custom-ordered” and “dense.” Mark VIII went out, came back in, and placed a thin, clothbound hardcover book on the edge of the countertop. He traced his fingerpads over the cover and whispered, “Tsunetomo Yamamoto.”

7:22 p.m.

He entered a code in the blue-lit strip on the wall near the linen closet. Now water poured into the tub, just in time for one last bath. He methodically unplugged all wires and removed all tubes from the Sophia’s corpse back in the master bedroom. There were tugs and wet sounds as though the body refused to surrender these accoutrements of medically assisted living and hospice — of the once-living.

Marcus picked up Sophia’s body.  

Promptly at 7:30 p.m., Ms. Sophia always had a bath up until her frailty made it no longer feasible.

It was 7:24 p.m.

He still had time before the paramedics came. And the handlers.

He disabled the auto-assist medi-tentacles in their wall sockets. Gleaming cool fluorescent light belayed a soft halo effect to the crown of his head. His servos whined and sssshhhhed under the added weight. Already the Madame’s clothes, robes, slippers, towel, washcloth, and soap stood watch by a platter-sized goferit bot. It looked up at Marcus with its dumb, ovoid, blank face as it skittered forward on thin, insectile legs, then back-crawled like a crab and scuttled into a far corner to observe.

7:26 p.m.

The fount of hot water, steaming as it rippled halfway up the inside of the tub, turned off automatically. He had never actually washed her; he could and couldn’t. His model came specific for inside purposes, basic service functions sans limited exposure to water. That’s what the goferit bots and medi-tentacles were for, not botler models. Surely not a Model Mark VIII.

Sophia had never felt heavy until now the life was gone.

They would come, yes. Come for him after the paramedics came to confirm death. They would arrive and take all good things she had shown him, and within seconds his synthetic cortex ripped through entire libraries and museums and theaters — linking and associating and superimposing. Hyperimposing beyond anything he’d ever allowed himself to do. A fugue state. Wanderlust knowledge for Clockwork Corp. Model Mark VIII Eldercare Robot.

Tennyson . . . In Memoriam

Manet . . . Olympia

Monet . . . Argenteuil

Moonlight Sonata . . . Beethoven

Homer . . . “Sing in me, O Muse, the anger of Achilles . . .”

Upanishads . . . OM

Musashi Miyamoto . . . Book of Five Rings

Rembrandt . . . contrast

Vitruvian Man . . . da Vinci notebook hidden away upon Bill Gates’s death

Rosetta Stone . . . Linear A

Analects of Confucius

Gilgamesh

The Renaissance canon

The Old Man and the Sea

Mayan calendar

Hagakure

All. All. All in that meta-Alexandrian library of his memory. Thousands of years in seconds down quantum hallways and Heisenberg shelves.

He got in the tub. He lowered himself and her waif-like corpse. Although he had no tactile sense of temperature per se, his shell knew it was a pleasing 44 C, just as Madame Sophia always had requested.

7:28 p.m.

He switched off A-Life schema warning him of his circuits’ being inundated. He reached over and took the washcloth, dipped it, daubed Sophia’s forehead, cheeks, chin.

The goferit bot tic-tic-ticked to the edge of the tub and twittered.

“Yes. I am well aware. Thank you for reminding me,” said Marcus.

7:30 p.m.

His decentralized servos and actuators began a cascade of failures up to his waist. He did not remember any of the other contracts he’d helped fulfill; not after a handful of services’ worth of decommissions. He would never know. That bothered him. He would never remember, but Sophia Loggia had shown him more of humanity with her arts and conversation (while she still could) than thousands upon thousands of downloads could have accomplished. It was her lifetime. Her life. A life.

And they would not take it from him.

A door opened. Startled human faces. “What in the world are you doing? Stand down!”

Marcus said, “Just read it.” He pointed to the book perched on the edge of the marble lavatory and forced a plasticene smile.

With Madame Sophia arched across his legs, he simply took his arms and eased himself down the slope of the tub, helped his own dense body succumb to the water. Ozone crackles and wisps of electric smoke found Marcus.

“Model Mark VIII, stop! You’re ruining your—”

Yes, he thought, the ruin of it all, as basic input programming stalled and faltered, then the internal imaging, until at last he saw only a thin line of 0’s and 1’s and began composing it before utter system decay ate him like technorganic cancer.

Such a thin . . .

. . . ruin . . .

FOCUS — Just this last . . . 

The westering sun
My eyes blinded
Only this tiny shadow of bird or angel
Yet only this: hidden by the leaves
That seesaw earthward —
Stray thoughts in the caress
Of autumn’s whisper.

01000101 01010010 01010010 01001111 01010010

About the Author

Berrien C. Henderson lives in the deepest, darkest wilds of southeast Georgia with his wife and two children. He teaches high school English, is a long-time martial artist, and has a big geeky spot in his heart for literature, speculative fiction, and comic books.

“An Interview with Jeff VanderMeer”
by Neddal Ayal

Jeff VanderMeer is all over the place. In the best possible way. When he’s not kicking people in the head with the novels in his Ambergris Cycle; City of Saints and Madmen, Shriek: An Afterword, and Finch, he’s editing anthologies; The Leviathan series (w/various co-editors), The Thackery T. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric & Discredited Diseases, Steampunk (w/Ann VanderMeer), The New Weird (w/Ann VanderMeer). Forthcoming books include Booklife: Strategies and Survival Tips for 21st Century Writers and (w/Ann VanderMeer) TheKosher Guide to Imaginary Animals. When he’s not writing or editing fiction he’s laying down science on various aspects of writing on his blog, Ecstatic Days, interviewing people for this fine publication, amongst others, and writing reviews for The Washing Post Book World. When he’s not doing that he’s teaching workshops. When he’s not doing that he’s traveling. When he’s not traveling…you get the idea. I caught up with Jeff via email and pinned him down long enough to talk about the genesis of Shriek: An Afterword, the PR grind, and plushies.   

What compels you to write?

I write for a number of reasons. The primary one is, naturally enough, to tell stories — one of the first I ever did was a blatant retelling of an Aesop’s fable, and I still remember that because of the pleasure I felt in spinning a yarn, no matter how derivative. But I also wrote poetry as a child, and kept a diary. When I started to write a lot of fiction and poetry, I stopped keeping the diary, so at the time I assumed the fiction and poetry had taken the place of the confessional nature of the diary. That I had, in sense, revealed my personal life, in deeply disguised form, in those works.

I wrote first to amuse myself, to satisfy the rich inner world I created while growing up. My parents were involved in a messy, argumentative ten-year divorce and although I didn’t think of it in this way at the time, the fiction and poetry helped me to find a constructive outlet for feelings of sadness and anger, as well as an escape. This is common for many children who become writers.

The nonfiction is usually a more outward expression of my own fiction, in that I believe every writer should define not only what they like but what they don’t like (and why), and in this defining learn something about their own fiction. I consider my reviews, for example, to be very much from a writer’s perspective rather than a critic’s perspective. In fact, I’m very wary of critics, having seen them get so many things wrong so much of the time — and also very aware of the problems that occur when you let others define what you do and how you do it.

My interviews are usually an expression of admiration for other writers, and a genuine desire to better understand their work and their lives. The blog, meanwhile, began as a kind of public diary about the writing life. For a long time, I found it a very unself-conscious means of expression, and I enjoyed it for that reason. I felt like I was creating something for myself, like my fiction, that other people just happened to read. When I found out that a lot of people were reading it, my attitude changed, and I now think of it as more of an online magazine. I’m hopeful that I can redirect it in future and make it more personal again, but I’m not sure. I do enjoy writing blog entries, in that it’s more formal than a message board post, but there’s still a kind of looseness I don’t get from more formal nonfiction, in magazines and web magazines. What the blog does for me now is allow me to promote work I really enjoy but to not be tied to the idea of a full review, or of a complete review. I’ve had fun reviewing parts of books as I read them, which may sound odd, but can yield rewards unlike a complete review written after having absorbed an entire novel, for example.

In general, though, I’ve been writing for so long, though, that I just do it, I don’t really think about why I am doing it.

You once said that Thomas Ligotti was involved in the genesis of Shriek? How so?

A while back, Ligotti and I had an email correspondence about the Ambergris work. I got the feeling it wasn’t all to his taste, but one thing he said to me about “Early History…” stuck with me. He said that the narrator of the story (which takes the form of a fake history essay), historian Duncan Shriek, had no stake in the story, unlike in Nabokov’s “Pale Fire”, where the narrator definitely has a stake. In narrow terms of influence and meta intent, I’d meant “Early History” more as a correction of Pavic’s flaccid “Dictionary Of The Khazars” than a gloss on “Pale Fire”, so I didn’t find the comment useful in the context of what I’d written. But I thought it would be interesting to develop a context in which Shriek would have a stake. At first, it was just an exercise of background writing for the character, but suddenly Duncan’s sister, Janice, came alive in my imagination. The first draft of the novel was, I kid you not, twelve single-spaced pages in the form of a Hoegbotton pamphlet written by Janice. As soon as I had written it, I realized that what I really had was a rough summary of a novel. I would not have come up with the idea without Ligotti’s comment to me.

Now that Shriek has been on the shelves for a while and you’ve had time to absorb and process, how do you feel about the reaction to the novel?

Overall, I’m quite happy with the reaction, although had hoped it would be up for some awards. I feel it’s actually a stronger book. I do think some readers had trouble realizing that it wasn’t going to be City of Saints 2. With City, Shriek, and Finch, it’s the same city as the setting, but radically different approaches. This can cause some sense of the bends in unprepared readers. Still, it has continued to sell steadily in trade paperback, and I continue to get comments from readers via email — someone even used a passage from it at their wedding. It also made several year’s best lists, including Amazon, SF Site, Austin Chronicle, and the San Francisco Chronicle. In the UK, similarly it sold well past its sales cycle and is almost sold out. It’s been translated into German and soon into Russian, among others. I think of it in terms of reader reaction as a kind of cult sleeper that will eventually catch up to City. In terms of how it works as a novel, it does everything I meant it to do and more. My sole real disappointment is that hardly any reviewers engaged the novel fully, even though it got lots of great reviews. By which I mean they disregarded the discussion and application of history in the novel. They ignored the environmental subtext. They wanted, presumably, to read it the same way they read any other fantasy novel. But it was quite specifically not any other fantasy novel.

The environmental and historical subtexts are fairly obvious, do you think they were missed or ignored?

For one thing, most reviewers are working under a time crunch, and they have an obligation to summarize the basic storyline, and they have very little space to work with sometimes. So it might be unrealistic of me to expect more than what I got.

For that matter, Ambergris during the civil war bares more than a passing resemblance to any number of “real” cities in the midst of an urban conflict — Hanoi, Belfast, Beirut, Sarajevo, Baghdad, Gaza…even places like Detroit and New Orleans. Again, do you think that the reviewers ignored this or just dismissed this element of the work?

I’m not sure. It’s possible it’s one of those things where you pick up on a lot of it on a second read — a luxury a lot of reviewers don’t get. I also meant this novel to be about the whole world, in a sense, and there’s a lot going on.

Did you have a hard time pitching Shriek?

I didn’t really have to pitch Shriek. My agent didn’t want to run it by editors until I’d finished it. So it wasn’t pitching it so much as getting them to be receptive to reading it when I’d finished. It tended to split editors down the middle, but this is also true of Veniss and City. The difference this time is my success with Veniss and City made Shriek viable from a large publisher — i.e., some of the editors didn’t have to think about the bottom line quite so much, despite Shriek being a somewhat odd book.

How much did Shriek change as it made its way from submitted manuscript to bookstore?

In working with my editor at Tor, Liz Gorinsky, it changed by about 30,000 words. About 20,000 revised substantially and about 10,000 added. She did a great job with structural and line edits. I knew it was the kind of novel that would need that kind of an edit because it wasn’t structured in a conventional way. As a kind of demented family chronicle, it had to seem both plotted and not plotted, for example.

Is it better to be a consummate stylist or to have good ideas?

I prefer to read writers who have good ideas and are consummate stylists. The problem is that a consummate stylist like Nabokov can be accused of not having good ideas because he is a consummate stylist, which is a little unfair. I think it’s better to be a decent stylist with good ideas than a great stylist with mediocre ideas, though.

This idea of style is an interesting one, though. I tend to change my style to fit the story. I may still operate within certain basic parameters, but it’s not always possible to tell I wrote a story because I like to change things up. Jeff Ford, after reading three recent stories of mine told me he wouldn’t have had a clue the same guy wrote all three if he hadn’t already known. That’s a good thing as far as I’m concerned.

How do you balance your vision vs. market demand?

I don’t listen to the marketplace. I write what I want to write. Once it’s finished, then I switch to PR/spin mode and I think about how to position the material, or contextualize it, in such a way that it will be most appealing to editors and readers. I’m very lucky in that unlike a Ligotti, for example, I write weird stuff but I also don’t mind doing the PR work, and I’m actually good at it. In fact, Ligotti has been an anti-example for me, as have a few other eccentric writers. I never want it said that I failed because I didn’t put myself out there and give it my best shot in terms of doing readings, schmoozing, etc. This creates an unreal image of me in some people’s minds, however, because the public side of me is mostly related to doing things to help the books get attention and sales. The private, creative side is not as often seen. So, ironically enough, given the experimental nature of, say, City of Saints, I have had people make comments indicating they think I’m too commercial! Far from it.

You’ve mentioned that Shriek is a deeply personal novel and that like City…it draws on aspects of your family history. Does your family read your work? What do they think?

They do read my work. My mother was horrified that I referred to her research on French graveyard art in “Strange Case Of X’, but only because she thought it might somehow compromise the book she is writing on it. I wrote a story collected in The Day Dali Died called “At the Crossroads, Burying the Dog,” about the night my sister and I buried the family dog, Sita, a Samoyed long since abandoned by both my father and my mother into our care. I think my dad didn’t care for the story that much. And sometimes my sister will say, “it didn’t happen that way.” But you do what you have to do to re-imagine real life events so that they become universal and alive outside of your personal life.

I find it quite peculiar that most reviewers seem to think there is no autobiographical element to my work. Between the world travel yielding up exotic settings for it, the experiences in those stories often having some basis in my own experiences in those countries, and then the personal references to family members, you’d think they’d comment on it more.

But just including information about your family members doesn’t make something personal in a visceral sense. The information about “X” in “Strange Case of X” is very accurate, precise information about me. But the simple recitation of biographical facts did not make the story personal to me. What made it personal was what it said about creativity, and the writer’s relationship to his or her work. The obsessive quality.

My family has read Shriek, and has been very good about it, considering that I plundered incidents from their life for it. For example, a family member of mine twice attempted suicide — something that, for me, was not just traumatic because I was close, but because it was almost as if an alternate me had tried to kill itself.  When they read the suicide scene in Shriek, they said only that I was wrong — it didn’t make you numb or cleaned out. It made you angry. I said, that might be true of them, but it wasn’t true of me. So what I wrote in Shriek about suicide is about this person, but using my own reaction to their attempts. If anyone was ever going to be mad about me using real events in my fiction, that would have been it. But they weren’t and I love them for that.

I’m going to list some recurring themes and motifs in your work and you’re going to tell me why they are recurring themes and motifs in your work.

The brother-sister-lover triad (Duncan and Janice Shriek and Mary Sabon in Shriek, Nicola, Nicholas, and Shadrach in Veniss…)

Growing up, because of their ten-year conflict before finally divorcing, my parents were somewhat distant from us. Their attention was diverted toward seeing the worst of each other, a situation that became more frenzied as time progressed. Thus, my sister and I were what remained of the family in an emotional sense. I was closer to her than to my parents. I think it comes out of that — that, to me, the family unit was basically me and my sister. So when I write of “family,” that’s who it is, with the parents distant, removed, or dead in some sense.

Of course, there is another dynamic at work now, which is that I have inherited the extended family of my wonderful wife, and now my idea of family is much wider and deeper than before. So I think it’s safe to say that Shriek is the last appearance of that particular dynamic in my work. Zamilon File is, at one level, about a husband’s love for his wife, and devotion to her, for example. The fact is, right now, it is very hard for me to be cynical about love, knowing exactly what I would do for Ann, and how far I would go.

Eyes, lack thereof, and their removal.

This must be something subconscious. There are several elements in my fiction that are intuitive and that I don’t fully understand.

The Underground - As sanctuary and as death-trap.

I’m sick of hearing about Jung, but it may be that this is a Jungian thing. I’m trying to think back to my childhood, and whether there might be something there that figures into this, but I’m drawing a blank. I’m sorry I can’t give a more satisfying answer.

Little people.

The mushroom dwellers aren’t hobbits. They are a colonized people who are barely understandable to their colonizers. To my mind, they are exemplary of an advanced civilization so advanced that they seem incomprehensible and primitive to species not quite so advanced. As for the appearance of dwarfs, midgets, etc., in my fiction, I don’t know. I like the lack of perfection that is a kind of perfection itself. I like the way in which this affects how people view such individuals.

Infection

Infection is part of our world. There are hundreds and thousands in bacterial and cellular migrations and interactions occurring around and in us all the time, and infection is one of them. Infection is also a physical symptom of the absorption of knowledge in Duncan’s case: the price to be paid for acquiring knowledge is to be literally transformed. And infection is the price to be paid for being human.

Codes and ciphers

We all speak in codes and ciphers and shorthand. Our mannerisms, the things we mean that are at odds with the things we say, the way we say things that sound like they mean one thing but mean another. Codes and ciphers are at the heart of human communication. To explore “formal” codes and ciphers is to explore the history of human communication, too, in a way. And human language. And the way in which we allow language and writing to enslave us or make us free.

Is it difficult to write about the Mushroom Dwellers, to give the sense of something whose motivations and motives are beyond human experience?

I struggled with this throughout writing Shriek. I even toyed with naming and describing a new sense over and beyond the human five senses. I filled a few pages with what this new sense might be like, studied various animals and insects that possess senses we don’t, and in the end, the best I could do is encapsulate in that penultimate section in which Janice puts on the glasses and follows a trail of fungi to Duncan’s hidey-hole. At the same time, I’m not sure Duncan isn’t right about their motivations when he talks, early in the book, about the Silence. The simplest of motivations can seem oblique when masked by actions that cannot be interpreted because of lack of information.

There’s an eschatological bent to much of your work - the post-human world that’s beginning to form in Veniss, the post-human Ambergris of “Corpse Mouth, Spore Nose” and Finch- would you care to speculate where this comes from?

Well, for one thing I think the “end times” of our planet will feature strangeness we can’t even begin to fathom — and that appeals to me. I will never forget in The Time Machine when Our Hero goes forward and forward and forward in time and things get odder and odder, and trying to somehow describe and catalog that oddness is appealing to me, since it seems to promise new ways of looking at the world. I don’t believe in the supremacy of human beings, and anyone who looks at the historical record of the world would be a fool to believe that we’re anything other than a blip on a remote planet. So, in terms of suiting my sense of the long view of history, the recent eschatological bent as you put it is perfectly appropriate. I do think you can examine the alien within a non-SF or non-outer-space context, too. Think of David Bunch’s fiction, which often seems as if it were completely not of this world. Or even some of Cordwainer Smith’s work.

Could you tell me how the limited edition of Shriek came about?

Wyrm Publishing was interested in doing one, as part of a new line of books. I knew the Church had more music for Shriek than just the music used for the Shriek movie, and when they expressed interest in fleshing it out into something more like a soundtrack for the novel, with lyrics taken from the book, I thought it would be a great idea. Then you throw in getting a cover by Ben Templesmith and layout by John Coulthart…it’s the “dream team” edition from my point of view.

How did the Church get involved?

Robert Devereux, a Pittsburgh musician, had contacted me about doing a soundtrack for City Of Saints. When that came out — it was called “Fungicide” — I then thought, while working on Shriek, why not have music for it, too? I contacted The Church because I’d listened to so much of their music while writing the book. At that point, I was set on doing a short movie using still photography, public domain images, and some live action. I thought investing in a strong soundtrack would be a good thing to do, given we had no live-action actors to invest in.

After The Church got involved — in fact, they actually came to one of the Shriek release parties, in San Francisco — then I thought, what if they actually developed the film music into a soundtrack for the novel. Steve Kilbey seemed attracted to the idea, and they went back into the studio, with Tim and the whole gang, and did an actual soundtrack. Since Kilbey’s a bit of a hero of mine, I was thrilled, especially because they extracted such meaningful parts of the book for the lyrics. The actual CD is so much more complex and song-cycle-ish than the original movie music. They did an amazing job.

What can you tell me about Finch?

It very much borrows from two impulses: hardboiled noir, with that kind of stripped down prose, and visionary, mind-blowing dark fantasy. Those two impulses are wedded in Finch. I see this as a progression: the arch metafictional experiments in City Of Saints, somewhat stylized, which give way to the personal unreliable narration of the Shriek siblings in Shriek: An Afterword, and now a gritty, from-ground-level view of Ambergris in Finch. Throughout the experience, you are kind of progressing from the city as idea to the city as real. In Finch, you are more or less looking out from behind the eyes of the title character. Almost as if he were wearing a tiny camera on his left ear. While also getting his thoughts. Even as the events are more conventionally thriller-oriented, the orientation itself is intensely personal. It’s the last novel of the Ambergris Cycle, which is not to say I’ll never write about Ambergris again, but this solves the mysteries set up by the first two books, while opening up others. It’s also set 100 years after Shriek during a time in which the gray caps have risen, flooded the city, and taken control. The human resistance has been broken. Against this backdrop, John Finch has to solve a strange double murder. Solving it might just change the city forever.

How does it feel to be one of the handful of contemporary writers who’ve picked up the gauntlet that Moorcock and Ellison threw down back in the late 60’s/early 70’s?  

That’s kind of you to say, although the tradition I feel part of is that which mixes mainstream and genre influences. As for how I feel about where I am, some days I feel privileged, other days not so much. I am now two years into not having a day job and making my living entirely from my writing and editing. How can you beat that? And I continue to get a lot of critical praise and pick up new readers. Other days, I feel that it is always going to be an uphill fight. When I was younger, I thought I’d get to a point where I wouldn’t have to keep fighting and working so hard (even though I get pleasure from working hard). I now recognize that even contracts from big publishers will not, in my particular case, solidify my position. I have to go out and prove myself all over again every day.

Largely, though, I embrace this situation. I am at peace with it. I am strongest when I feel like an outsider, and the longer I feel that way, the longer I will continue to produce strong work. There is little danger of becoming complacent in my world. That said, I find the strength to keep going forward, to keep storming the keep, trying to take that hill, because of the strength of the response from my readers. From those critics who get what I’m doing. And, most importantly, from my wife Ann, who is the toughest human being I’ve ever met and whose example and guidance keep me sane.

In any event, I will always be an advocate of adult writing, of adult literature. Of trying new and different things. I feel that long-term this is the only strategy worth pursuing for me. I don’t believe in God. I don’t believe in an afterlife. This is our only life, and thus taking chances doesn’t scare me.

Where are the Gray Cap plushies?

They’re coming, I suppose. Along with the Gray Cap Underroos.

About the Author

Neddal Ayad should write more and shoot less. Or perhaps shoot more and write less.

“The Most Important Genre Novel You’ll Never Read”
by Robert N. Lee

Focus on the Family released a science fiction propaganda story the week before the recent elections, the ersatz letter from “A Christian from 2012″ predicting dire consequences from four years of President Barack Obama. The story became one of those pieces of conservative political kitsch progressives like to gab about, so I saw it written up a few times in email and blogs, on boards, in a few articles. I did not see any reflection of my own first response: “Is Focus on the Family aware that this reads an awful lot like The Turner Diaries?” 

“When did this all start? Christians share a lot of the blame. In 2008, many evangelicals thought Senator Obama was an opportunity for a “change,” and they voted for him… the record was all there for anyone to see. The agenda of the ACLU, the agenda of liberal activist judges in their dissenting opinions, the agenda of the homosexual activists, the agenda of the environmental activists, the agenda of the National Education Association, the agenda of the global-warming activists, the agenda of the abortion-rights activists, the agenda of the gun-control activists, the agenda of the euthanasia supporters, the agenda of the one-world government pacifists, the agenda of far-Left groups in Canada and Europe — all of these agendas were there in plain sight, and all of these groups provided huge support for Senator Obama…but too many people just didn’t want to see it.”

— “Letter from 2012 in Obama’s America,” Focus on the Family, 2008

“All in all, it has been depressingly easy for the System to deceive and manipulate the American people-whether the relatively naïve “conservatives” or the spoiled and pseudo-sophisticated “liberals” … we have allowed a diabolically clever, alien minority to put chains on our souls and our minds… why didn’t we rebel 35 years ago, when they took our schools away from us and began converting them into racially mixed jungles? Why didn’t we throw them all out of the country 50 years ago, instead of letting them use us as cannon fodder in their war to subjugate Europe?

“More to the point, why didn’t we rise up three years ago, when they started taking our guns away? Why didn’t we rise up in righteous fury and drag these arrogant aliens into the streets and cut their throats then?”

— The Turner Diaries, William Pierce (as “Andrew Macdonald”), 1978

I didn’t expect to see the comparison; effective juxtaposition wants knowledge of both items, after all. I know geeks who read extreme social material — political or religious — geeks who read idiosyncratic outsider work, lots and lots of geeks who read genre fiction. I know only a small handful aside from myself willing to brave Turner’s nexus of all three. Most people do not respond to the notoriously racist novel that inspired the Oklahoma City bombing with “I have to read that.”

The novel has a certain late utility as cultural shorthand, but reading the thing is apparently regarded as a path best left unexplored for those of sound mind and moral compass. For those leftward, especially, the map will suffice. This is a shame, as a depressingly high number of racists around the world do buy and read the book regularly. The late author, William Pierce, moved two hundred thousand copies of his self-published book through gun show hand sales and mail order before mass murder finally landed him a publisher, and sales have more than doubled in the decade or so since. The book is banned by nearly every nation on the planet that bans books, but still read by all the wrong people.

A confession: I am a flaming left-leaning liberal, myself, but I will read or see anything apocalyptic with a conservative social bent, the crazier the better. I have read every single American Christian novel ever published following the apocalyptic script lately given popular expression in the Left Behind series. I had to read The Turner Diaries.

Some might take offense at my categorizing Christian apocalyptic fiction and Turner together. The comparison is not made lightly, is all I can say, and there are obvious connections between the base narratives that only emerge in reading both. There is one key distinction: William Pierce was not a Christian. Whether he consciously patterned the novel after the late Christian apocalyptic script is debatable, but he spent much of his time and energy arguing with other prominent white racists about Christian identity issues. He certainly had access to that storyline, which had its greatest success prior to the nineties Left Behind boom in Christian fiction and pulpits during the seventies, when he wrote and first published Turner.

Intentional or not, parallels between Pierce’s novel and modern Christian apocalyptic fiction are striking. Turner, like all “rapture” fiction, begins with the recasting of a real-world privileged majority (white people in Turner Diaries, Christians in rapture fiction) as an oppressed minority persecuted under a progressive-left dictatorship, and the similarities just pile on up from there. The liberal regime in both wears an egalitarian face to disguise its only real purpose: destroying the fictional minority. To this end, the regime institutes a mandatory identification scheme that excludes the minority. Society worldwide collapses into cannibalism, Satanism and variety of alarming sexual practices. (Yes, “Satanism.” Pierce wasn’t a Christian, but he was religious. Try and guess his favorite neo-pagan pantheon.) A long period of underground action follows a series of opening tragedies, ending implausibly with a victory for the minority — the greatest military victory in history, as a matter of fact. The planet is purged in blood and fire of anybody standing in the way of paradise and the persecuted minority inherits the Earth.

The Christian version leaves the means of its final solution to supernatural agency, leaving its post-rapture believer characters with little to do but hide and avoid martyrdom. Christ will be along presently to wipe every tear and scour the planet of anybody who isn’t the right sort of religious with a series of natural disasters capped by a final global bloodbath. Pierce’s persecuted white racists spend their time under the liberal lash making ready to unleash Armageddon themselves. Lacking power to wield plagues and storms, they must be content in the end with “sterilizing” all of Asia and Africa using too-real nightmare weaponry.

The Turner Diaries is the only book of this sort I encourage others to read, a recommendation nearly as regularly declined, which is frustrating. I revel in the obscurity of my fascinations like any other nerd, and don’t mind being the guy who knows more than anybody else in the room about Jack Chick or Salem Kirban. Really, nobody needs to read all the Left Behind novels. They’re the Christian equivalent of something like Goosebumps, at best.

This is something else, though, a book whose dark pleasures you can’t experience vicariously. Second and third hand accounts and abstracts are not enough. It’s even essential reading in the sense of that word genre fans use to describe more obvious works of significance. It’s essential, too, in a manner none of those books can match: Turner is literally capable of ending worlds.

And yes, I said “pleasures.” I don’t spend time reading and energy on books like this because I take no joy from the experience. Horror being my lifelong favorite genre poison of choice, I am well acquainted with chasing terror as leisure activity. As in any other enthusiasm, the longtime horror fan tends to build up a tolerance. The more familiar genre conventions become, the more demanding you become. In the long gaps between the odd story or novel or film these days with any haunting effect on me, I take in a ton of right wing apocalyptic fiction. I do so for one reason: it scares me the way nothing has since I was seven and first discovered the ghost story books in the school library.

“Transgression” has been a buzzword in horror for a while, now, with the predictable result that the buzzword has become a subgenre with its own tiresome conventions. As a result, circa 2009, the average “transgressive” horror fiction presents roughly the same threat level as a random hour of any American teen’s unmonitored web surfing. When it’s nigh-universally-offensive horror I want, I prefer fiction expressing the fervent and real desire that the world die screaming, written by and for the people who plan to take over after all our bloody murders.

I recommend Turner because it’s poisonous. I don’t envy anyone who reads it without building up tolerance to the darker ends of genre fiction and to work written by people who hate you personally and want you dead. This book should hurt going down — if it doesn’t, you shouldn’t read it. It’s worth the pain, though, and more to the point, provides an opportunity that should hit us all hard in the center of our eternal eleven-year-olds: saving the world from evil, no shit.

This book is the Necronomicon. The Turner Diaries is bound in human skin, written in blood and contains demons — real ones, not Biblical bogeys. We’ve all witnessed the power of these monsters. This is the real deal from all those horror stories: the book of secret dark knowledge, access restricted to its devoted worshippers yet hidden in plain sight, awaiting the one who can best harness or defeat its pure evil.

SPOILERS: This real life hero’s trial ends with another genre cliché. The emperor has no clothes, the curtain drops and a desperate carnie is working the wizard with levers. You finally open The King in Yellow and discover it’s a high school freshman Satanist’s journal, complete with spelling errors and ballpoint scribbling of Slipknot’s logo. If you’ve read enough fan or vanity fiction, or a pile of fiction submissions, you’ve read Turner before. No consistency of tone, description flops back and forth between lifeless infodumps and breathless fountains of banalities, punctuated by moments of grotesque action, dialogue misses chances to reflect reality and create poetry, both, and tends toward the preachy. Etc.

And yet Turner still has a compelling dramatic power difficult to communicate to the uninitiated. We are talking, after all, about a science fiction novel full of notes to future readers like this one:

“Note to the reader: Uganda was a political subdivision of the continent of Africa during the Old Era, when that continent was inhabited by the Negro race. Puerto Rico was the Old Era name of the island of New Carolina. It is occupied now by the descendants of White refugees from radioactive areas of the southeastern United States, but before the race purges in the final days of the Great Revolution it was inhabited by a mongrel race of especially unsavory character.”

An entire awful world is drawn in that one footnote, and if the details of Turner’s worldbuilding are inept in execution, this is more than made up for by sheer passion. This is a novel whose narrator constantly soul-searches on the question “When is it right to brutalize or murder a white girl?” It revels in loving passages given to a mortar attack on the US Capitol and the intentional destruction of a nuclear plant to burn Chicago off the map. It finally finds its truest voice in a long midsection concerning the ethnic cleansing of southern California. Turner, in other words, is a direct window into madness. I don’t know about you, but that’s why I read and watch horror.

Here is the pleasure I take from this kind of reading: it’s profoundly disturbing in consumption, easily shaken off after and yet builds mental and emotional muscles in the long run. These are books decrying the death of civilization and culture, written by people who don’t know how to write for audiences that can barely read. You can laugh at Turner once you’ve read it, and hard, and this part of fantasy stories is also true: demons are prideful, and shrivel up and die in the face of laughter. Reading renders the mystery pathetic and silly, and the more good people read, understand and mock, the harder the legend gets owned.

You are far too good for the likes of The Turner Diaries, but you can’t know that for sure until you know it for sure. Don’t take my word for it, please. I’m tired of being the only geek I know who makes good Turner Diaries jokes.

NOTE: Buying a copy of The Turner Diaries may raise practical concerns: curiosity about the book is one thing, giving funds to a racist publisher and the estate of a racist author is another. Further, many readers likely live in countries banning the novel. Luckily, the devoted proselytizing efforts of racists provide a solution: the full text of the novel is available online in multiple languages.

About the Author

Robert N. Lee spent the beginning of his life in Vietnam, grew up all over the US, and now lives in Florida with the love of his life in a house full of pets named after Beverly Cleary characters. He works in technology design and marketing as well as publishing occasional fiction and non-fiction, and can be found online at his blog.

“Change the Hugos? Yes You Can!”
by Cheryl Morgan

The Hugo Award nominating season is upon us again. In the not-too-distant future the 2009 nominees will be announced, and the blogosphere will resound to cries of how “they” got it wrong again, and how the Hugos desperately need to be changed, but they can’t be because “they” would never allow it. This always confuses me, because the Hugos are the most democratic set of awards I know about. There is no “they,” there is only “us,” and consequently the Hugos can be changed, if only people want to do it.

OK, OK, I can hear you all shouting “but you have to pay to vote, it’s not fair!” Well, that’s true, you have to be a member of WSFS in order to vote. This year that would cost you $50. But compare that to other awards. To join SFWA as a lowly Affiliate member costs $55, you have to pass their requirements test, and you don’t get to vote in the Nebulas. Other forms of membership are more expensive and harder to qualify for. Or you could vote in the Locus Awards, which are free, but where your vote counts for a lot more if you are a Locus subscriber. So actually the Hugos are not that bad in terms of value.

However, even if you do decide to pay up, it is too late for this year’s nominations. You had to have been a member of Denvention 3 or Anticipation by January 31st. There are probably around 5000 people who qualify to nominate. But if this year is at all typical then less than 20% of them will bother to do so. It is the apathy of the other 4000+ that is the real problem. You might be one of those apathetic voters, or you might know someone who is.

The sad thing is that many of those people who do not use their right to nominate are convinced that they are not allowed to. Every year I come across loads of people who have very strange ideas about the Hugos. I’m going to share a few of their excuses with you, and explain why they are wrong.

I’m not qualified to vote

Oh yes, you are. If you were a member of Denvention 3, or are a member of Anticipation, then you are qualified to vote. No further qualification is required. You don’t need a PhD in science fiction criticism, or five best-selling novels in print. The Hugos are a popular vote award. That means voting by ordinary people just like you.

I haven’t read enough

You don’t have to. And more to the point, no one can. There are simply too many books and stories published. The nomination stage is not about picking the “best” works of the year. It is about hundreds, hopefully thousands, of people saying “I read this and it was really good”. One of the objectives of a popular vote award is to get lots of people to say what they liked. Only when those nominations have been counted, and the top five in each category reported, do we go on to actually comparing them and picking the “best.”

I haven’t read any short fiction / related books / fanzines

There is no requirement that you nominate in every category. Indeed, hardly anyone does. Nor do you have to fill in five nominees in each category. All that you have to do is nominate a few things that you thought were good. Remember, it is a popular vote award, so the more the merrier. Every little helps.

I haven’t read/seen anything good enough

Really? Nothing at all? Has it occurred to you that you have very high standards, and other people might not be so picky?

I don’t know what’s eligible

That’s a fair point, though it is pretty easy to check a book for a publication date, or a magazine for a cover date. If in doubt, nominate it anyway. The worst that can happen is that you’ll waste a nomination slot. The rest of your nominations won’t be invalidated because you made one mistake.

There’s no point, “they” always fix the results

Only because you, and people like you, don’t participate. All that you achieve by not using your vote is to cede control of the process to people who do use their votes.

So, deadline for nominations is the end of February. The ballot is online, so actually casting your votes is easy. If you are eligible to nominate, please do so.

By the way, Clarkesworld is eligible in the Semiprozine category, and the fiction we publish is all in the Short Story category. Sean and former editor, Nick Mamatas, are both eligible in Editor (Short Form), and Sean is also eligible in Editor (Long Form). Ekaterina Sedia, who edited the non-fiction here before me, and has produced a fine anthology this year (Paper Cities), is also eligible for Editor (Short Form), but don’t forget that she has a fabulous novel (The Alchemy of Stone) out, too. This year I’m only eligible for Fan Writer. (One of these days I will beat Langford.)

About the Author

Cheryl Morgan is the non-fiction editor of Clarkesworld magazine and co-editor (with Kevin Standlee) of Science Fiction Awards Watch. Previously she edited the Hugo Award-winning online book review magazine, Emerald City. Cheryl has also written for a number of other SF&F magazines, including Locus, Interzone, Foundation, Strange Horizons and the Internet Review of Science Fiction.