“Celadon”
by Desirina Boskovich

I was six years old when I shifted between worlds for the first time.

My mother and I were in our little apartment in the center of the world, the part that got built first. The world was new then and the nanites still busy about their work. The world has stretched much further now.

Our apartment was small but cozy, bathed in a vague light that spilled everywhere yet came from no particular source. Someone who had seen the first earth might have called it moonlight, or so we believed. None of us had seen earth for ourselves… certainly not me. Our artificial moonlight enshrined the city, slanting from every angle, drifting in a manufactured sky.

I sat at the table alone, drinking weak green tea from a chipped white teacup. Long wet hair fell around my shoulders, fresh from the bath, dampening my fuzzy robe.

I took a sip, set the teacup down, and looked at the table. A soft layer of green moss crept across it. As I watched, moss tendrils advanced toward me, trembling like slick fingers. The moss rustled as it grew, swallowing the legs of chairs.

The window had become a stained mosaic of asparagus and emerald. A small white butterfly frolicked around me, then landed on the rim of my cup.

I felt a glow of amber warmth, like the safety of cuddling into my mother’s fragrant sheets, listening to her lullabies as I fell asleep.

But then I looked down. The ghostworms were poking their heads up, emerging implausibly through the concrete floor. Their slimy heads waved blindly as they wriggled and squirmed beneath the furniture.

I jumped up and knocked over my teacup, which bounced and clattered to the floor. A wash of pale green tea dribbled across my white robe. My mother rushed in.

Then the light changed, and everything resolved to normal. The table was spotless white. Suddenly, I became aware of how clean everything was: synthetic and flawless, wrapped in an artificial sheen.

“What happened, sweetheart?” my mother asked, picking up my teacup. The spill seeped into the floor and disappeared, swallowed by thirsty nanites.

“Nothing,” I said, remembering the way the butterfly had landed curiously on my cup. “Can I sleep in your bed tonight?”

“Hmm,” she said, which meant yes.

In my mother’s bedroom, lace curtains covered the small window, shuttered to keep out the light. A flame flickered in the lamp on the desk. Her sheets were soft and smelled like lavender.

Usually she sang to me, but that night, I made her tell me the story. I knew it already, but I loved hearing it again and again. “Tell me about how it was, when you found Celadon, before I was born.”

My mother loved to tell this story almost as much as I loved to hear it. Even if there were parts she skipped over. “Well,” she said. She tucked a long strand of white hair behind her ears, her green eyes glistening with memories of far away days. “I was exploring with my crew on our ship, a beautiful ship. Her name was Alanis. She’s retired now, but you should have seen her. Maybe someday we can go down to the docks and visit. She was so slick, so smart, so… gentle. You know about our home-world: it was a lovely place to live, but it was too full. It was called Tenne. So, even though we loved Tenne, we knew we’d need another world soon where we could have our children — ” at this point in the story she always touched my nose — ”and they could have their children. We spent years with our ship, exploring the darkness, looking for a good spot to grow another world. A planet we could make our own.”

I could hardly imagine the years-long journey in that smart, gentle ship. I was only six years old, after all. Back then, I didn’t understand how old my mother really was. I’m not sure if I even understand it now. “And finally you found the planet,” I said.

“Yeah,” she said. She looked over my head, as if she was looking out the window, though it was closed. “We descended closer and closer, and the surface of the planet was this beautiful green. So we called it Celadon. We sent the bots down to do readings, investigate the surface, see if it was safe. We had to wait for a while, but I already knew. I felt it, somehow, you know? We were home. By that time, I was already expecting you.”

“And I was the very first baby born on Celadon,” I interjected self-importantly.

“Yes,” she said. “Yes, you were. But before that, we sent the nanites down to the surface of the planet, and they began building a new world for us, just like the cities we’d left behind on Tenne.”

It was a lovely story, the beginning of a myth. And my mother was the heroine.

It was a lovely story, but it wasn’t entirely true.

But no one knew that at first, except the original crew of the spaceship from Tenne. And they didn’t have anything to say about it. Waves of new settlers came in every year or so, and they all viewed my mother as a heroine, too. I remember the ceremony they staged, honoring her with a medal on the steps of the newly constructed city hall. Her white hair was just as luminescent as the marble steps. They hung a glistening silver medal around her neck. She was brave and beautiful, a conqueror and a pioneer.

But when I was twelve, the anthropologists finally arrived. They were angry.

Not all of them were human. They were a motley group, a strange menagerie of feathers and wings and awkward tusks and shining cyborg limbs. This was not good. Celadon was a human planet, discovered and populated by ancient earth-stock. The others tended to be a bit resentful. They thought the humans had too many planets already.

They met in the city hall, the same one where my mother had been honored years ago. I sat in the last row of chairs, my pale hair falling in my eyes. I listened as my mother explained her case to the strange and unsympathetic panel of judges. And for the first time, I heard the whole story.

There had been life on this planet: a natural ecosystem. An endless network of worms crawled just beneath the surface. Enormous flocks of butterflies lived in the trees, roaming the oceans of moss. When they landed en masse, they could shroud a tree in shimmering snow.

The scouting bots’ findings corroborated those of the few anthropologists who’d landed on this planet some years earlier. Without further intensive study- — by the anthropologists, of course — it was impossible to rule out the potential that the worms and butterflies had been sentient life forms.

They no longer existed on Celadon. They had been destroyed. My mother had given the order.

Two years before the ship had arrived at the planet that would become Celadon, the travelers received the news from Tenne. Among the news, there was the gruesome story of a ship that left just before Alanis. This ship had discovered a new planet, odd but livable. There was only one possibly-sentient life form: a species of small reptiles, lizard-like creatures that traveled in swarms and packs. The settlers had already been on the ship for years, and they were determined to co-exist peacefully, while the anthropologists studied the reptiles. Somehow, the reptiles infiltrated the colony. They massacred the settlers, leaving nothing but regurgitated bones and walls smeared with blood. The nanites were already tidying the remains when the next wave of settlers arrived.

“So I did what I thought was right,” my mother said, facing the panel without flinching. “I wanted this planet to be safe.”

At her order, nanites swarmed the planet, pulsing the surface with brutal light. The worms and butterflies and moss that coated the surface were destroyed. The planet was scrubbed clean.

The hearings were long, the panelists long-winded. They called expert witnesses, and the settlers on the first ship called their own.

Sometime during this long proceeding, the shift happened again. I watched with interest as the windows darkened with moss and the floor disintegrated into a mass of ghostworms. I was still surrounded by people, but no panelists. Things were strangely silent in this world. No one felt the need to speak.

A man sat just ahead of me, listening intently to nothing in particular. As I watched, a ghostworm wriggled out of his left ear, explored the back of his neck with a probing tip, then slid into the right ear.

I felt the amber glow again, the numbing warmth.  The bench I sat on disintegrated, then the wall beside me — whole patches consumed by a black rot, eaten wafer-thin. The moss consumed windows, and white butterflies wandered in through broken panes.

The man with worms in his ears turned around, glanced at me, and nodded kindly.

Meanwhile, in the real world, the panel was sentencing my mother for the crime of xenocide. Her sentence: life imprisonment, in a penal colony on a rock far from this world.

In a different time, there would have been riots. Blood would have run in the streets. But these people had waited too long to make this planet their home. They’d lived too long, strayed too far, sacrificed too much. They accepted her fate with penitent guilt, willing to sacrifice my mother to clear their collective conscience.

I was the only one who screamed and protested. They took her away, still calm and resolute, her hair brilliantly white around her shoulders, her eyes enigmatic emerald.

They sent me to live with a man I called “uncle” — one of the original settlers, my mother’s shipmate.

The years after that were dark and ill-defined. My city that had once seemed so clean and bright felt sterile and empty. The people who I’d imagined family were strangers and betrayers.

This was when the two worlds began to diverge, no longer twinned as they once had been.

In the second world, we still lived in the old apartment. My mother was there, and we were together. Moss coated the chairs and crept across the table, blossoming thick in unexpected places like cups and plates. There were ghostworms underfoot, but they anticipated our footsteps, trailing our ankles like devoted pets. The butterflies flocked around our heads. In the second world, we rarely spoke; it no longer seemed necessary.

We followed our normal routines, setting out small meals, singing in the evenings, reading old books from my mother’s library. We toured the city and the light was golden. Beneath everything shuddered a tremendous thrill: warmly it beckoned, to come ever closer, to come further in.

A snow-white butterfly landed on my fingertip, and revulsion stung through me. I pulled away, feeling sick. My mother smiled, but there was a gulf between us; she didn’t understand. Butterflies wreathed her hair like garlands and the moss shifted beneath her feet, cushioning her steps. Whole sections of the city were green with its weight. Passersby wore green fingernails and heads full of worms. My mother inhabited this world, and she was content.

In this world, it was difficult for me to remember any other — my own world felt like a pallid dream. I tried to tell her, but when I opened my mouth, her world faded away.

Two decades passed. I got my own apartment. I wrote my mother letters, though they took years to reach her.

When I wrote, I felt like I was dropping my letters into an endless chasm where they would never be found.

I wrote:

Sometimes I’m in a different world. The world that would have been if we hadn’t killed the butterflies. It’s a green world, full of moss… earthworms that eat through the floors… butterflies that gather around heads. Walls disintegrating with black rot. It wants something. The life that was here isn’t content to live and let live. It wants us, too. In that world, everything is connected. Everyone is part of it, and it wants to swallow us.

She wrote back, finally, eventually.

Love, don’t think about what could have been, don’t think about the past. I’m fine here. I’ve lived a long time, much longer than you, you know. You should find a ship, explore, see the galaxy. You’ll make different choices, better ones.

She thought it was an allegory. I wrote back.

It’s not a metaphor, mother. I have seen that world. Literally. I see it all the time. And I have been seeing it more and more.

Years passed, again. Finally, another letter.

Stranger things have happened. Go see Ravin. He can explain it better than I can.

Ravin had been my mother’s closest friend aboard the ship. Maybe her lover, maybe even my father. I didn’t know if I had one.

One image of Ravin burned white-hot for me: the way he sat silently in the back of the room as my mother was sentenced. His eyes were downcast, his cheeks pale, his lips pressed together. He’d done nothing, and I was still angry. If he was my father, I didn’t want him.

But I did want answers to my questions, and it would be years before I could get another letter from my mother. So I went to find him.

His room on the other side of the city was small but comfortable. Light sparkled in the windows, glinting off the shells of blue glass bottles. Art from Tenne graced the walls. His furniture was handmade, not built by nanites.

“Sit,” he said, gesturing to a small sofa. I did. I was surprised by how thin and small he seemed, even standing above me.

He’d been playing an old game from Tenne. The board was chaotic with black and white pebbles. Each pebble was black on one side, white on the other. Flipping only one could transform the board. It was a complicated game, and I didn’t know how to play.

We cut through the pleasantries quickly. “My mother told me to come. She said you could explain.”

“Go on,” he said, his eyes penetrating blue.

“I’m in the middle of two worlds,” I said. “This world that we’re in right now, and another one. I don’t know where it is, exactly. I tend to think it’s the world that would have been if — You know. If they hadn’t killed the natural life here.” I said “they,” though I could have said “you.”

“What do you mean, you’re in the middle?”

“I see both. I see this one more. But the other one, I see it too.”

“What does it look like?” His interest felt cool and scientific.

I described my second world.

He thought for a while, then told me the story I already knew so well. “You know, your mother was pregnant with you when we discovered Celadon. Everyone told her she was being silly, that she had enough to worry about as captain of a pioneering ship. No one could make her change her mind. She wanted to have you, the natural way.”

He gazed at me and paused, as if expecting me to say something. Silence thickened between us, and he continued.

“I still remember the way she looked, standing there on the deck. The trees crowding the edges of the window. The leaves rustling from the air in the vents. There was a red bird perched above her, and its color matched her dress. She stared out the window and all of a sudden, there was Celadon. The closer we got, the greener it became. We stayed like that until it was safe to land.”

“So what are you saying?”

“I don’t know, exactly. You were there from the beginning, your fate intertwined with Celadon’s. You’re part of this world in a way that no one else is.” He was quiet for a moment. “In the second world, would you say that time works differently?”

“Yes,” I said. “I didn’t notice it for a while, because everything feels so brief and fragmented already. But it does. Causality seems to be missing, somehow. Things happen for no reason.”

He began pacing the room. He flipped a black pebble over to reveal its white underbelly, then contemplated the ripple of results that followed. “We thought we were doing the right thing. Now I’m not so sure. There was something special here, something we should have investigated.”

“You did the right thing,” I said resolutely. “That world… well, there’s just something wrong about it.” “Different, maybe,” he suggested. “Special.”

“Does it matter?”

“No, not really,” he said. “It’s gone, we’ll live with the consequences.”

“Some of us more than others,” I said pointedly.

He looked away and cleared his throat. “It’s gone, except it’s not gone for you. I can’t really explain what happened, or why. We made a decision, with results that changed history. And there you are, at the cusp. Caught in the middle between both paths.”

There was one more thing I wanted to get clear. “So, you all decided together. You all decided to give the order to scrub the ecosystem.”

“We all voted, yes. Only one person voted against.”

“And who was that?” I demanded.

“Me.”

For a moment, I had no words. “Why did you vote against?”

He spent a minute searching for words. “I was responsible for monitoring the bots’ info-loads as they explored the planet. And I had read some of the anthropologists’ texts on the surface life. I had a sense- — and I wasn’t the only one — that there was something at work here, something truly alive.”

“But no one else on the ship felt that way,” I said.

“No,” he said. “Everyone else wanted to break land and start construction. They told me I had always been too mystical for my own good. Maybe it’s true. Your mother was very angry at me. It was part of why we parted ways once we landed here.” He fixed me with his steely blue eyes, and for a moment I knew, but I pushed the knowledge away.

I felt exhausted. “I have to go now,” I said.

“Come again,” he invited me, showing me to the door. “

“I will,” I said. I knew I would not.

Instead, I visited the ship, Alanis.

She was retired, and lived in a special place, down at the docks. She was the most important ship on Celadon, after all. Every week, technicians came in and lovingly checked her ports, inspected her chips. The dock-boys polished her hull and shined her floors. Children left flowers beneath her. Sometimes, her keepers gave tours, which she didn’t enjoy very much. She did enjoy my visits, though. But they’ve been rare, mostly alongside my mother.

This time, I went alone, and with a mission.

“Alanis,” I said, standing on her main deck, watching the dark lights that I liked to think of as her eyes.

“Yes,” she answered.

“I need help. For my mother. I need logs, recordings. I need to know all the details about the weeks before they landed on Celadon. I want to know how the decisions were made. Do you have that? Do you still have the logs?”

“Of course,” she said, sounding amused. “I haven’t forgotten.” I couldn’t tell if she was teasing me or not.

“Can I have them?”

“Of course.”

She painted a disk for me and gave it to me with a cup of hot chocolate. “Thank you,” I said.

She couldn’t make real hot chocolate anymore; her domestics were corrupted and her keepers had stopped replenishing the stores a long time ago. I didn’t tell her that, just took the disk and the cup with me as I left. Why did everyone but me seem so old?

I walked through the city, clutching my disk and looking for somewhere to discard the mug of chocolate sludge.

The city alone was young, the same age as me.

You could tell. Maybe it was the effect of construction by nanites, but everything seemed youthful and energetic. The streets glowed. The stoplights inspected the traffic beneath. Houses vibrated, ever so slightly, like a picture with weak transmission.

I’d noticed that Ravin’s furniture seemed solid and inert. Because it was old, or because it was built by hand?

The more I thought about it, the more his home seemed like its own kind of prison.

After visiting Alanis, I was ready. This was what I’d been waiting to do for years, and I was finally old enough. By the time the journey ended, I was even older.

I traveled to Tenne, to go before the panel. It wasn’t the same panel of anthropologists who’d sentenced my mother, although I recognized a few familiar faces—if they could be called faces. I doubt they recognized me. It had been thirty-some years, and I was no longer the same pale and awkward girl. Slowly, falteringly, I grew into my mother’s strength.

The anthropologists were clipped and impatient, glaring at me over snouts and beaks and masks. I’d traveled light-years to get here — they would have to be patient.

“I am here to speak on behalf of my mother,” I said.

“State her name for the record, please.”

It was a long name: new syllables garnered for every century, every experience that had marked her.

“Go on,” the moderator intoned. She was a cyborg, with long synthetic limbs, metallic purple hair, and a sleek silicone shine to her skin. I couldn’t interpret her inflection, nor her expression. It was a specific kind of loneliness that I’d learned to live with.

“My mother was unfairly sentenced for the crime of many. She gave the order, yes. But the whole group voted.” I produced my logs from the ship. They showed my mother giving the final order; they also showed unanimous agreement.

I presented the panel with everything I had. “She should not bear the weight of this decision alone. It was a group decision. Everyone who lives on Celadon should share the responsibility, together.”

The panel was brisk and disinterested. “I’m sorry,” the cyborg said, “but we rarely reverse the decision of a previous court, except in notable extenuating circumstances. All this information was available at the time of the previous hearing.”

“Yes. But my mother didn’t bring it up. Because she wasn’t like that. She was the only one who was willing to take responsibility for the actions.”

“Then the responsibility clearly rests with her,” the cyborg said, and I couldn’t tell if she was being unkind or not. “If you’d like to appeal this to a higher court, you are within your rights as a galactic citizen to go before the High Court of Cultural Differences.”

“But that’s on the other side of the galaxy.” It would take me longer to reach the High Court than all the years I’d been alive so far.

“Precisely,” she said crisply. “Your mother has already lived for centuries. If you want to give your first years for her last, then go ahead. The next ship leaves for the High Court in a few months.”

I pleaded as long as they’d allow, but their decision was final. At some level, I’d expected it all along. Only longing had made me hope for the unforeseen. After all, communication from world to world had always been hazy, and rules changed faster than space travel. I’d hoped there was a chance.

I declined their offer of transportation to the High Court. “I’ll find my own ship.”

I’d already decided: if I was going to the High Court, then Ravin was going with me. He would not have been my first choice of companions, but I felt he had a responsibility. I wasn’t ready to make my way into the galaxy alone. And my mother had chosen him first.

Besides, what was a couple years of preparation for a fifty-year journey?

I found passage to Celadon.

Now, in transit between Tenne and Celadon, I’ve spent my spare hours writing this account. I’ve reviewed what has passed. I’m prepared for what is to come.

When I arrive on Celadon, there is a letter.

My mother has died. Peacefully, in her sleep. Perhaps she was already gone, even as I pled her case before the panel. It’s so hard to calculate time.

She’s been absent from my world for so long, yet death makes me feel her absence more sharply. Even worlds away, she was the force that kept my world revolving.

Heartbroken, I wander aimlessly through the city. I wish I could go to Ravin, but I can’t. Too much has come between us. He will never be family.

The city feels changed, too. The change is indefinable. But the lights glare brighter; the noises are louder, more unnatural.

I sit in my apartment. I drink fragrant green tea and wait, letting my eyes drift half-closed as I watch the silver play of light in lace curtains.

Until the curtains crumble black and turn to dust, the walls are streaked with moist darkness, and the moss squelches beneath my bare feet.

I want to find my mother, but time works differently here; seeking does not always lead to finding. Instead, I wander, patient as a dream. Whole sections of the city have been reclaimed by the moss. There are few people. I glimpse them in dark corners, pale like worms, locked in tangles of arms and legs. I long to join them, but I keep walking.

Butterflies land in droves on my shoulders, sprinkling me with the sugar that dulls the sting.

In this world, all life is the same. At first, I believed there were only three life-forms here. Now I understand there is only one. The worms, the moss, the butterflies… all are merely manifestations of its being: spanning this world from the ground to the sky, seeing all, knowing all, devouring all.

I find my mother at the edge of a dripping forest. She sits with her back against a sturdy tree, her white hair intertwined with its roots. Her emerald-green eyes consider me, comfortably. She smiles in welcome. She opens her mouth to speak, but all that emerges is a small white butterfly, which alights gracefully on my shoulder.

I fight the urge to sleep, and struggle to speak.

“Mother,” I stammer, my tongue sticky-dry. “Mother. Are you happy here?”

Her lips don’t move, but I feel her voice, echoing through me. “Of course. Always.”

I lie beside her, and the tree’s roots shift to accommodate me. The moss drifts over my face and blinds my eyes. The butterflies weave patterns in my hair. The ghostworms caress my fingers. Finally, I understand.

This is life, eternal, everlasting. It is not good, it is not evil. It simply is. It desires to be always more. And I too desire, to be part of everything, to feel it all.

“You’re here,” the moss whispers into my ears as it penetrates, and it greets me with a vision: the moment on which all else depends. A moment which changes history; yet there are many histories on Celadon, and enough consciousness to hold them all.

I am a woman, strong and eager, standing on the foremost deck of a smart and gentle ship. The fans blow breezes through my hair. The leaves of trees rustle above me. Inside me, a heart beats, beautiful and unfaltering. I stroke my stomach, the swelling expanse that waits beneath my crimson dress. I stand before a window; below stretches a green and glowing planet. I’ve already named it, but nobody knows yet. Celadon. This pulsating green world and the heartbeat inside me have become the two lovers I live for.

Resolute, I turn from the window, summing up the energy to create and destroy worlds. I speak, one word:

“Now.”

About the Author

Desirina Boskovich graduated from Emory University in 2005, with a degree in creative writing. In 2007, she attended the Clarion Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers’ Workshop. Her work is forthcoming in Realms of Fantasy, as well as Last Drink Bird Head and The Leonardo Variations, edited by Jeff and Ann VanderMeer. Currently, she lives in Atlanta, in the light-filled attic of an old brick building. She works as a freelance copywriter and drinks too much tea.

“Teaching Bigfoot to Read”
by Geoffrey W. Cole

To: Bigfoot@cascades.us.terra
From: acejones32@avalonlink.nl.luna
Subject: hi big guy
Sent: Saturday, October 10, 2122 11:09 AM LST

Dear Bigfoot,

Life on the moon sucks. Dad got home early from the air factory today and I wasn’t done cleaning the dishes from breakfast so he broke my breakfast bowl over my head. Guess I’ll have to eat out of his bowl tomorrow.

Dad says he’s gonna have to get a new job. Not that he told me. He told Melinda, the girl he’s been bringing home lately. They drank the last of his screech — that’s this nasty rum like they used to make back on Earth — then started poking each other on the bottom bunk while I sat on the top. Dad caught me peaking and near took my eye out when he threw his boot. Melinda calmed him down at least, and they got back to poking at each other.

Dad saw me writing to you when Melinda left. He said What the f–k was I doing writing to a bigfoot. See one day I asked him why he didn’t pray to Jesus like Mario’s mother, and he said he may as well pray to Santa Claus or bigfoot for all the good it would do. Well I got to thinking praying might not do any good, but an email should get to you.

Not sure what good you can do anyway, seeing as you’re down there on Earth, but writing to you is better than nothing. I should probably get to bed. Dad’s snoring and that makes me tired. I’ll finish this in the morning.

Morning. Dad got up late and complained when his breakfast was cold but he ate it all anyway and I had to wait forever until I could use his bowl and to tell you the truth I don’t care for cold powdered eggs. Dad kept saying we wouldn’t be able to afford things like powdered eggs, and said there was other things we wouldn’t be able to afford too, like air and water, but they never shut off the air, just the water, and I can always get some from the neighbours anyway.

What’s it like to have water fall for free from the sky, and air you never have to worry about going sour? And trees. I’d sure like to see one. Mario’s shown me some with his VR deck, but you know they’re not real, just like the ladies he shows me aren’t real, but boy are they pretty. Prettier than Melinda, anyhow.

Don’t know when Dad will be back today. He said he’s going to go to the pharma factory to see if he can get work there, but Mario’s dad works there, and his dad’s got his highschool, so I’m not so sure about my Dad’s chances. The breakfast bowl is still in the sink; I should clean it while I still got water running.

     Ace

To: Bigfoot@cascades.us.terra
From: acejones32@avalonlink.nl.luna
Subject: stupid prairie dogs
Sent: Thursday, October 22, 2122 10:46 PM LST

Dear Bigfoot,

At school they asked us to do presentations, and I did mine on you. I didn’t tell them I emailed you, but I told them everything else. Mrs. Drissold said that I was supposed to do a presentation on a real wild creature, and I told her you were real enough. The other kids did gazelles and lions and stupid prairie dogs, and she said I should of done something like that. Well I told her, none of them kids has ever seen a gazelle or a lion or a stupid prairie dog, and I ain’t seen a bigfoot, so what’s the difference. I guess I got too excited, cause I ripped up the poster with the stupid prairie dog on it, but you know what’s it like sometimes when you get too excited, don’t you?

Dad was home when I got back from school, and he was none too pleased that I ripped up the other kid’s stupid prairie dog poster. Mrs. Drissold must of called Dad and tattled on me, which don’t seem right. I don’t tattle on her when she forgets my name. Dad warned me against messing with other people’s stuff, but when I told him about the kid who’d talked on and on about the stupid prairie dogs, he laughed and said yeah, they are f–king stupid.

The pharma factory didn’t take him, and neither did the shit factory. Sorry, shouldn’t have cussed, but Dad always says it, and heck, you’re bigfoot. You must shit all over the place. He’s gonna try the port tomorrow. I told him not to, Graham’s dad got killed at the port, and so did the dad of that kid who always stinks like piss, but he said there was shit else to do, with the mines all closed and everyone shipping out of Avalon to other parts of the moon.

Do bigfoots write? I don’t even know, but if you can read this, you can probably write. Don’t know why you’d have an email address if you can’t write, so you must be able to.

     Ace

To: Bigfoot@cascades.us.terra
From: acejones32@avalonlink.nl.luna
Subject: chicken heads
Sent: Monday, November 9, 2122 11:58 PM LST

Dear Bigfoot,

They shut off the water. Jerks. Dad’s only missed three payments. I’ve been round asking for whatever the neighbours can spare, but they don’t have much, and a few of them have been cut off too.

I got a boot in the arm for breakfast. I told Dad we didn’t have anything but yeast-meal, but he hollered that he hated the stuff. He apologized after he dumped it on the floor, and told me he’d buy me real eggs one day. He always goes on about em, real eggs. He says I even tried eggs once when I was a baby before Mom died, but I don’t remember. They seem gross anyhow. Something like chicken in a blender? Nasty. Not that I know what chicken tastes like either, just the fake stuff they grow up here, though Dad tells me everything tastes like chicken but the fake chicken.

I’d like to see a real chicken. A kid did a presentation on chickens last week, which was better than the stupid prairie dogs, but I must of fallen asleep halfway through cause Mrs. Drissold whacked me on the head. One thing I do remember is that chickens run around when their heads get cut off. Can you do that? I bet you’d run around until you found your head then you’d stick it back on your neck and run off into the forest.

By the way, I still haven’t heard back from you. I know it’s only been two emails, but I’m waiting, all right?

I got an idea. Why don’t you send me a photo of you? Your computer can probably take it. Then I can sell your photo, get the water back on, and get Dad and me a better place to live. Could you do that? You don’t even have to write anything (its okay, I didn’t learn how to write until two years ago when I was seven).

     Ace

To: Bigfoot@cascades.us.terra
From: acejones32@avalonlink.nl.luna
Subject: can you read this?
Sent: Tuesday, November 17, 2122  1:33 AM LST

Dear Bigfoot,

Dad got a job at the port. You’d think good news, but he spent the first pay cheque on two bottles of screech and Melinda. She hasn’t been around in so long, I kinda forgot how bad she smells. Anyway, when they were poking each other and shaking my bed something fierce, I got to thinking I should come see you. Maybe you need someone to read these notes to you. Don’t know how I can get there. Dad said once that I can’t leave the moon, cause I grew up too tall and skinny for Earth gravity, but I think that’s nuts. People are coming and going from Earth all the time. And I heard that if you sit in a pool of water it feels like there’s no gravity at all. Well, I never seen a pool of water, but I was thinking I could just sit in a big creek or river or something and read you my emails. Maybe I could even teach you how to read em yourself. It’s not that hard. Well, it’s kinda hard. Dad actually helped me learn it. He said, if you can’t read, you ain’t shit. No son a mine’s gonna grow up a literate. Course he didn’t have books or anything, just old magazines with lots of naked ladies and the hockey newspapers. I learned enough about reading to teach a bigfoot.

Course maybe you got one of those voice-reader programs on your computer. Still, I’m a good teacher. I taught Mario how to steal pastries from the baker without getting caught. Well, I didn’t get caught, and he didn’t get in much trouble, just the black eye the baker gave him. His mom ragged Dad out something furious!

     Ace

To: Bigfoot@cascades.us.terra
From: acejones32@avalonlink.nl.luna
Subject: Mrs. Drissold sucks
Sent: Wednesday, December 9, 2122  9:27 PM LST

Dear Bigfoot,

Stupid Mrs. Drissold. In class today she tells us that tomorrow is Go to Work with your Parents Day. Tomorrow! She said she told us weeks ago but I don’t remember; maybe I was asleep, but some of the other kids didn’t remember either. I had to tell Dad tonight after he got home, which was real late, and he stunk worse than Melinda and could barely lift his dinner to his mouth. I don’t even know if he heard me, he just nodded his head and crawled into bed. I don’t want to go to the port. Graham’s dad got killed there.

     Ace

To: Bigfoot@cascades.us.terra
From: acejones32@avalonlink.nl.luna
Subject: got me a grizzly!
Sent: Thursday, December 10, 2122  10:04 PM LST

Dear Bigfoot,

Mrs. Drissold ain’t so bad after all. Dad took me to the port today. I got up extra early and made him powdered eggs like he likes em, with tons of marmite and hot sauce, then when he suited up for work I followed him out the apartment, with the breakfast bowls still in the sink (we got me a new bowl, not as nice but better than waiting every morning). Dad said What the hell you following me for? And I said, Mrs. Drissold said I gotta go to work with you, all the kids are doing it. I didn’t bother telling him I told him last night. Christ, he said. The port ain’t no place for a boy. But when we got there, Dad got me a suit from some little guy who works the night shift and I got to walk in a vacuum!

Dad showed me around, and he introduced me to all his buddies. This is my boy, Ace, he said, and all his buddies said that I was even bigger than the guy whose suit I was wearing. Dad wore these big lifting arms that strapped on to the back of his suit over his own arms, and used them to move these huge boxes of ore and pharma and supplies around. He looked almost as strong as you!

He put all the boxes that were going back to Earth into these cylinder type things that got all sealed up then stuck in the railgun and fired off to Earth. I’ve never seen anything move so fast as those cylinders. It was awesome. The stuff coming in landed in the big magnet pits, which are kinda like the opposite of rail guns. Whenever a shipment came in, all the guys would crowd around to see what was inside.

That’s where Dad got me my present. He tipped one of the boxes and out poured all these stupid little plastic toys, building blocks, teacher’s tools, that sort of thing. Whoops, he said. Broken merchandise. Take something, boy, so you remember.

There was only one thing that was even halfway cool, this plastic robot grizzly. When I got it home, the grizzly walked around and roared until the batteries ran out. So cool! You must see tons of bears. I bet you fight them off every day when they come and try to steal your breakfast berries.

The port got boring after that. Dad just kept doing the same thing, lifting boxes and putting them where the bossman said to put em, but whenever he asked, I’d say, Yeah, it’s an awesome job, Dad. Sometimes you gotta say things like that, even if you don’t really mean em.

Dad cooked up some real bacon that he got from another box of busted merchandise. I never knew anything could taste so good. My belly hurts, but I ain’t complaining. You must eat bacon all the time!

     Ace

To: Bigfoot@cascades.us.terra
From: acejones32@avalonlink.nl.luna
Subject: stupid bossman
Sent: Monday, December 14, 2122  9:37 PM LST

Dear Bigfoot,

Looks like I’m never going to eat real bacon again. Dad was home from work when I got back from school. There was an empty screech bottle but it wasn’t like last time, he wasn’t mad, just all weepy and wanting to give me hugs. He kept apologizing and saying how he’d never done me right and I didn’t know what to say. He said the bossman fired him cause they caught him taking broken merchandise home. He took my grizzly and some stuff from the freezer and said he had to bring them back or he’d be in more trouble. He left after that and I ain’t seen him since.

I filled up some water bottles for when they turn off the water next, not that it will do much good. They bill us by the drop, Dad always says, but I’m going to hide some away just in case.

I got an idea, bigfoot. I won’t tell you about it yet, but I think I know a way I can come see you.

     Ace

To: Bigfoot@cascades.us.terra
From: acejones32@avalonlink.nl.luna
Subject: don’t tell anyone
Sent: Tuesday, December 22, 2122  8:24 AM LST

Dear Bigfoot,

They shut the water off, but I don’t care. I’ve got it all sorted out. I’m coming to see you! Know those couple weeks back when I went to work with Dad? Well, last week I snuck into the port and stole the little guy’s suit and checked out the place. Know those cylinders they blast off back to Earth on the rail gun? That’s my ticket! I just gotta slip into one of them before they’re sealed up, then I’ll get a free ride back to Earth. I even checked out where they land, and get this, it’s in the ocean! I won’t even have to worry about gravity.

Here’s the problem though, there are lots of guys there who’d notice if I snuck in a capsule. But not on Friday. The guys at the port were all talking about X-mas, and how a few of them got stuck working and were planning on drinking screech all day to piss off the bossman. Well, if they’re into their screech, there’s no way they’ll notice me. I want to be around for X-mas, but this is my only chance.

I haven’t told anyone else about this, cause I know no one will let me go, but Friday, I’m going to do it.

I can’t wait to see you, and don’t worry, I wont tell anyone that I’m going to teach you how to read. It’s our secret.

     Ace

To: rickjones4@avalonlink.nl.luna
From: acejones32@avalonlink.nl.luna
Subject: sorry - c u soon
Sent: Thursday, December 24, 2122  11:15 PM LST

Dear Dad,

Sorry I had to take off. I know you’re probably mighty sore at me for sneaking away without telling you, but I knew you wouldn’t let me go, and my plan was too good. I should get to Earth in a few days, and then I’ll go find bigfoot. I’m going to take a picture of him that we can sell for millions so you can come live with us too. We’ll live in the forest, with free water and free air, and you can fish if you want and maybe we can even bring Melinda along.

Don’t be too sore. I’ll see you soon. I left some breakfasts in the fridge, just heat em up and you’re good. There’s some water in the back of the cupboard. I took a couple jugs with me, but don’t worry, I’ll pay you back for it.

I’ll see if I can get a chicken. We’ll have real eggs when you get here.

     Ace

To: Bigfoot@cascades.us.terra
From: rickjones4@avalonlink.nl.luna
Subject:
Sent: Friday, January 1, 2123 4:33 AM LST

Bigfoot,

I must be crazy to be writing to a fucking Bigfoot. My head’s been on fire for so long. I can’t talk to anyone else about this, the bastards at the shipping company made me sign the non-disclosure after they paid me off. More then I’d ever make working for them too.

‘Course there are a few people in Avalon who know what happened. Melinda, the guys who worked X-mas at the port, but they got their shut-the-fuck-up cash too, so they’re probably happy Ace did what he did.

Still can’t believe it was that bad for the boy. I’ve been reading everything he wrote, and it hurts so much to see what an ass I was, but what hurts worse is hearing his voice in the damn emails he wrote. Don’t know if I’ll ever hear his voice again. Wish he’d written more to you.

The bastards at the shipping company say he must have drowned. They didn’t find a piece of him near the spot the capsule splashed down, and they say they searched for days. But that suit he stole should have kept him afloat. Shit, he can’t be at the bottom of the ocean, he can’t. My head feels ready to burst just thinking of it. He’s gotta be with you. That suit floated, he wasn’t that far from shore, and he was a strong boy, he could have made it. And he wanted to see you so bad. So you better be taking good care of him, as good care as he took of me.

Melinda and those other pricks are buying new apartments or  gold teeth or other useless shit with their shut-the-fuck-up cash, but they should be saving it for the next time the water’s shut off. The moon isn’t getting a cent of Ace’s money from me. I’m spending everything they paid me for a ticket dirtside.

I’m coming for you. I’ll tromp through every forest down there if I have to. On the way, I’m gonna swim in creeks, climb trees, eat bacon and eggs, maybe even stomp on a stupid prairie dog. All the shit my boy should have done. He didn’t deserve this place. I didn’t deserve him. You don’t deserve whatever cave you’re hiding in, and I don’t deserve to find you, but with whatever life I’ve got left in me, you better believe I’m gonna damn well try.

    Rick, Ace’s dad

About the Author

Geoff graduated from Simon Fraser University’s Writers Studio in 2007, and since then his work has appeared in Apex Magazine, where he placed second in the Annual Halloween Short Story contest, The Ubyssey, and emerge 2007. Geoff has degrees in biology and engineering, and lives with his wonderful fianc in Vancouver, British Columbia, where he manages the construction of Canada’s largest water filtration plant. An avid telemark skier, surfer, and hiker, what he finds in the mountains and oceans he transposes to the page warped by a vision of the future filtered through polarized sunglasses and a fine single malt.

“Anthologists Discuss Their Craft”
by Jeremy L. C. Jones

Editing anthologies is an unsung art. An anthologist balances story selection, story editing, story arrangement, and central concept (not to mention a variety of clerical and financial concerns). 

There are many individual pieces involved in the process, requiring practicality as well as intuition. The anthologist, as Jeff VanderMeer says below, must be “ambitious and grounded.” 

In the end, a gathering of stories can be simply a gathering of stories or it can be something much more than the sum of its parts.

This “something more” is accomplished through the choices the anthologist makes in terms of, among other things, pacing, variety, and, as Jonathan Strahan points out below, honesty.

Below, six of the most accomplished and innovative editors working in the fantasy, science fiction and horror fields discuss the art of editing anthologies.

The Anthologists

John Joseph Adams is currently making his final story selections for his fourth themed anthology, Federations, which is due out this spring. Adams followed his definitive post-apocalyptic reprint anthology, Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse, with the expansive (and no less definitive) zombie reprint The Living Dead. In between these, he continued to work as the assistant editor at The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and he edited the original anthology Seeds of Change.

Ellen Datlow is perhaps best known as the co-editor (originally with Terri Windling and then with Kelly Link & Gavin J. Grant) of twenty-one annual The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror anthologies. She is the former fiction editor of Omni magazine and former editor of SCIFICTION. Alone and with co-editors, Datlow has won or shared numerous awards for her anthologies and for her editing, and was named recipient of the 2007 Karl Edward Wagner Award, given at the British Fantasy Convention for “outstanding contribution to the genre.” Her most recent anthologies are The Del Rey Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy and Poe: 19 New Tales Inspired by Edgar Allan Poe. Forthcoming in mid-2009 are The Nebula Awards Showcase: 2009 and Troll’s Eye View (the latter with Windling).

James Lowder won two Origins Awards in 2008, one for Hobby Games: The 100 Best (non-fiction) and one for Astounding Hero Tales (fiction). A few months later, Paizo Publishing released Worlds of Their Own, an anthology of stories told in creator-owned settings written by authors known for their shared world fiction. Lowder has edited anthologies of superhero, Arthurian, and Forgotten Realms fiction. His zombie anthologies for Eden Studios (The Book of All Flesh, The Book of More Flesh, and The Book of Final Flesh) are deserving of every bit of their cult status. 

Jonathan Strahan has edited more than a dozen anthologies. His past titles include annual volumes of The Year’s Best Australian Science Fiction and Fantasy, Best Short Novels, The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, The Starry Rift, and perhaps most gloriously, the recent The New Space Opera (co-edited with Gardner Dozois).   His forthcoming and in-progress lists feature titles such as Godlike Machines, Conquering Swords: New Sword and Sorcery, Dreamtime: Legends of Australian Fantasy, and Life on Mars: Tales from the New Frontier. 

As the fiction editor of the legendary Weird Tales magazine, Ann VanderMeer selects and edits some of the strangest and most brilliant fiction being published today. Under her leadership, the fiction content of the magazine is both very much in the tradition of the old weird and perpetually re-defining the new weird. Her anthologies Steampunk and The New Weird (both co-edited with Jeff VanderMeer) help define two sub-genres without narrowing their scope; her Best American Fantasy, though a “year’s best” retrospective, features stories that are innovative and forward-looking. Like Datlow before her, VanderMeer has shaped a new generation of fiction writers. She is currently working on The Kosher Guide to Imaginary Animals.

Multiple World Fantasy Award winner, Jeff VanderMeer is best known for his fiction set in imaginary world of Ambergris. Works such as City of Saints and Madmen and Shriek: An Afterword will be followed soon by Finch, a noir take on Ambergris. In addition to the anthologies mentioned above, VanderMeer has edited a long list of others, including Fast Ships, Black Sails (co-edited with Ann VanderMeer), Mapping the Beast: the Best of Leviathan, and The Thackery T. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric and Discredited Diseases (co-edited with Mark Roberts).

What is at the heart of a great anthology?

Ann VanderMeer: Great stories. If you don’t have that, nothing else matters.

Jeff VanderMeer: That, and the passion of the editors. If you don’t leave anything out on the field, so to speak, it tends to show in the anthology.

Jonathan Strahan: Any great anthology has two things at its heart: a great idea and a bunch of great stories. The hardest thing to do is come up with an idea that is robust enough to support an interesting, varied anthology. If you have a great idea then you either should be able to find a bunch of great reprints, or [the idea] should spark some great new stories. 

And for an anthology to be “great,” you need at least three really good stories. Doesn’t matter if they’re by first timers or big names or whomever: you need three top-notch stories. Without that the book won’t stand up.

Ellen Datlow: The writers primarily, but also the editing that goes into making the stories as great as they should/can be.

John Joseph Adams: [In general], I think, a table of contents that demonstrates the range of what a sub-genre or theme is capable of. In the case of a reprint anthology, I think it’s also important to include a large number of stories from disparate sources so that any one reader is unlikely to have read them all and will find many new discoveries, even if they voraciously read short fiction.

I hadn’t thought of it before, but as I formulated my answer to your question, I realized that what I’m saying, really, is that diversity is at the heart of a great anthology.

James Lowder: Terrific stories showcased in the service of a unifying idea — a theme or concept or mood that the anthologist illuminates through the story selection, as well as the book’s structure and pacing.

Where does an anthology start for you, and how does it develop?

Ann VanderMeer: An anthology can start one of two ways for us. First, when a publisher asks us to edit a particular anthology. And second, when we have an idea for an anthology. As soon as those seeds are planted the ideas flow. Jeff and I will then start brainstorming back and forth about the main goals of the project, which writers would be a good match for the project, etc. We make lots and lots of lists.

Jeff VanderMeer: We go through a long discovery process first, though. To see if it’s a project we really want to do. For example, originally we planned to turn down Tachyon’s offer to edit a New Weird anthology. Then when we did research and debated all of the pros and cons, we found there was a compelling case for doing the anthology. And we’ve been rewarded in that conclusion both from the general critical response and by the fact that it has sold well.

Jonathan Strahan: Usually an anthology starts with an idea, a spark of some kind. I could be reading a story and think “this would make a great starting point for a book,” or have a conversation about some aspect of the field and think what was being discussed could make a good book. It may just simply be me wanting to work in an area that I particularly love or am interested in at that moment.

Once I have the idea, I write a scoping document. It’s usually an 800 to 1,000 word description of the book, perhaps listing stories that I know of that would fit into it, or listing people I think would make interesting contributors. It’s really a personal working tool that lets me work out if the book is viable, if it would be interesting and so on. If I can’t see the finished book in my mind’s eye at this stage, I scrap it. A lot of ideas die at this stage, which is probably a good thing.

If the scoping document looks good, and if I have a title in mind, I’ll use it as the basis for a written proposal. There are a lot of variations from here, but if we’re talking about an invitation-only anthology it’s at this point that I send out invitations, see if people would be interested being involved in the book should it happen. I then complete the proposal and send it to my agent. We knock it around a bit and then send it out to publishers.

If the book sells, I then confirm with all the likely contributors that the book is happening and that they want to be involved. I like to give writers as close to a year as I can to get stories done. This often isn’t enough, but seems a pretty reasonable amount of time, and gives me some flexibility. I then wait. Stories come in, are accepted or not, changed or not and generally go back and forth as the deadline approaches.

I’d say about three months before the deadline I look at what I have for the book and review who still has stories to do. I’ll often write to people and see what sort of story they’re doing, to make sure the book is as varied as possible.

Once the stories are in, I line edit them, write the introduction, and then do the story notes. I then spend a week or so playing with running orders and so on, complete the manuscript and email it in. There are things that come after that, but that’s basically the
process.

Ellen Datlow: First of all, there is a big difference between all-reprint anthologies and original anthologies for which the stories are requested. And there’s also a difference in theme anthologies vs. non-theme anthologies.

For a theme anthology of original stories I always begin with the theme. Next it’s the writers. I think of the writers I’d like to have in the anthology (leaving some room for serendipity, i.e. the unexpected submission received through word of mouth).

For a non-theme anthology it starts and ends with the writers. I try to acquire a good variety of writers and stories from the get-go by telling the writers that they can write whatever they want — but, as I say in the next paragraph, the closer the anthology comes to being done, the tighter the parameters.

Then I wait for the submissions, encouraging the writers periodically and asking how their stories are coming along. I generally get in most of the stories way before deadline, which is good. I pay as much as I can from the advance on signature of the contract, so the early birds don’t have to wait until I hand in the book to get paid. Also, there’s more flexibility in the type of story I’ll buy in the beginning. As the anthology begins shaping up I’m much more careful of repetition in point of view and sub-themes.

A couple of months before my deadline I start nagging, and I also may alert the writers who haven’t yet submitted their stories that I don’t want any more of a particular type of story.

Also, as I buy stories I ask for an afterword (if that’s the type of anthology I’m editing) and a bio.

A month or so before I hand in the finished manuscripts I do the final line edit of each story — although for most of the stories I’ve already worked with the author on any substantive editing before I’ve committed to buying the story. But every story gets a final and thorough line edit towards the end of the process.

John Joseph Adams: Since every anthology I’ve done so far has been a theme anthology, it’s started with the theme.

My first anthology, Wastelands, is post-apocalyptic, and I chose that topic simply because it’s a favorite sub-genre of mine, and also having done some research on the subject for an article, I discovered a distinct lack of anthologies on the subject, and sensed a resurgence of interest in the sub-genre from both writers and readers.

Each of my projects after that grew out of discussions with the publishers of the books. After being thrilled with the way Wastelands turned out, Night Shade approached me with the idea of doing a zombie anthology. For Seeds of Change, Prime approached me first with just the idea of doing an original anthology, and then we batted around some ideas until we settled on a theme.

James Lowder: I start with the anthology’s controlling concept. From there, I’ll usually sound out a couple of potential authors on their interest and then talk with a publisher. Sometimes a publisher will love the idea as first pitched, sometimes I’ll have to tweak the project a little so that it fits the publisher’s line or budget or schedule. If too much tweaking is required, then it’s not a good fit and I take the pitch elsewhere. Once the anthology is underway, it’s a matter of being flexible enough to incorporate the unexpected great ideas or stories that come along, but disciplined enough to keep the overall project true to the original concept.

How do you select stories?

Ann VanderMeer: Our brainstorming sessions point us in the direction and then we read, and we read a lot! We’ll both read different things, then weed them out and come up with a finalist list. From that list we re-read all the fiction and make a spreadsheet of the possibles. Then we typically re-read again and see how the stories work with each other. From this process we select the stories.

Jeff VanderMeer: I am more of an initial skimmer. I usually figure out I’m going to like something or not by a very quick read. Ann is more systematic and thus her initial readings are more accurate. At the same time, I sometimes bring in something that we wouldn’t otherwise have thought about considering.

Ellen Datlow: For original anthologies I request stories from at least a third over the number I need because not everyone I approach will submit her story in the time required and at least a few of the stories won’t be right for the anthology and will be rejected. I pick the stories that I love and that fit within the broad boundaries of the theme. Towards the end of the process, I try to make sure that I’ve got a variety of types of stories.

For a reprint anthology, I make lists of stories that I’ve published and love and those that have made an impression on me during my long and wide ranging reading experience. Then I reread everything (sometimes multiple times) and decide what goes in, balancing all the way.

Jonathan Strahan: I guess the core process is the same, regardless of whether you’re talking original or reprint stories. I sit down with the story and I read it. I try to be as fresh as possible and have as few preconceptions as I can. My intent is to give it as fair a reading as I can.  I’ll scribble any thoughts I have about it on the last page of the manuscript (or make a note if it’s in a book). I’ll then set it aside for at least a day, before re-reading it. If it knocked me out both times, and it fits the project I’m doing, I’ll buy it. If I’m lukewarm on second reading, I’ll set it aside for a week or two and then try again. If I don’t love it at that point I’ll either let it go or discuss it with the author.

Things are a little different for the year’s best. I read throughout the year, usually stopping in mid-to-late October. During the year I look at every story I can, making notes on any that I think are possible contenders for the book. I’ll note what genre it is, something about theme, and how long it is. As the deadline approaches I start re-reading the stories I thought were terrific. If they stand up on re-reading, I then enter them into a spreadsheet I have. Then I juggle word counts, genre and so on to come up with a balanced book.

John Joseph Adams: You have to [solicit stories from well known authors], if you want anyone to buy your anthology. You don’t have to only solicit stories from known authors, of course — you can have an open reading period during which anyone may submit a story. But in general, it really behooves the anthologist to have as many stories to consider as possible, so it seems to me that keeping a book invite-only is a dangerous proposition.

There can be trouble if you have a very, very specific theme; for instance, if you’re editing an anthology of stories about monkeys discovering rocketry and leaving the Earth to settle other worlds, well, you almost have to keep the pool of writers writing for you somewhat limited, because any story that doesn’t make it into the book would really have nowhere else it would fit.

But anyway — for my first original anthology, Seeds of Change, I kept it invite-only by necessity; because I also work at Fantasy and Science Fiction, Gordon [Van Gelder] felt like the theme of the anthology was so broad that having an open reading period would kind of be a conflict of interest with my duties at the magazine. For Federations, however, [I did] an open reading period.

As for how I select stories, I first think about which stories first come to mind when I think about a particular theme and I jot those down. Then I think about authors that I like and/or big names that seem likely to have written something on the theme, then I browse through my anthologies and collections and do research online to see if I can find anything that might fit.

As I find likely candidates I put them all into a spreadsheet to keep track of them, and as I read them, I give them a rating on a scale of 1-10 to help me remember what my initial reaction to a story was (which might change when I go back to read it again, so it’s important to know what that first reaction was). Actually, the scale is more like a 6-10 scale, because anything that I consider less than a 6, I’m not going to include it in the book.

I’ll also keep a separate column to numerically note the story’s relevance to the theme; stories that are iffy on the relevance scale are often among those easiest to cut, no matter how good they are. Then, once I’m ready to start finalizing the table of contents, I just think about balance and diversity and theme, and try to conceptualize what group of stories would work best together in between two covers.

James Lowder: I try to find the best possible stories that display a variety of approaches to the anthology’s theme or concept, working from the story pool available. How large that pool is, and who it might include, will depend upon the project and its budget. For the anthology Worlds of Their Own, which reprinted creator-owned works by writers known for their shared world novels, I had a relatively limited pool of stories compared to, say, the All Flesh zombie anthologies I put together for Eden Studios. The zombie anthologies were “open call,” meaning I received literally hundreds of original submissions. In all cases, I read through many more stories than I eventually use and search for the ones that are the best written and most evocative when placed in a sequence.

I particularly enjoy working on open call anthologies because of the surprise factor. I always get a few really startling, inspired tales, things I never would have expected. These often come from writers I don’t know or know only a little. Open call projects, or those with a significant number of open slots, are also great places to give fledgling authors a break. About a third of the stories in each of the All Flesh books were first professional sales. It’s a lot of work reading through all the submissions you get from an open call, but the hard work usually pays off.

How do you determine the order of stories?

Ann VanderMeer: This is a very important part of the process. We are very careful about how the stories are ordered because we know that the typical reader will read the anthology from beginning to end. We make sure that stories flow naturally from one to the next. We ensure that stories back-to-back are not too similar to each other. Since some of our anthologies have a particular, narrow bent, this is especially important. We don’t want a “sameness” to infect the book. Each story and its placement must have a meaning and purpose for the project.

Jeff VanderMeer: In the New Weird anthology, we went one step further. We had the challenge of creating an anthology useful to both general readers and academics. So we sectioned it off, with two sections more of interest to academics, two sections more of interest to general readers. The progression went: introduction, then the stories that influenced New Weird, then the actual New Weird stories, then the discussion that created the term, and then an experimental section with writers trying their hand at a “New Weird” type of writing.

Ellen Datlow: I try to pick a strong story to go first and the strongest story to go either last or next to last. Then I try to make sure that there’s a good mix of lengths, tone, voice, character, point of view, etc.

John Joseph Adams: The first thing I do is write all of the story titles and bylines on a series of index cards, then lay them out on my desk. By the time I’ve finalized the TOC, I usually have a good idea of what I might want to lead with and end with, but other than that I probably don’t have much idea what will go where.

I like to lead with one of the strongest stories in the anthology, and if possible, a very strong story which is also by one of the bigger names in the book. I also close with one of the strongest, and then try to put another of the strongest somewhere in the middle, kind of like the support poles of a tent. In between the poles, I try to focus on story flow: sometimes you want to avoid two similar stories, but other times they might complement each other, or you might want to place a lighter piece immediately following a story with a downbeat ending.

So, once I get the index cards laid out, I look for my tent-pole stories, then start shuffling things around until I get something that feels right. It’s hard to explain what makes something feel right, but it’s something I think you get a feel for after having read so many hundreds of anthologies over the years. Ultimately, I’m not sure how much it matters to the casual reader, but I think a well-structured book will be more satisfying to the reader. Of course, that’s assuming the stories are read in the order the anthologist chooses, of which there is no guarantee.

James Lowder: I pace the stories with an eye toward tone, topic, and theme, so that readers starting the book on page one and reading the tales in sequence find the experience rewarding. The first story sets the overall mood and the last story somehow closes the book. I also try to structure an anthology so that the story juxtapositions suggest additional meanings, along the lines of the Soviet montage theory of film editing. But the ordering process is dynamic, since adding one new tale to the mix might require the entire table of contents to be rearranged. Sometimes the order needs to be changed to resolve formal or mechanical concerns — two stories close together that are too similar in setting or narrative voice, for example. Other times editorial intuition kicks in. A story just doesn’t read as strongly when placed before or after another tale, so you move it. I tend to shift around the story order several times during the editing process, even after I have all the works selected.

Jonathan Strahan: A lot of this is intuitive, to be honest. I used to follow an old approach: open with your strongest story, second strongest goes last, third strongest in the middle, then shuffle from there. I’ve stopped doing that, though, because I’m not sure it makes for a great reading experience. Now what I try to do is find the story that is the best story in the book which is also the most accessible and the most typical of the theme of the book. I think it’s really important to open with a story that is really accessible and entertaining, and which sets the readers expectations (i.e. if you’re editing an anthology of dragon stories make sure you open with a story that has a big dragon in it!). I will usually then put the longest story in the book towards the end, either last or second last. I’ll put the second best story in the middle, and then try to balance length and theme from there. I want the book to have a rhythm: vary long and short stories, make sure you don’t get three vampire goblin stories in a row, that kind of thing.

How has your understanding of the process changed since your first anthology?

Ann VanderMeer: Not really a change so much as a refinement of our process. I believe that our process works very well. Because our talents compliment each other, we work very well as a team. 

Jeff VanderMeer: I agree. I’d just say that as we’ve worked closely, we’ve kind of been able to channel each other’s strengths. I’ve become more patient and thoughtful, for example.

James Lowder: By studying successful anthologies such as Ellen Datlow ’s Blood is Not Enough or Skipp and Spector’s Book of the Dead, even single author collections such as Ellison’s brilliant Deathbird Stories, I’ve become more conscious of the art of pacing and the editor’s ability to make an anthology more than just a simple collation of tales. And each new anthology I edit or simply read teaches me something new.

Datlow: It hasn’t much.

Jonathan Strahan: Enormously. I know I have a much better understanding of what I’m doing. I now know what it takes to edit a story, sequence a book and so on. That said, I’ve only edited five original anthologies at this point. I’m still learning all the time about stories, about writers, about assembling books. I’ve learned an enormous amount from editing The Starry Rift and from editing the Eclipse series. I don’t think I’ll ever stop learning, truthfully, because the next book can always be better than this one.

Any funny anecdotes from any of the anthologies you’ve done?

Ann VanderMeer: I’ll let Jeff tell you about the time Clive Barker called the house. I had just had surgery that day for my shoulder and was pretty much out of it, on pain medication. The phone rings and Jeff answers…

Jeff VanderMeer: …and this raspy voice comes on and says, “Clive Barker here. It’s opinions not onions.” And I’m like, “What?” “Opinions, not onions.”

And it turned out there’s a recurring typo in the story of his in our New Weird anthology, where “last breath and opinions” is reproduced as “last breath and onions.” He’s been chasing it down for 18 years. The thing is, in the context of “breath,” “onions” makes a weird kind of alternate sense. Anyway, he was very complimentary of the anthology, and we told him we’d correct the error in foreign editions and any reprint of the US one.

James Lowder: When I was working on the first of the zombie anthologies for Eden Studios, I received a flood of submissions. As the deadline approached, I was getting hefty stacks of envelopes with full, completed manuscripts every day. One afternoon, I was mowing my lawn when the postal carrier came through. He knows that I work from home on fantasy and horror books, and that I get a lot of work-related material in the mail.

Well, on this particular afternoon he got out of his truck to hand me the stack of submissions, which was too large for my mailbox, and asked, after a rather uncomfortable pause, “Have you changed the sorts of publishing projects you’re working on?” I was baffled by the question — until I looked at the top envelope, addressed to The Book of All Flesh. No, I explained, the title didn’t mean I was now editing porn. It was a collection of zombie stories (which, I suppose, is just as bad in some people’s minds).

Do you have an anthologist’s credo?

Ann VanderMeer: I don’t know if this is an anthologist’s credo, but we approach each project with the philosophy to make it the best book we can produce. We also are strongly committed to searching far and wide to make this happen. And we believe in mixing it up, having a lot of diversity in each project we do. Each book is unique unto itself.

Jeff VanderMeer: I want my reach to exceed my grasp, so to speak. There’s no point in doing something by half-measures. This is why in something like the fake disease guide I co-edited awhile back you’ll find a reproduction of a fake page from a supposed related book by Borges, translated into the “original” Spanish. When Ann and I edit together, we work well because the credo is to be both ambitious and grounded. I can go off into left field, and Ann pulls me back, because Ann is the best reader I know, and thus the best general editor.

Ellen Datlow: To be strong and reject stories that don’t work, even if I really want that author in my book.

If I’m not blown over by a submission the first time I read it, but am not sure I want to reject it, I’ll wait a week or two and reread it. Usually within the first two pages of the second read I’ll know if I want to buy it.

John Joseph Adams: Well, I’ve never written one down before, but perhaps it would be: Publish the story, not the author. When selecting stories the anthologist should chose to include a story based on the strength of the story itself, and not who the author is. It’s an easy trap to fall into, to cram in stories by your favorite authors into an anthology, or to cram in stories by bestsellers or award-winners, because, after all, the anthologist does have some obligation to the publisher to include a sufficient number of brand name authors in order to help market the anthology.

Luckily, bestsellers and award-winners are often damn good writers (thus explaining that whole success thing they’ve got going on), so it doesn’t often present a huge issue in terms of quality — it’s more of a problem when it comes to fitting the theme. I often see readers and reviewers complaining when they read an anthology that doesn’t hew closely enough to the theme, so I try to always keep that in the forefront of my mind when making final selections. I may not always succeed in that for every reader, but that’s what I strive to do.

James Lowder: I have some general beliefs about editing that impact how I select original stories for anthologies. I feel very strongly that the editor’s primary role is to help the writer clarify and strengthen his or her creative vision and the execution of that vision. Sometimes editors either stand too far back, letting the writer flounder, or get too close, leaving obvious fingerprints on the work by imposing themselves and their own writing style. Editing should be a rigorous process, even contentious. Writers should always know the editor respects them and their work, but I expect to be pretty interactive with my writers. Really, that’s no more than I hope editors will do for me, and my writing, when I’m on the other side of the blotter.

Editing anthologies is much more complicated than novels or individual stories, since there are several writers involved. The goals and integrity of each story need to be taken into account, but the book as a whole should reflect the anthologist’s vision, too. The more creative people participating in a project, the greater the potential for chaos. If I have an anthology-specific credo, it’s that chaos is inevitable when working on an anthology, but chaos can be a source of vitality for the book.

Jonathan Strahan: I think three or four years ago I would have struggled to answer this and probably would have said something like “look for great stories.” In the last year or so, though, I have developed a credo. It’s pretty simple: be honest.

Ultimately you’re acting as an agent for the reader so you need to be as straightforward and as honest with your reader as you can. Title a book clearly. Write an introduction that actually describes the book you’ve edited. Buy stories that fit the title and the idea. Encourage the publisher, as much as you can, to put a cover on it that fits (something I’ve actually been very lucky with — most of my publishers have been terrific and very supportive). If you do that, then a reader can pick up a book and feel they’re going to get what they expect. 

For example, when editing The New Space Opera Gardner [Dozois] and I chose a title that was pretty unambiguous, filled the book as best we could with space opera stories, and then our publisher put a big rocket ship on the cover. Readers could be fairly confident that, if they bought the book, they’d get a bunch of new space opera stories, probably with spaceships in them. I’m currently co-editing an anthology of swords and sorcery stories with Lou Anders. It’s tentatively titled Conquering Swords.  The stories we’ve bought so far are all definitively “swords and sorcery.” The title will reflect that, and I’m sure the cover will, too.

So, yeah, if I have a credo right now it’s: be honest. You can still get it wrong, but at least you and everyone else knows what you’re trying to do.

About the Author

Jeremy L. C. Jones is a freelance writer, editor, and part-time professor living in his wife’s hometown. He is on the board of the South Carolina Academy of Authors, the Hub City Writers Project, and is the interview editor for the Southern Nature Project. In July of 2008, he and Jeff VanderMeer launched Shared Worlds at Wofford College, a creative writing and world-building sumer program for high school students.

“The Mauna Kea Experience”
by David L. Clements

The door of the plane opens and the first hint of the tropical night wafts inside. In spite of nearly twenty-four hours of traveling, the fresh air and perfumed humidity wake me up. That, and the knowledge that I’ve arrived.

I’ve flown from London to Hilo on the Big Island of Hawaii to use one of the telescopes at the famous Mauna Kea Observatory. British astronomers have been doing this since 1979 when UKIRT, the UK Infrared Telescope, opened. The high volcanic peak now hosts the Kecks, the largest and most famous ground-based telescopes, and many others. I’m here to use the James Clarke Maxwell telescope, the JCMT, a fifteen meter submillimeter dish, to study dusty galaxies near the edge of the observable universe.

But now all I want to do is get my bags, get to the hotel and go to sleep.

I hurry to the outdoor baggage hall — much of Hilo airport is outside or open to the balmy air — and get a taxi to Banyan Drive and a large bed.

Hilo is a small American town dropped into a tropical jungle — everything is surrounded by foliage I’m more used to seeing in a greenhouse. Hilo is also one of the wettest places on Earth, with 128 inches of rainfall a year. But I don’t have time to enjoy it as I have to head up the mountain.

The Big Island is made of five separate shield volcanoes rising from the bottom of the Pacific. One is extinct, two are dormant — officially this includes Mauna Kea, but we tell our students it’s extinct to make them feel safer — and two are active. One of these, Kilauea, is very active, and has been constantly erupting since 1983. You can see its dull glow from the observatory and sometimes it produces a sulfurous vog — volcanic smog — that blows into Hilo. The biggest volcanoes are Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa. These form the bulk of the island. To get to either you have to ascend the infamous Saddle Road that runs between them.

Starting in Hilo the car climbs into thicker jungle as the houses get further and further apart. Soon we hit clouds and a thick mist, almost rain, coats the windshield. We’ve left the jungle behind and are in the cloud forest. Oddly-shaped trees stand on either side of the road, with wispy foliage and thin white trunks emerging from the black volcanic rock.

Eventually we break into bright sunshine and get our first clear view of the mountains. On the left the huge bulk of Mauna Loa dominates, its vast flanks scarred by lava flows. On the right, smaller but higher, is Mauna Kea with the observatory’s white domes clustering on the top.

The road flattens out as it meanders through the lava flows until we take a right turn onto the steep Mauna Kea Access Road. We go across a cattle grid and enter grassy ranching country, complete with signs warning us of ‘Invisible Cows’ in the frequent fog.

By this point I can feel the altitude. I’m breathing faster, my ears have been popping as the car climbs and, if I try anything strenuous, I get light-headed.

A few more turns through rust red cinder cones and the astronomers’ residence, Hale Pohaku, comes into view.

The first part of my ascent is complete.

I’ll be driven to the summit by my telescope operator. They don’t let anybody control the telescopes, and they want to make sure I don’t break anything. The operators come from a huge range of backgrounds. My driver used to be a sonar officer on US submarines, while another is a part-time DJ at a Hilo radio station.

The operators also look after the observers. You lose a few points of intelligence for every thousand feet of altitude. At 14000 feet everyone is stupid, but it affects you in strange ways. I’ve taken an IQ test at the telescope (maybe in itself a sign of stupidity!) and got the result you might expect for someone with an astrophysics PhD. But I’ve also spent thirty minutes failing to work out how to get an instrument properly aligned.

There are stories from the construction of one telescope about an angry call received at sea level.

“There’s a problem with these parts you sent up.”

“Oh yes?” said the sea level manager.

“Yes! I’ve cut the things three times and they’re still too short!”

“Come down to sea level,” said the manager. “Now!”

There are other odd effects. On my first observing run I was typing away when I got an odd feeling that I was forgetting something very important. I looked round to make sure the telescope was working and checked the observation was progressing. Everything fine. Had some new email come in? No. Any bad weather? No. I sat back and scratched my head because the feeling wouldn’t go away. Then I realized.

Breathing.

Yes, that’s it — I’d forgotten to breathe, and a few deep breaths later I was feeling much better.

Any exertion really hits you. You learn this quickly when you come back from the toilet and run up stairs that look perfectly innocuous to anyone who’s just come up from sea level. If you’re lucky you can struggle to the top before you have to stop, lungs heaving and vision compressing to a dark tunnel as oxygen starvation sets in.

My observations are part of a large area survey of the submillimetre sky. This part of the spectrum, also called terrahertz waves, sits between radio and infrared wavelengths. The submillimetre has only been opened up in the last couple of decades and we’re still in the earliest stages of exploring its potential. My particular interest is the study of dust-dominated galaxies which are very powerful emitters of submillimetre radiation.

In the local universe luminous dusty galaxies are rare but observations with the COBE satellite in the early 90s confirmed hints that dusty galaxies were much more numerous at earlier epochs of the universe. They’re so numerous, in fact, that roughly half the total energy emitted by stars in the history of the universe came from such objects, where the light was absorbed by dust and re-emitted in the far-infrared and submillimetre bands. The history of galaxy formation we get from optical telescopes, such as the Hubble Space Telescope or the giant Kecks, is thus biased. It can’t show us the obscured emission that comes out in the submillimetre so half the story is missing.

Uncovering this hidden history is hard work as it takes many hours to detect just one of the dusty galaxies responsible and we need hundreds of them to properly understand where they are, what powers them and what role they play in the bigger picture of galaxy evolution.

I’m here to add some more nights of data to this survey.

Hale Pohaku, ’stone hut’ in Hawaiian, is a halfway house between sea-level and the high altitude of the observatory. Astronomers stay here for 24 hours of acclimatization before being allowed up to the summit and then come back to sleep during the day. There are dorms, a library, TV room, canteen, where you can get ice-cream 24 hours a day, and hot and cold running internet.

Weather is the great enemy. All too often it can send you home empty handed. Cloud, fog, wind, humidity, rain, ice and snow all bring problems. Snowfall means the summit has to be evacuated as it’s all too easy to be stranded. In the early days some astronomers stuck on the summit in a storm had to burn furniture to keep warm.

Once I’ve unpacked and settled in, I have a little walk. HP is surrounded by cinder cones but their stark shapes are softened by bushes and clumps of grass. On one side the mountain slopes down to the Saddle Road with Mauna Loa rising beyond. On the other the summit road continues, leading upwards into an arid red landscape. Above that is the clear, deep blue sky only seen at the best observatories.

At the summit, like giant mushrooms growing on an ancient stump of mahogany, are the domes of the telescopes. Most are round and white, reflecting as much of the day’s heat as they can. Beneath the summit ridge, in Millimetre Valley, are the JCMT and the two other submillimetre telescopes. One of these, the Submillimetre Array, consists of eight small dishes sitting open to the elements on individual plinths. The other, the Caltech Submillimetre Observatory, hides inside a spherical reflective ball, only revealing itself for observations. The JCMT rises like a giant cylindrical gun turret, but its dish can’t be seen from outside as it’s covered by a giant Goretex membrane, shading it from the sun during daytime operation and protecting it from dust.

Everything except the telescopes is brick red. The ground is a mixture of volcanic cinders, larger rocks and a fine pervasive dust. And there are no signs of life. Apollo astronauts trained here for the moon landings, but the landscape is closer to Mars than the moon — it would be familiar to anyone who’s looked at images from the Mars rovers.

It isn’t entirely lifeless. Apart from astronomers and tourists, there are a few tufts of vegetation. There’s even a native insect. They consume less hardy insects blown up the mountain from sea level and unable to cope in the thin air — a unique ecological niche.

And most of the observatories have mice.

Our big four wheel drive pulls up to the JCMT and we settle into the control room surrounded by desks and computer screens. Once the sun sets there’s nothing to see outside so we close the small window and concentrate on the observations. The operator looks after the telescope and I make sure the data coming in looks right. We keep ourselves going with sandwiches from HP. I graze on food throughout the night as it helps keep me awake. I also drink lots — tea, water, fruit-juice — anything to make sure I stay hydrated and prevent altitude sickness.

The night wears on. I try to keep my attention on the observations but it’s hard. The hum of the computers and humidifier lull us to sleep when the CDs run out, but at least the humidifier is working. The best data comes when it’s very dry. The human body can’t cope with this so when the humidifier breaks you get nose bleeds. Some of the best data I’ve ever got at the JCMT was taken with my hand clamped to my nose stemming a stream of blood. My lab book and the observing log still have the stains.

By 6am the sun has started to rise and we get our second wind. But it all starts again ‘tomorrow’ when we get up at 4pm, for ‘dinner’ as breakfast, and head back.

Several exhausting days later and our final night is nearing its end. I take special care to clear my stuff out of the control room and there’s an extra spring to my step. The last night of the run is like the night before Christmas, or the end of school. I’m always a little excited about being let out of this scientific monastery and back to sea level.

I don’t really know what results my data will bring. Some observing runs, perhaps the most exciting, bring instant gratification with something interesting appearing on the screens immediately the data is read out. Extragalactic submillimetre surveys aren’t like that. My nights of data will have to be carefully combined with many others before we know what we’ve seen and the data must then be compared to datasets at other wavelengths before we can really understand what the submillimetre galaxies are doing. No instant gratification this trip, but I know the data is sound and that this run has been another useful step towards sorting out the hidden history of the universe.

After breakfast and a few hours sleep I meet up with another astronomer who’s driving me down to Hilo. I have sunglasses and a hat, but I still blink in the unaccustomed brightness. Below us are the tops of the clouds we’ll pass through on our way. Then we’re in the car and off.

As the car heads downhill, away from HP and its dry volcanic landscape, we soon reach the ranchland. Smells of grass and pine woods come through the windows. My head begins to clear as my body drinks in the richer supply of oxygen. This just keeps going all the way to sea level. You never realize it when you’re there, but your body works hard for every breath on the mountain. For days my lungs have been pumping further and faster than they’re used to. But now they can relax. With every breath I taste the richness of the air at the bottom of the atmosphere. The feeling won’t last, but for now slow breathing is a welcome relaxation.

My data has been downloaded. My work is done and I can look forward to a couple of days in Hilo catching up with friends. As the car descends into the mists of the cloud forest it all catches up with me and I fall asleep.

About the Author

David L Clements is an astrophysicist at Imperial College London with a degree in physics and a PhD in astrophysics. His main research areas are extragalactic astronomy and observational cosmology focusing on dust dominated galaxies and their role in galaxy evolution. He has spent much of the last 7 years working on the European Space Agency’s Herschel and Planck satellites which are due to be launched in 2009, but has also found time for research projects using ground-based observatories, like the JCMT, and satellites including NASA’s Spitzer and Chandra telescopes. As well as scientific papers he has written non-fiction for Astronomy Now, Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine and others, and is trying to write fiction as well. You can see some of the latter at microhorror.com.

Find out more about the science in this article here and keep watching for news from Herschel once the satellite is launched in April 2009!