Categories
fiction first look novella Rahab SF spec fic The New People

M-Brane SF Double #1

Today was meant to be the release date for M-Brane SF Double #1, partly in honor of the birthday of Jeff Lund, who created the nifty cover art and who puts up with M-Brane publisher Chris Fletcher on a daily basis. Alas, the coincidence of a tiny glitch in the cover layout (not Jeff’s responsibility) and the long Memorial Day weekend has caused a delay. A week perhaps. Which may mean the pre-publication special is still open: the print Double plus a passel of electronic-form M-Brane merch, all for the low low price of $14.95. Why not head over to M-Brane Press and try?

Meanwhile, in my quixotic fashion, I will continue to claim 31 May 2011 as official pub date. And so, to welcome you into my half of the book, herewith the 1,300-word first chapter of my ~30,000-word novella.


The New People

 

1: Haven-city, Haven-archipelago: EJ 313 Zizdy 03

Running blind, he collided with somebody or something, stumbled, nearly fell, but kept running. The endless clamor in his ears was like surf magnified, roaring. Surely people were screaming, sirens wailing. The phone was out—even if he could have heard anything under the roar—a dead, cold weight on the bone of his jaw. The second time, he couldn’t keep his balance. Unseen paving rushed up to strike palms and knees, hard and hot. He rolled onto his shoulder. Something punched his side and he continued rolling until the low seawall stopped him. He kept blinking, trying to see, but there was only light. He felt the inarticulate grunts and moans in his throat but couldn’t hear them, couldn’t stop them. Pavement shuddered under his cheek as the tower continued to collapse. Shuddering himself, he lay there for what seemed like a very long time, arms crooked around his head, knees pulled up to protect his belly, panting, sobbing.

Eventually the throbs of light in his eyes began to slow and dim, though the dull roar continued in the bones of his skull. When he could distinguish the movements of his fingers, he sat up, leaning against the wall. The fog of brightness made everything hazy and flat. Nobody was running now but he saw people in the eye-burning yellow of Emergency Response moving against the backdrop of indistinct buildings. The façades glowed with a white clamor pierced by prisms of hot glass that made his eyes tear. Unless it was shock, fear, horror that made him cry.

They weren’t supposed to have, to use weapons. The new people, if that was what they called themselves. The manifesto spoke of reform, of change—not killing. He had wanted to join them, further their aims. They had bombed the nursery.

Pulling himself to his feet, he turned his back on the corniche and its buildings, placed his hands flat on the top of the seawall. Morning sun threatened to blind him again if he looked up. Below, the beach lay deserted, abandoned belongings forlorn on disturbed sands. Waves lapped unconcerned onto the sand, surf burst on the reef. Far across the water, the silvery ribbon of the elevator climbed from the horizon to pierce the zenith, longer than anything, taller than anything—immeasurably taller than the nursery spire before it fell. If he looked right, down the beach, only a little way, there would be débris where the tower had collapsed, broken on the sand. Débris. Bodies. Babies.

Madmen. Only madmen could deliberately kill babies.

Something touched his shoulder. He tried to shrug it off, but it was a hand that grasped hard and forced him to turn. The man in ER yellow was talking to him. “I can’t hear you,” he said, unsure whether he could be heard himself. “I don’t think I’m hurt badly but I can’t hear anything except—” The man seemed to be shaking his head. “I can’t see very well either.”

Wielding some medical implement, the man inspected his ears, then changed the setting to irradiate his eyes. That made him blink, but afterward his vision came clear. Ears remained blocked to any sound but the constant rumbling in his skull of the bomb’s aftershocks. The man held up a hand and he understood he was meant to count the fingers: “Three.… Two.… Four.… My name is Jafet. I arrived from Away last night—I’m on vacation. Do you need my ID?”

The man nodded.

Jafet reached for the lozenge on its chain around his neck, suddenly aware he hadn’t picked up his satchel when he fled the café. But it was ID the man wanted and he carried that on his person. Tugging it free, he handed it over, scarcely noticed the man slipping it into his journal’s aperture. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I need to sit down.”

Faltering, he reached behind to be sure of the wall and sat. Below the frayed hem of his sarong, ash and dust crusted his legs. There were scratches and streaks of muddy blood—the worst of it from his fall but some might be shrapnel. He lifted his hands: more scratches, more blood, more dirt, on palms and forearms.

Another hand appeared, returning his ID. Jafet took it and looked up. The man’s blinding coverall wasn’t dirty but creased and crumpled as if he’d pulled it on only a moment ago. His name was stitched across the breast in red, NISIM, above the municipal emblem. His face was blank with concern as he searched his pockets. Finding what he needed, he leaned over Jafet with a different tool, pressed it to the muscle and tendon of Jafet’s jaw where the phone was bonded to the bone. A thin, angry whine sliced through the roar in Jafet’s ears. He winced.

The man, Nisim, inspected his implement, made an adjustment, pressed it against Jafet’s jaw again. The whine modulated down to an easy, not unpleasant tone, then cut out. Nisim made another adjustment.

“Can you hear me now?”

Muffled and distorted by the continuing roar, the voice from the aether was nevertheless distinct. “Yes,” Jafet said.

“How close were you?”

“In the café.”

Nisim’s black eyes opened wide. “Judgment! And you got out before the rest of the building fell on you?”

Jafet shook his head. “I told you—I’m from Away. I’ve been running out of buildings since I could run. It’s like an instinct. I hope—”

In turn, Nisim grimaced. “Probably not. We know about typhoons in Haven, but typhoons give you warning, and you run inside. The nursery was typhoon proofed.”

“How…how many?”

“Too soon to tell.” Biting his lip, Nisim looked away. “Staff, expectant fathers, other visitors: a few hundred, probably. Most of the babies should survive if we can dig the bottles out fast enough. I should—”

Jafet took a breath. “Yes, you should. Now. I’ll be fine.” He took another breath. “Thank you for telling me about the babies.”

“The bottles are tough.” Nisim almost smiled. “Here.” He handed Jafet a foil sachet. “Put this on your scratches after you wash. If the tinnitus hasn’t faded by morning, or if anything else feels weird, get yourself to a clinic. My phone knows you now, so I’ll check in tomorrow.” He nodded, turned away, then looked back, a crooked grin ready to turn to tears. With a start, Jafet comprehended the young man’s astonishing beauty. “On behalf of the municipality,” Nisim said, “I apologize for your vacation being spoiled.” Then, trotting, he was away down the corniche.

What’s that supposed to mean, Jafet wanted to say. He was breathing hard again, nearly hyperventilating. He didn’t want to watch Nisim reach the ruins—the café where the waiter who’d served him, the cook who’d prepared his breakfast, the other customers must all have been crushed when the nursery behind and above collapsed and fell on them. He hadn’t authorized payment for his meal before fleeing. It was the second explosion that blinded him: he had paused for an instant, stupid, not twenty meters from the café doors, looked back, looked up. The slender spire of the nursery—first and largest nursery in the world—was moving, jerkily swaying. He knew it was designed to move, but not like that. At the top of the spire, the titanic sculpture gleamed and flashed as sunlight caught on its facets and curves: stylized father nurturing stylized son.

But then as he watched, the babe in his daddy’s arms flared blue-white like a little star, brighter than the sun, searing Jafet’s eyes before he could turn and run, before the concussive blast deafened him.

The first explosion had done the job—the second was merely symbol.

Jafet swallowed dry. Madmen. If it were the new people, he wanted nothing to do with them—he wanted them punished, however noble their aims. His hotel was half a kilometer up the corniche, an easy stroll. He started walking.


Intrigued? You might also want to look into issue #10 of M-Brane SF (November 2009), led off by “Jannicke’s Cat,” a novelette from two hundred fifty years earlier in the history of The New People’s planet; and M-Brane SF Quarterly #1 (October 2010), containing “Annie,” a short story roughly contemporaneous with “Jannicke’s Cat.”

Both those stories, along with The New People and much else, are meant one day to be folded into a volume of conventional-novel length. A Boy’s History of the World (working title) will be a sweeping sci-fi panorama of the extra-solar planet Rahab, from the foundational trauma of Eve’s judgment, when all the women began to die, to the first tentative recontact with a human universe containing two sexes.

That’s the plan, anyway. Logistics are complex. Watch this space for progress reports.

Categories
fiction short stories spec fic

mega congratulations

Last evening in New York (while I cowered under the blankets in Rhode Island: second week of persistent migraine aura), my friend Sandra McDonald (who wasn’t in attendance either) won the Lambda Literary Award for LGBT SF/Fantasy/Horror with her luscious, enigmatic, and spectacular collection Diana Comet and Other Improbable Stories, which you should buy and read right fast if you haven’t already. If you don’t love it, you are no friend of mine.

Sandra’s was one of five titles on the (actually very long) Lammy short list with which I had some pre-publication involvement. I designed two of the Gay Erotica finalists—Tented, edited by Jerry L Wheeler; and A Twist of Grimm by William Holden—and one of the SF/F/H titles—Disturbed by Her Song by Tanith Lee, writing as and with Esther Garber and Judas Garbah. Less visibly, I copyedited/proofread Wilde Stories 2010, edited by Steve Berman, and Diana Comet. Naturally it was not possible for all of them to win. Nevertheless, I’m delighted the judges had the excellent taste to honor one of my two favorite books of last year.

Now you’ll have to excuse me: I have the MS of Sandra’s newest novel waiting to be read….

Categories
fiction novella Rahab SF spec fic The New People

tomorrow week

The M-Brane SF Double, comprising (as has been said before) my short novel The New People bound tête-bêche with Brandon Bell’s Elegant Threat, is very nearly a real thing—an object to be held in one’s hands, caressed, fondled…read. M-Brane mastermind Chris Fletcher just released an image of the almost final wraparound cover:

You still have a week to take advantage of the pre-order special and receive not just the physical Double but a veritable waterfall of other M-Brane fictions in electronic formats, all for the low, low price of $14.95. What are you waiting for?

 

Categories
BrazenHead

open letter

Dear Writers:

Sure, the guidelines look a bit long and verbose, perhaps a tad precious. But still, how long can it take you to read 800 words? Please do so. Please preserve me from ever again having to write a sentence like this: Your description of ______ makes clear the work is almost precisely the opposite of the kind of book I wish to publish.

If I were looking for 500,000+-word novels, I would not have specified an upper limit of 60,000. If I were interested in publishing works of unadorned realism (as you claim yours to be), I would not have said, twice, I wished to read solely science fiction, fantasy, and/or supernatural horror. While I did not specify an iron prohibition against fiction that celebrates pederasty, my distaste for the subject matter is really quite apparent. Likewise, the subtext fairly shouts that I have no patience for poor English and am desperately unlikely to look kindly on acres of pages Babelfished from your native tongue.

Furthermore, and this is perhaps just petty, my goddamn name is all over the guidelines page. It was simply rude to address your cover letter to Sir/Madam.

Also rude: to claim explicitly that your vision, as a straight woman, of homosexual men’s (and boys’, I suppose) lives is truer and more beautiful than a gay man’s.

Saving yourself perhaps five minutes, max, by barely glancing at the guidelines, you have wasted a good deal more than five minutes of my time and generated rather a lot of ill will. Following up with a rude (I believe it was rude: it was basically incomprehensible) and bitter reply to my diplomatic, comprehensive rejection letter—well, I take that as gravy. Salty, unpalatable gravy.

In all good conscience, I cannot wish you better luck as you seek publication elsewhere.

regards,

AX

Categories
fiction historical fantasy short stories spec fic

surprise award nomination

A friend who attended Gaylaxicon 2011 at Outlantacon this weekend informs me that my Arabian Nights-esque short story “Firooz and His Brother” appeared on the shortlist for the 2010 Gaylactic Spectrum Awards. Which all seems rather odd to me since “Firooz” first appeared in 2008, but apparently the 2009 awards recognized only novels while 2010 bundled together two years’ worth of short fiction. Huh.

At any rate, I have not yet found a press release or anything on the Web but choose to trust my source. The irrepressible Hal Duncan won the short-fiction award, I’m told, but I don’t know which story. When I do find back up, I’ll update the entry for “Firooz and His Brother” on the stories page with a link.

Meantime, should you wish to read my story, which appeared originally in the May 2008 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, it’s readily available in two best-of-the-year anthologies: Wilde Stories 2009, edited by Steve Berman (Lethe Press, 2009), and The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2009, edited by Rich Horton (Prime Books, 2010).

Categories
The Unexpected Thing

oh happy day

Today, 8 May 2011, is the eighteenth birthday of my closest companion (bar the cats) of the last two years. Or would be if, you know, he were an actual person rather than an imagined construct, a character in a novel nobody but myself has yet read all the way through. As of today, Nathaniel Walker is enfranchised; some time in the next thirty days, when the post office is open, he’ll have to fill out one of those little cards to register with Selective Service; later this month he’ll be graduated from high school. In the Commonwealth of Massachusetts where he resides, if it were a weekday, he could go to town hall for a marriage license without his parents’ consent…if his fiancé weren’t still seventeen for a few more months.

Actually, I’m not entirely certain of the legalities. Rustam Shirazi was legally emancipated in the fall of 2009: in the law’s eyes, he has no parents. Nevertheless, I expect they’d wait at least until Rusty turns eighteen on 2 August.

This year, in the United States and a number of other countries, today is also Mother’s Day. That Nate’s birthday would coincide, any year it fell on a Sunday, with that holiday was not intentional: I merely needed a Friday in early May of 2009. It irritated him when he noticed it—not especially gracious about sharing the spotlight. When I noticed it, I deliberately gave his boyfriend my own mother’s birthday. I’m not at all certain Lee Jeffers would appreciate the sentiment. She thoroughly disapproved of Mother’s Day, a commercial stratagem of the greeting card, floral, and candy industries, saying she was a mother every day of the year and her children had better not forget it.

Eleven years after her death, I have not forgotten. Nevertheless, though I share her cynicism about the holiday, I wish all mothers and their children who do like to celebrate it a happy Mother’s Day.

 

Lee Jeffers, 1926 - 1999 (portrait by Sam Manning ca mid-1950s, ineptly photographed by AJ)

Now I need to get back to that short story I started the other day.

Categories
fiction novella Rahab SF spec fic The New People

pub date approacheth

Over at the M-Brane SF blog, Chris Fletcher has announced a firm publication date for the M-Brane SF Double: 31 May 2011. To entice you into being among the early readers of this startling little book, Chris offers a massive trove of free electronic-form M-Brane bling to the first hundred pre-orderers, including a lifetime subscription to the flagship monthly ’zine M-Brane SF itself. What are you waiting for? It’s only $14.95!

 

While you’re there, be sure to read Chris’s prefaces to Brandon Bell’s Elegant Threat and my The New People—but hit that PayPal button first.

To send you on your way: A live performance of the song that inspired and titled my novella, Ivri Lider’s “Ha’anashim Ha’chadashim,” in an odd, countrified arrangement.