Lightspeed Magazine Issue 2 Read online

  Lightspeed Magazine

  Issue 2, July 2010

  Table of Contents

  Editorial by John Joseph Adams

  “No Time Like the Present” by Carol Emshwiller (fiction)

  “Top Five Time Travel Nightmares” by Carol Pinchefsky (nonfiction)

  “Manumission” by Tobias Buckell (fiction)

  Author Spotlight: Tobias Buckell (nonfiction)

  “You Are the Person You Are Now” by The Evil Monkey (nonfiction)

  “The Zeppelin Conductors’ Society Annual Gentlemen’s Ball” by Genevieve Valentine

  Author Spotlight: Genevieve Valentine (nonfiction)

  “A Very Brief History of Airships” by Gregory Bryant (nonfiction)

  “…For a Single Yesterday” by George R. R. Martin (fiction)

  “Music Is Science Fiction: An Interview With The Lisps” by Desirina Boskovich (nonfiction)

  © Lightspeed Magazine, 2010

  Cover Art by Julie Dillion.

  www.lightspeedmagazine.com

  Editorial by John Joseph Adams

  Welcome to issue number two of Lightspeed. Last month we debuted to an enthusiastic response from the science fiction community. There have been numerous comments here on our site, postings in the blogosphere, “likes” on Facebook, retweets on Twitter—and for that, we thank you. In our July issue, we’ve got a whole new slate of material for you, and we hope you’ll let us know what you think of our offerings this month as well.

  In Carol Emshwiller’s “No Time Like the Present,” the residents of a small, economically-disadvantaged town are surprised by the sudden influx of oddly tall, oddly rich, oddly speaking people who appear out of nowhere and buy up all the prime real estate. And if you don’t think that sounds shoe-dad, well, evolve why don’t you?

  Corporate slavery, retrograde amnesia, posthumanism, and kicking ass take center stage in “Manumission” by Tobias S. Buckell, the tale of a mercenary named Pepper who must rebel against those who would seek to control him.

  Steampunk is the order of the day in “The Zeppelin Conductors’ Society Annual Gentlemen’s Ball” by Genevieve Valentine—an SFnal take on a subgenre more known for its flights of fantasy—featuring heliosis, 19th century ephemera, and, of course, airships.

  And from bestselling author George R. R. Martin, we bring you “…For a Single Yesterday”—one of his lesser-known tales, but also one of his most powerful—which explores the value of memory, music, and drugs in the aftermath of an apocalypse.

  On the nonfiction side of things this month, in addition to author spotlights on Genevieve Valentine and Tobias S. Buckell, we’ll be starting off on a humorous note with Carol Pinchefsky and the “Top Five Time Travel Nightmares” you might encounter should go for a swim in the timestream.

  In “You Are the Person You Are Now,” Neurotopia’s Evil Monkey explains how memories work, the difference between retrograde and anterograde amnesia, and how you may be a new person from moment to moment.

  Gregory K. H. Bryant, meanwhile, provides us with “A Brief History of Airships,” a primer on the history and evolution of dirigibles that explains how steerable, lighter-than-air craft progressed from some crackpot inventor’s dream to the elegant, Victorian technology of yesteryear.

  And, finally, in “Music is Science Fiction,” we present an interview with indie rock band The Lisps, whose steampunk musical Futurity tells the story of two Civil War-era inventors who imagine a utopian future defined by an omnipotent machine that will end war once and for all.

  No Time Like the Present by Carol Emshwiller

  A lot of new rich people have moved into the best houses in town—those big ones up on the hill that overlook the lake. What with the depression, some of those houses have been on the market for a long time. They’d gotten pretty run down, but the new people all seem to have plenty of money and fixed them up right away. Added docks and decks and tall fences. It was our fathers, mine included, who did all the work for them. I asked my dad what their houses were like and he said, “Just like ours only richer.”

  As far as we know, none of those people have jobs. It’s as if all the families are independently wealthy.

  Those people look like us only not exactly. They’re taller and skinnier and they’re all blonds. They don’t talk like us either. English does seem to be their native language, but it’s an odd English. Their kids keep saying, “Shoe dad,” and, “Bite the boot.” They shout to each other to, “Evolve!”

  At first their clothes were funny, too—the men had weird jackets with tight waists and their pants were too short. The girls and women actually wore longish wide skirts. They don’t have those anymore. They must have seen right away how funny they looked compared to us, and gone to Penny’s and got some normal clothes like ours.

  They kept their odd shoes, though, like they couldn’t bear not to have them. (They look really soft, they’re kind of square and the big toe is separate.) And they had to wait for their hair to grow out some before they could get haircuts like ours. This year our boys have longer hair than the girls, so their boys were all wrong.

  Every single one of those new people, first thing, put two flamingos out on their front lawns, but then, a few days later, they wised up and took them away. It wasn’t long before every single one of them had either a dog or a cat.

  When Sunday came, they all went to the Unitarian church and the women wore the most ridiculous hats, but took them off as soon as they saw none of us wore any. They wore their best clothes, too, but only a few of us do.

  Even though they come to church, Mom says I shouldn’t make friends with their kids until we know more about them and I especially shouldn’t visit any of their houses. She says the whole town doesn’t trust them even though everybody has made money on them one way or another.

  Their kids have a funny way of walking. Not that funny, actually, but as if they don’t want anybody to talk to them, and as if they’re better than we are—maybe just because they’re taller. But we don’t look that different. It seems as if they’re pretending we’re not here. Or maybe that they’re not here. In school they eat lunch together at the very farthest table and bring their own food, like our cafeteria food isn’t good enough. They obviously—all of them—don’t want to be here.

  I’ve got one of the new people in my class. I feel sorry for her. Marietta…Smith? (I’ll bet. All those new people are Smiths and Joneses and Browns and Blacks.) She’s tall and skinny like they all are. She’s by herself in my class; usually there’s two or three of them in each class. She’s really scared. I tried to help her the first days—I thought she needed a girl friend really badly—but she didn’t even smile back when I smiled straight at her.

  The boys are all wondering if those new boys would be on the basketball team, but so far they don’t even answer when they’re asked. Jerry asked Huxley Jones, and Huxley said, under his breath, “Evolve, why don’t you?”

  Trouble is, my name is Smith, too, but it’s really Smith. I’ve always wanted to change it to something more complicated. I’d rather be Karpinsky or Jesperson or Minnifee like some of the kids in my class.

  I kind of understand those new kids. I have to eat a special diet, and I’m too tall, too. I tower over most of the town boys. And I’m an only child and I’m not at all popular. I don’t care what Mom says, I don’t see what harm there can be in helping Marietta and I’m curious. I like her odd accent. I try saying things as she does and I say, “Shoe Dad,” to my dad even though I don’t know what those kids
mean by it. Maybe it’s really Shoo Dad.

  One of these days I’m going to sneak into her house and see what I can find out.

  But I don’t have a lot of time for finding out things because I have to practice the violin so much. Funny though, when I took my violin to school because I had my lesson that afternoon. Marietta looked at the case as if she couldn’t imagine what was in it. I said, “violin,” even though she hadn’t asked. And then she looked as if she wanted to ask, “What’s a violin?”

  Those kids are all so dumb about ordinary things. Every single one of them has been kept back a grade. I don’t know how they can walk around looking so snooty. It’s as if they think being dumb is better.

  Marietta is awful in school, too. The teacher asked her who was the vice president and she didn’t know. So the teacher asked who was president and she didn’t know that either.

  That gave me the courage to ask her if she wanted help. But then she said her mother doesn’t want her to be friends with any of us and I said my mother says the exact same thing. Finally she laughs, we both do, and she says, “Shoe Dad, if we can keep it secret.”

  (Those kids never say “Okay.”)

  She says, “But I shouldn’t be too smart either. We don’t want anybody to notice us.”

  So far I don’t think she has anything to worry about in that direction. I don’t say that, though. What I say is, “You’re getting noticed for the opposite reason. You need my help.”

  I’m really curious about her house, but she wouldn’t dare invite me and I wouldn’t dare go there. And she can’t come to my house because Mom would be horrified. Too bad they look a little bit different otherwise Mom would never know. So we mostly meet in the woods by the railroad tracks where the bums used to hide out back when there were bums. Mom doesn’t like me to go there either. She thinks maybe there might still be bums around. Marietta and I always scope out the place first, not for bums, but because boys sometimes go there to smoke.

  I discovered Marietta was so bad at math because she was used to writing out the problems in an entirely different way. Once I got that straightened out she got a lot better. But she said Huxley told her there was no need for her ever to know who was president here now. I said, “Why not?” She started to say it wasn’t important but she stopped in the middle. Then she said, it was just that there were some things she wasn’t going to bother knowing.

  She tells me she really likes Judson Jesperson, but she says she’s not supposed to go outside her own group. And me, I like Huxley Jones, but Marietta says he can’t go outside their group either. She’s supposed to like Huxley and I’m supposed to like Judd. I asked her if this was some sort of religious thing? I didn’t dare say racial but Judson has very dark hair and eyes though his skin is just like hers. She said, no, it was something entirely different and she wasn’t supposed to talk about it. She said it would be very dangerous for any of her group to marry outsiders. She said, “Who knows who would be president in a couple a hundred years if Judd and I got married?”

  So anyway, we’re unhappy together and I can tell her all about Judson’s family but she can’t tell me anything about Huxley.

  A dozen more families of the tall people move into town. They can’t take the best houses because they’re already gone, but when they get through with the second best houses, they turn out be almost as good except for not being on top of a hill and next to the lake.

  The first group of kids is getting a little friendlier. Huxley even let himself get talked into being on the basketball team but he didn’t know how to play and had to be taught from scratch. Judd says they’re sorry now. All he has going for him is being tall.

  I don’t care, I like him. I like his stooped over posture. As if he doesn’t want to be that tall. I like his kind of scholarly face. I like his pixie grin. At first he was always frowning at all of us, but pretty soon he wasn’t and especially not at me.

  The first thing I said to him was, “I like your name,” and he actually did smile.

  By now everybody is saying Shoe Dad.

  Then we have the first snow and a snow day. It’s so beautiful. I want to see Marietta right away, but no school so I start out towards her house. I’m not going to disobey Mom. Besides, that’s our only good hill for sledding. Everybody will be up there.

  And there everybody is, with sleds and garbage can lids and folded up cardboard boxes. Some kids even have skis. The new kids are even more excited about the snow than we are. They act as though they’ve never made snowmen and never thrown snow balls. They’re like little kids. Well, actually we all are.

  Those new kids have skis and fancy boots. But not a single one knows how to ski.

  Marietta’s there. I knew she would be. She says first off, “Look… these great boots….”

  She has the fancy kind you can’t walk around in. They’re white with dozens of black buckles. I admit they’re beautiful. I say, “Shoe Dad.”

  “…and they only cost five hundred dollars.”

  She’s always saying things like that. Everything is cheap to her. I wish something was cheap to me. I’d like to say, “Evolve!” but I don’t want to make her feel bad. I say, “Bite the…oh yeah, bite the ski boot.”

  We don’t hear about it till lunch time, but that night in the middle of the storm, odd things disappeared. Half the fish at the fish hatchery, and that very same night, a big pile of lumber from the lumber mill disappeared. The night watchman swears he made his rounds every hour. Sometime between his two o’clock and three o’clock a whole section of lumber was gone and not a sound. The fish people are there early and late. They went to feed the fish at eight and found half the tanks empty. Some of us say the new people are getting blamed just because they’re richer than we are and just because they’re new, though nobody can figure out how they could have done it. Even so, I’m suspicious, too. Dad says the town is going to have a meeting about them.

  Then we hear that exactly the same night, north of us, in Washington State they also lost a lot of lumber. And another place in Nevada lost half their grass-fed beef.

  Funny though, Huxley said all this was our fault. Even that they’re here in the first place is our fault. He said we should have stopped cutting down trees. He won’t say anything more about it. That shows how odd these new kids are. But I guess that’s fair, we blame them for everything and they blame us.

  Except for Marietta, those kids still don’t like it here at all, but Marietta says she’s getting to like it, partly because of being friends with me—where she was before she never had such a good friend as I am—and she also likes it because she always did like camping out and making do with what’s at hand. That makes me wonder all the more where she came from.

  The new people often have meetings in one of the larger houses up on the hill. They can’t hide that because all the best cars in town are parked outside. After the fish and lumber disappear, the next time those cars gather, a whole batch of the town’s people storm the house. It isn’t fair, but the cops are on our side; they’re just like all the town’s people, they don’t trust those new people either. And it isn’t as if the new people had any higher up connections in the town that would help them. So the cops arrest them instead of us, even though we’re the ones that broke into their meeting. Did a lot of damage, too, and not only to the furniture. Six of the new people are in the hospital.

  That leaves a lot of those kids with nobody looking after them. The school principal asks the town parents if they’ll take in some of the children temporarily until their parents can get themselves straightened out with the police. I get my folks to take in Marietta. Mom doesn’t mind it under these circumstances. In fact she acts nice. She even bakes cookies. Marietta can’t believe Mom made these right here at home. She’s so fascinated she forgets to feel worried for a while.

  As usual I have to practice the violin. Marietta tries it out. All she makes is squeaks. She can’t believe how hard it is. She’s only played computer instruments. �
��Aided,” she says, so you don’t have to know anything. But you can have any sound you want and you sound good right at the beginning.

  I have twin beds in my room so we get to be right in together.

  At first Marietta seems to like it as much as I do. We talk until Mom comes in and tells us we have to stop because of school tomorrow. But a little bit after I turn out the light, I’m pretty sure Marietta is crying. I ask if there’s anything I can do.

  She says, “I wish I could go home.”

  I say, “It won’t be long before your parents come back.”

  “I mean I want to go back where we used to live. My real home.”

  “Where is it?”

  “We’re not supposed to say.”

  “Was it so much better there?”

  “Sort of…some ways…except it’s nice being so rich for a change. Of course there’s lots you don’t have…. Oh well.”

  “I’m glad you’re here.”

  “Well, I’m glad for having you.”

  “Can I go up and see your house now that there’s nobody there?”

  “It’s just like yours only richer. That’s because everything is so cheap here otherwise we couldn’t afford stuff. It’s supposed to be just like yours. Our parents made it special to be like that.”

  “Can we go anyway? I like rich stuff and I hardly ever get to see rich things except on TV. Besides, don’t you need to go get more clothes?”

  So we do that—skip school and go up. She’s right. There’s nothing odd about it…except there is. There’s a fancy barbeque thing in the backyard, but obviously never used. There’s a picnic table beside it but no chairs. The two flamingos are in a corner, lying on their sides. Inside it’s awfully—I don’t know how to describe it—cold and stiff, and kind of empty. It’s as if nobody lives there. There’s a National Geographic on one side of the coffee table and a Consumers Report on the other, and that’s all. No clutter. Mom would like it.

  Upstairs, her room has all the right stuff. There’s a brand new teddy bear on the pillow and a small bookcase with brand new books, all very girlie. They don’t look read either. There’s not a single Tarzan or John Carter. I ask, and she never even heard of Tarzan. I tell her I’ll lend her some. Even though we’re too old for those, she’ll like them.