Interstellar Flight Magazine Best of Year One Read online

  Generally, though, I think horror authors are scared of a lot of things. We just know that misery loves company.

  IFP: You just released a charming fantasy novella called Minor Mage (Red Wombat Studio, 2019) about a preteen magician trying to save his town from a drought. What’s up next for you after that? Do you have any more self-published works close to completion?

  TK: I do! A longer book called Paladin’s Grace should be coming out for the holidays, assuming all the ducks line themselves into a row. And I’ve got three or four books in various stages of completion at two different publishers, so there’s a lot more to come!

  T. Kingfisher is the vaguely absurd pen-name of Ursula Vernon. In another life, she writes children’s books and weird comics and has won the Hugo, Sequoyah, and Ursa Major awards, as well as a half-dozen Junior Library Guild selections. In addition to her writing, T. Kingfisher is an artist, a gardener, and the owner of a collection of cats, hound dogs, and incorrigible chickens. The Twisted Ones is available wherever books are sold.

  3 The Greatest Arsenal: Science Fiction Libraries and Archives

  How SFF librarians and archivists are saving the past for the future’s researchers

  by Jeremy Brett

  “You want weapons? We’re in a library. Books are the best weapon in the world. This room’s the greatest arsenal we could have. Arm yourself!”

  The Doctor, “Tooth and Claw” (Doctor Who, Series 2, Episode 2, 2006)

  Science fiction and fantasy fans are no strangers to the imaginative power of the Library (or the Archives). There’s something perennially entrancing about the concept of a limitless repository of information that spans vast eras of history (as with Jorge Luis Borges’ Library of Babel (1962), Isaac Asimov’s “Encyclopedia Galactica” from his Foundation trilogy, or the library assembled from across time and space by the Great Race of Yith in Lovecraft’s “The Shadow Out of Time”(Astounding Stories, 1936)). Equally compelling are the many libraries of fantasy, in which mysterious volumes of magic and sorcery are locked away on endless shelves, to be examined at the reader’s peril. We all know well and love the library at Unseen University in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld Series, presided over by the man-turned-orangutan Librarian; the library of Morpheus in Neil Gaiman’s comic series The Sandman (which contains, among other things, books that only exist in the dreams of their authors); and the fifty-two levels of the Great Library from the Thursday Next series by Jasper Fforde, in which every book that has been written or will ever be written resides.

  Libraries and archives also serve in science fiction and fantasy as sites that preserve—either by design or accident—the last remnants of lost civilizations, such as the collection of pre-World War III relics maintained (and misinterpreted) by the Albertian Order of Leibowitz in Walter Miller’s novel A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959), or the small assemblage of disintegrating books that instantly turn to dust at Rod Taylor’s touch in the 1960 film The Time Machine. Whatever narrative or function these institutions might serve, the idea of vast repositories of knowledge—whether restricted to a small group of elites, or available to all—is an enthralling one.

  Therefore, it makes perfect sense that in the real world we look to libraries and archives to protect and preserve the history of the genre itself, carrying on the mission of their fictional counterparts. There exists a small but growing number of institutions (the majority of them in the United States) that collect materials that document, chart, and explain the history and development of science fiction and fantasy as a genre. These materials include books (novels, anthologies, collections), scholarly journals, comic books, magazines, art, ephemera, objects, audiovisual materials such as film, record albums, or audiocassettes, fanworks such as fanzines and vids, as well as archival collections that include manuscripts and correspondence from genre creators and associates. The variety of materials in any one repository rivals that of the universe itself. (Well, maybe one of the smaller universes.)

  Major institutions that systematically collect SFF materials include, to name some of the most prominent: the Eaton Collection of Science Fiction and Fantasy at the University of California, Riverside (the world’s largest academic SFF collection); the Merrill Collection of Science Fiction, Speculation and Fantasy at the Toronto Public Library (the largest in Canada); the Science Fiction Foundation Archive at the University of Liverpool (the largest in Europe); the SFWA Collection at Northern Illinois University, University of Kansas (with its storied James Gunn Center for Science Fiction); Syracuse University; the University of Iowa; and the Browne Popular Culture Library at Bowling Green State University.

  Science Fiction and Fantasy merit serious study and, as with any form of literature or art or science, require the primary sources for research that libraries and archives provide.

  The existence of collections like these is significant for the SFF genres for several reasons. They preserve the story of What Came Before (or in many cases, What Is Going On Right Now) in science fiction and fantasy for future generations of readers, fans, and scholars. That’s especially important because both the published and the historical record in documents of SFF have so many hidden histories within them that deserve exposure and attention. The old, traditional story of SFF is one told by and for cisgender white men.

  However, using the vast array of historical materials that our great arsenals preserve, we can rediscover and bring back to the light the work of women, LGBTQ creators, the non-white creators, and others who have always been part of the story but whose contributions did not always go recognized or fully appreciated. And independent of the nature of the creator, these arks of history preserve books and stories and articles and all sorts of other works by obscure creators that may deserve a new look. (Think of the decades worth of stories in pulp magazines that can still inspire joy, excitement, and escapism but were never anthologized or collected anywhere, for example.)

  Through conscious efforts, these arsenals can help ensure that the current state of SFF is reflected in the documentary record, too. Curators, librarians, and archivists can collect the works and the papers of newer, rising, or less-established creators and make sure that the history of this generation of SFF creators is preserved alongside the records of the traditional canon.

  Finally, the existence of these collections in major academic or public institutions have a deeper meaning. They signify that science fiction and fantasy are not only frivolous bits of popular culture that don’t count as “real” literature (or film, or whatever else); in fact, they are genres as worthy as any of scholarly attention and research, and of the time and energy of students. Science Fiction and Fantasy merit serious study and, as with any form of literature or art or science, require the primary sources for research that libraries and archives provide. (In conjunction with this, note that several institutions offer Science Fiction Studies as an accepted minor or other program of study: these include UC-Riverside’s Speculative Fiction and Cultures of Science program, the Science Fiction Studies minor program at Georgia Tech, and the new Science Fiction concentration in Texas A&M University’s Department of English.)

  These collections are also physical manifestations of the belief that the materials therein have lasting significance because the genre as a whole has a genuine and real impact on society and culture, on literature, on gender studies, on sociology, and even on science and engineering fields. As we all know, SFF inspires, enlightens, entertains, frightens, and causes us to question why things are and how things could be. That kind of impact demands respect, time, and attention.

  As an example of what these arsenals can hold, I can speak most directly to the collection that I curate, the Science Fiction & Fantasy Research Collection at Cushing Memorial Library & Archives, Texas A&M University. Our collection traces its origins back to the mid-1970s, when librarian Hal Hall (a noted SF scholar and bibliographer in his own right) acquired for Cushing two hundred old SF paperbacks and convinced the director that, indeed, science fic
tion was a subject whose history merited preservation alongside Cushing’s existing collections relating to military history, the history of Texas, the history of books and printing, and other important subjects. From that small seed has grown over the succeeding decades one of the largest collections—one of the strongest arsenals—of its kind in the world.

  The collection at Cushing is comprised of thousands upon thousands of items, including books, magazines, scholarly journals, pulp magazines, three-dimensional objects, items of ephemera, audiovisual materials, and archival collections that together chart the course of science fiction and fantasy since the seventeenth century (one of the oldest items in the collection is the 1640 work A discourse concerning a new world & another planet by John Wilkins).

  The collection is vast, incorporating centuries of published works. Part of the collection’s mission is to capture works, both important and less remembered, from the long history of science fiction and fantasy. Items range from the 1823 second edition of Frankenstein (the first to credit Mary Shelley as the author), to a complete run of the famed Ace Doubles (1952–1978), to first editions of Verne and Wells and nearly every other SFF author of note, to the personal SF library that belonged to Anne McCaffrey, to examples of American comic books and Japanese manga, to complete runs of pulps like Amazing, Astounding, and Galaxy, to collections of genre poetry.

  Cushing’s arsenal also includes over one hundred individual archival collections, that is, collections of primary documents assembled by creators that include manuscripts, correspondence, drafts, and other materials, that as a whole, document one’s life and career. These kinds of things are particularly important because not only is it inherently cool to look at the thing that eventually became the thing we love, but because it lets fans and researchers alike observe how texts evolve from idea to completion and the process surrounding the production of texts. They also provide insights into the minds and sometimes even the whimsies of the creators.

  The Collection’s largest and most well-known collection is that of fantasy author George R.R. Martin, which encompasses hundreds of boxes of paper records as well as books, objects, and Game of Thrones-related merchandise. However, Cushing also holds smaller collections from major figures in the field, such as Arthur C. Clarke, Ray Bradbury, Avram Davidson, Robert Heinlein, Anne McCaffrey, Andre Norton, John Sladek, and Robert Silverberg. In addition, we have a very large collection of archival materials from Michael Moorcock.

  As a Texas institution, one of our primary goals is also to chronicle the rich SFF tradition in our state and in the Southwest region generally. To that end, we also have collections of archival materials from locals (or regionals) like Steven Gould, Laura Mixon, Elizabeth Moon, Joe R. Lansdale, Ardath Mayhar, Howard Waldrop, D.L. Young, and our own local literary celebrity Martha Wells.

  As I noted above, these arsenals also exist in order to preserve the current state of the field and to make sure that creators from marginalized or overlooked populations are included (as women and minorities are achieving such immense things in the genre today). To that end, working with the authors themselves, I have made an effort for Cushing to become the repository for the archives of newer writers like Marie Brennan, Beth Cato, J. Kathleen Cheney, Brenda Cooper, Alyx Dellamonica, Jeannine Hall Gailey, Stina Leicht, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Ada Palmer, Kelly Robson, and Django Wexler. One of my goals has been to expand our holdings—both published works and archives—to include more works by writers of color, women writers, LGBTQ writers, and so forth.

  A well-stocked arsenal should also recognize that science fiction and fantasy libraries and archives are really a triumvirate. One party consists of the creators: the authors, the filmmakers, the artists, the editors, etc. The second includes the scholars who have gone before us and have produced important research on SFF: at Cushing, we have works by and the archives of significant researchers such as Sam Moskowitz and Everett Bleiler.

  And the final member of the triumvirate, just as important as the other two, belongs to the fans: the people who receive the stories, who find joy and meaning in those stories, whose hearts and minds are fired, touched, comforted, and excited by those stories. To that end, we also collect fanworks of all sorts: fanzines, fanfic, vids, and filksong (music generated by and tied to SFF fandom). No one can really understand the full breadth of the SFF world without understanding how readers and viewers interpret, discuss, and revise the creative works that they love.

  Cushing Library is one of a small but expanding number of arsenals (or perhaps a more appropriate metaphor might be ‘arks’, as vessels designed to preserve) devoted to ensuring that the long, fascinating, rich, and complex chronicle of science fiction and fantasy is secured, safeguarded, and made accessible to present and future generations. There will always be an audience for stories of both what might be and what can never be, and there will always be people interested in the history and development of these stories. For those people, collections like ours exist.

  4 Boundary Crossing, Liminality, and the Hungarian Literary Fantastic

  An interview with Bogi Takács, author of Algorithmic Shapeshifting & editor of the Transcendent Series

  by T.D. Walker

  To be in a liminal state for long is a massive demand on one’s energy. And yet this is something that happens to marginalized people all too often. I think a lot of my poems are about this kind of discomfort. And also, when a high-energy state is maintained for long, the release can be explosive.

  Bogi Takács

  Speculative poetry is a constantly-shifting market with a vast and diverse group of readers & writers. Today in our Q&A series, T.D. Walker (a talented poet in her own right and author of Small Waiting Objects from CW Books, 2019) touched base with one of spec poetry’s most powerful voices, Bogi Takács. Editor of the Transcendent series for Best Transgender Speculative Fiction, winner of the Strange Horizons 2014 Readers’ Poll for eir hypertext poem “You Are Here / Was: Blue Line to Memorial Park,” Takács is also a reviewer, journalist, and holds Masters degrees in Psychology and Theoretical Linguistics, as well as attending the University of Iowa for a Ph.D. in Speech & Hearing Science.

  Interstellar Flight Press: One of the striking elements of Algorithmic Shapeshifting (Aqueduct Press, 2019) is the way worldbuilding puts your reader both in this world and in other worlds, at times simultaneously, and others oscillating between them.

  As a writer who works in both speculative prose and poetry, do you find that your approach to worldbuilding changes between each genre? Do the worlds presented in your poems push back on the forms you create with the poetic structures in ways they might not in prose? And how does the language of your poems tie in to that creation of these worlds?

  Bogi Takács: I think that my approach to worldbuilding is roughly the same for both when I write prose and poetry. I generally start with visual imagery. Translating it into words is a separate process, and a very conscious and deliberate one. I do think that my poetry has a closer relationship to words, and—so to say—the surface form, than my prose does.

  IFP: An overarching theme to the book is the idea of boundaries, those created and those transgressed. How did you want the poems to challenge your readers’ ideas about boundaries, both personal and interpersonal? And since poetry collections guide their readers through arguments about the worlds they are set in and composed in, how did you view boundaries between the poems as you were assembling the collection?

  BT: This is a really fascinating question, and now that I consider this topic of boundaries and crossing them, I feel it also applies to my prose. One of my own stories closest to my heart is “This Shall Serve As a Demarcation” (Glittership, Episode 3, 2015) which is very explicitly about demarcations and boundary-settings, both in the physical and the conceptual sense. This is also going to be the starting story in my upcoming debut prose collection The Trans Space Octopus Congregation (Lethe Press, 2019); the one that sets the tone for what will follow.

  But this t
heme definitely appears in my poetry too. Boundary-crossing happened to me in a very physical sense because I’m a migrant. I also find myself thinking a lot about the boundaries of the body, probably related to my being autistic and not having a good sense of my body in space, but also possibly related to transness/intersex-ness. I had a lot of experiences, especially in a medical context, where people would not respect the boundaries of my body or even me as a person. I ended up changing my Twitter username to @bogiperson at one point because I wanted to see it all the time in my face that yes, I get to be a person too. I had trouble believing it. Now some people assume Person is my last name!

  I’m not sure exactly how I want to challenge people’s ideas of boundaries. I do think some boundaries are necessary and important, for example, the boundaries of my body are there for a good reason, and so are everyone else’s. But other boundaries can be restrictive and even harmful; binary sex/gender policing, for instance.

  I think one possible way of thinking about it is that from a certain vantage point, sets with sharply defined boundaries are just a special case of sets with less sharply defined boundaries. Generally, in high school math, one is only taught about the former, but the latter can absolutely exist . . . as much as mathematical constructs can be said to exist. Sharp boundaries can be more of an oddity than not, it all depends on the framework we use. And what we use depends a lot on what we are taught.