Uncanny Magazine Issue 46 Read online

  UNCANNY MAGAZINE

  “Uncanny Magazine Editorial Staff” by Uncanny Magazine

  About Our Cover Artist: Elaine Ho by Elaine Ho

  “The Uncanny Valley” by Lynne M. Thomas & Michael Damian Thomas

  “The Suffering Body Problem” by Meg Elison

  “Your Eyes, My Beacon: Being an Account of Several Misadventures and How I Found My Way Home” by C.L. Clark

  “The Eternal Cocktail Party of the Damned” by Fonda Lee

  “Bones Are Stones for Building” by Haralambi Markov

  “This Village” by Eugenia Triantafyllou

  “The Coward Who Stole God’s Name” by John Wiswell

  “Spirit Folks” by Maurice Broaddus and Rianna Butcher

  “Two Hands, Wrapped in Gold” by S.B. Divya

  “The Scholar of the Bamboo Flute” by Aliette de Bodard

  “The Boy Who Cried Historical Accuracy” by Francesca Tacchi

  “From Panic to Process: What Taking Criticism Actually Means” by Marissa Lingen

  “Gracias, Orlando: A Genre Film and a Queer Body Awakening” by Héctor González

  “No Astra without Aspera” by Tessa Fisher

  “Timeless Pie” by Beth Cato

  “In Stock Images of the Future, Everything is White” by Terese Mason Pierre

  “Spirituals” by Anjali Patel

  “Wormhole” by Abu Bakr Sadiq

  “Interview: Haralambi Markov” by Caroline M. Yoachim

  “Interview: S.B. Divya” by Caroline M. Yoachim

  “Thank You, Patreon Supporters!” by Lynne M. Thomas & Michael Damian Thomas

  Edited by Lynne M. Thomas, Michael Damian Thomas, and Michi Trota

  Ebook generated by Clockpunk Studios.

  Copyright © 2022 by Uncanny Magazine.

  www.uncannymagazine.com

  Uncanny Magazine Editorial Staff

  Publishers/Editors–in–Chief: Lynne M. Thomas & Michael Damian Thomas

  Managing Editor/Poetry Editor: Chimedum Ohaegbu

  Nonfiction Editor: Meg Elison

  Podcast Producers: Erika Ensign & Steven Schapansky

  Podcast Readers: Erika Ensign & Matt Peters

  Senior Assistant Editor: Naomi Day

  Assistant Editor: Monte Lin

  Interviewers: Caroline M. Yoachim & Lynne M. Thomas

  Submissions Editors: Cislyn Smith, Dolores Peters, Heather Clitheroe, Heather Leigh, Jay Wolf, Liam Meilleur, Matt Peters, Piper Hale, Tazmania Hayward, C. E. McGill, Rowan MacBean, Brahidaliz Martinez, Genevra Hsu, Marissa Harwood, Liew Tze

  Logo & Wordmark design: Katy Shuttleworth

  About Our Cover Artist: Elaine Ho

  Elaine is a Singaporean-American illustrator and writer. Her work is influenced by Renaissance and Baroque mannerism, and she’s drawn to themes of the broken and the beautiful. She has been featured in American Illustration, Spectrum Fantastic Art and Infected by Art. View her work at www.artofelaineho.com, or follow her on Twitter and Instagram @artofelaineho.

  The Uncanny Valley

  by Lynne M. Thomas & Michael Damian Thomas

  It’s a wet and cold spring as we write this in Central Illinois. We are falling asleep most nights to the rumble of our sump pumps, which hopefully will keep our house from sinking. These are anxious times, but overall the Thomases remain well. Caitlin has dodged hospitalizations for a full year (*knocks on wood*), Lynne continues to adore her day job as the Head of Rare Book and Manuscript Library at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and Michael and Hugo the Cat have many adventures around the house, much to the bemusement of Lynne and Caitlin.

  We’re slowly making plans for the year. All of us hope to see more of all of you at conventions. Things are scary, but we muddle through the best we can.

  We couldn’t do it without you, Space Unicorns. You are a fabulous and kind community. In a world with so much toxicity and tragedy, you work so hard to make things better through your words and actions. You are amazing—the absolute best. Thank you, you shining and wonderful Space Unicorns.

  PHENOMENAL news, Space Unicorns! SIX Uncanny Magazine stories are finalists for the prestigious Hugo Award! “Colors of the Immortal Palette” by Caroline M. Yoachim is a finalist for Best Novelette, “That Story Isn’t the Story ” by John Wiswell is a finalist for Best Novelette, “Unseelie Brothers, Ltd.” by Fran Wilde is a finalist for Best Novelette, “The Sin of America” by Catherynne M. Valente is a finalist for Best Short Story, “Proof by Induction” by José Pablo Iriarte is a finalist for Best Short Story, and “Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather” by Sarah Pinsker is a finalist for Best Short Story! Congratulations to everybody!

  Even more wonderful news! Uncanny Magazine (Publishers/Editors-in-Chief Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas, Poetry/Managing Editor Chimedum Ohaegbu, Nonfiction Editor Elsa Sjunneson, and Podcast Producers Erika Ensign and Steven Schapansky) is once again a finalist for Best Semiprozine!

  Finally, former Nonfiction Editor Elsa Sjunneson is a finalist for Best Related Work for Being Seen: One Deafblind Woman’s Fight to End Ableism! Congratulations, Elsa!

  It is an amazing list of Hugo Award finalists, many of whom are Uncanny authors and friends. CONGRATULATIONS TO EVERYBODY!!! Thank you to everyone who nominated these works, and to the hard-working Chicon 8 staff. We are honored, ecstatic, and overwhelmed.

  From the Chicon 8 Press Release:

  The Hugo Awards are the premier award in the science fiction genre, honoring science fiction literature and media as well as the genre’s fans. The Hugo Awards were first presented at the 1953 World Science Fiction Convention in Philadelphia (Philcon II), and they have continued to honor science fiction and fantasy notables for more than 60 years.

  Only Chicon 8 members will be able to vote on the final ballot and choose the winners for the 2022 Awards. If you are not already a member, please go to our website https://chicon.org/home/membership-rates/ to register as at least a Supporting member in order to participate in the Hugo Awards. The 2022 Hugo Awards, the Lodestar Award, and the Astounding Award will be presented on Sunday evening, September 4, 2022, at a highlighted formal ceremony at Chicon 8.

  More information about the Hugo Awards is available at: https://chicon.org/home/whats-happening/hugo-awards/

  Questions about the Hugo Awards process should be directed to [email protected] .

  The 80th World Science Fiction Convention, Chicon 8, will take place in Chicago, Illinois, USA from September 1–5, 2022. For more information about the convention, including current membership rates, visit http://chicon.org . All media releases are available at http://chicon.org/home/about-worldcon/press-and-media/ . Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at @chicagoworldcon.

  Outstanding news, Space Unicorns! FIVE Uncanny Magazine stories are finalists for the prestigious Nebula Award from the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America! “The Giants of the Violet Sea” by Eugenia Triantafyllou is a finalist for Best Novella, “Colors of the Immortal Palette” by Caroline M. Yoachim is a finalist for Best Novelette, “That Story Isn’t the Story ” by John Wiswell is a finalist for Best Novelette, “Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather” by Sarah Pinsker is a finalist for Best Short Story, and “Proof by Induction” by José Pablo Iriarte is a finalist for Best Short Story!

  Congratulations to Eugenia, Caroline, John, Sarah, and José!

  It is an amazing list of finalists, many of whom are Uncanny authors and friends. Congratulations to everyone!

  From The SFWA website:

  The awards will be presented in a virtual ceremony on Saturday, May 21, 2022, that will stream live as part of the 2022 Nebula Conference Online. Winners in each categ
ory will be determined by the vote of Full, Active, Associate, and Senior members of SFWA.

  More great news, Space Unicorns! Five Uncanny Magazine poems are nominees for the Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association’s Rhysling Award for speculative poetry! L. X. Beckett’s “What The Time Travellers Stole,” Mary Soon Lee’s “Confessions of a Spaceport AI,” and Abu Bakr Sadiq’s “POST MASSACRE PSYCHE EVALUATION” are all nominees for Best Short Poem. Theodora Goss’s “Medusa Gets a Haircut” and Avi Silver’s “The Captain Flies” are nominees for Best Long Poem. Congratulations to L.X., Mary, Abu, Theodora, Avi, and all of the Rhysling Award nominees!

  Even more fabulous news, Space Unicorns! The 2022 Aurora Awards finalists have been announced, and “Eighteen Days of Barbareek” by Rati Mehrotra is a finalist for the Best Short Story Aurora Award! Congratulations to Rati and to all of the phenomenal finalists!

  From the Aurora Awards website:

  This ballot is for works originally done in 2021 by Canadians. The Aurora Awards are nominated by members of the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Association. The top five nominated works were selected. Additional works were included where there was a tie for fifth place. An online awards ceremony will be held on August 13th, 2022 hosted by When Words Collide ( www.whenwordscollide.org ). NOTE: Links have been provided to the works to help you get more information about them.

  And now the contents of Uncanny Magazine Issue 46! The phenomenal cover is Wall of Roses by Elaine Ho. Our new fiction includes C.L. Clark’s saucy tale of a lighthouse and the sea “Your Eyes, My Beacon: Being an Account of Several Misadventures and How I Found My Way Home,” Fonda Lee’s satirical look at a new circle of Hell “The Eternal Cocktail Party of the Damned,” Haralambi Markov’s exploration of love and duty in the far future “Bones Are Stones for Building,” Eugenia Triantafyllou’s flash story of community “This Village,” John Wiswell’s examination of a very important person “The Coward Who Stole God’s Name,” Maurice Broaddus and Rianna Butcher’s tale of family, magic, and self-empowerment “Spirit Folks,” and S.B. Divya’s surprising retelling and expansion of a familiar tale “Two Hands, Wrapped in Gold.” Our reprint is “The Scholar of the Bamboo Flute” by Aliette de Bodard, which originally appeared in Silk & Steel: A Queer Speculative Adventure Anthology in 2020.

  Our provocative and compelling essays this month include “The Boy Who Cried Historical Accuracy” by Francesca Tacchi, “From Panic to Process: What Taking Criticism Actually Means” by Marissa Lingen, “Gracias, Orlando: A Genre Film and a Queer Body Awakening” by Héctor González, “No Astra without Aspera” by Tessa Fisher, and Nonfiction Editor Meg Elison’s editorial. Our gorgeous and evocative poetry includes “Timeless Pie” by Beth Cato, “In Stock Images of the Future, Everything is White” by Terese Mason Pierre, “Spirituals” by Anjali Patel, and “Wormhole” by Abu Bakr Sadiq. Finally, Caroline M. Yoachim interviews Haralambi Markov and S.B. Divya about their stories.

  The Uncanny Magazine Podcast #46A features “Your Eyes, My Beacon: Being an Account of Several Misadventures and How I Found My Way Home” by C.L. Clark, as read by Erika Ensign, “In Stock Images of the Future, Everything is White” by Terese Mason Pierre, as read by Matt Peters, and Lynne M. Thomas interviewing C.L. Clark. The Uncanny Magazine Podcast #46B features “The Coward Who Stole God’s Name” by John Wiswell, as read by Matt Peters, “Spirituals” by Anjali Patel, as read by Erika Ensign, and Lynne M. Thomas interviewing John Wiswell.

  As always, we are deeply grateful for your support of Uncanny Magazine. Shine on, Space Unicorns!

  © 2022 Lynne M. Thomas & Michael Damian Thomas

  Lynne and Michael are the Publishers/Editors-in-Chief for the four-time Hugo and Parsec Award-winning Uncanny Magazine.

  Nine-time Hugo Award winner Lynne M. Thomas was the Editor-in-Chief of Apex Magazine (2011-2013). She co-edited the Hugo Award-winning Chicks Dig Time Lords (with Tara O’Shea) as well as Whedonistas (with Deborah Stanish) and Chicks Dig Comics (with Sigrid Ellis).

  Along with being a six-time Hugo Award-winner, Michael Damian Thomas was the former Managing Editor of Apex Magazine (2012-2013), co-edited the Hugo-finalist Queers Dig Time Lords (with Sigrid Ellis), and co-edited Glitter & Mayhem (with John Klima and Lynne M. Thomas).

  Together, they solve mysteries.

  The Suffering Body Problem

  by Meg Elison

  As a millennial, what was I to do when I got COVID but announce it on the internet?

  I was miserably ill with the Delta variant of the novel coronavirus. I ran the typical fever, had the characteristic fatigue and the long cough. I had not been so sick in decades. I felt the sapping of my energy—physical and mental—so keenly that I legitimately worried about my ability to rise from the bathtub once I got down into it. I languished. I had no doubt in my mind that if I had caught this strain of this deadly plague without the benefit of having been vaccinated that the infection would have threatened my life.

  Naturally I told the internet. I could see no one—my partner and I quarantined absolutely the second we realized what we probably had. I had been largely locked in my house for a year and a half already, and I had gotten infected the moment I’d broken that lockdown. I was lonesome for company, craving the extrovert’s perfect drug, and frustrated as an artist who lives to eavesdrop and people watch. All I had was the internet. I told the story of my symptoms and my discomfort, my misery, and my gratitude that it was not worse.

  Unexpectedly, friends in the SF/F community reached out to share not just solidarity but real advice. When I worried in the open about long COVID and my (still ongoing but much diminished) parosmia, I got a DM from S.B. Divya, a talented author and early COVID sufferer. Divya has been open about her infection and its long-term consequences, but I hadn’t read the story yet. She reached out and explained how it had been for her, offering her sympathy and an opportunity to talk. I was overwhelmed with gratitude.

  My friend and fellow genre writer Effie Seiberg also wrote fearlessly about her experience with myalgic encephalomyelitis or chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), which is an autoimmune disorder that has been triggered for some people following COVID or other viral infection. Seiberg has been generous in this conversation, enduring the projections of people who live in fear of living as she does, advocating for herself and people like her while also recommending that folks do everything they can to avoid catching COVID.

  Thus armed with the compassionate nonfiction of my friends, I returned to my endless unrefreshing COVID sleeps and tried to force my brain to read fiction. I gave up on trying to get it to make fiction in the early days, but I was lucky enough that I could keep reading.

  I wanted to read about disease and suffering, but the great COVID novels are still slouching toward New York, ready for their time to come around. I thought of old and new favorites: of Stephen King’s plague opus The Stand with its 1970s style reliance on institutions and the American-do spirit that sees town hall democracy standing watch against demonic powers and small-town politics alike. In all its hundreds of thousands of words, The Stand has the room it needs to describe a respiratory illness turned deadly, featuring first-person suffering of breathlessness, mucus production, and the delirium of fever between the boiling of a brain and the comprehension that evil walks the world in cowboy boots.

  I turned back to Scalzi’s Lock In because we were all locked in, weren’t we? Not like the people in his novel who suffer from Haden’s syndrome and cope with their comatose consciousness by walking around in AI-integrated robotic transport bodies. Scalzi shows us the body in the sickbed, needing care but nearly forgotten, even by its owner, for the crime of becoming moveless. However, as COVID dragged me through a third week of breathless exhaustion, I would have said an enthusiastic goodbye to my suffering body and yes to such a device.

  Plague and zombie novels are as common as table salt. More difficult to find were the stories told from inside the suffering body. Even inside the fog of desperation,
I could not help but think like a writer—why is it so hard to tell people how it feels? Is it that suffering is too universal, to repetitive, too inane to be compelling? I searched for proof that that wasn’t the case, and I found it.

  I returned to Nicola Griffith’s 1992 debut novel Ammonite, winner of the Lambda and Otherwise awards that year, for her particular view of suffering. Marghe, Griffith’s linguist and explorer, intentionally allows herself to get infected with an alien virus in order the comprehend it and become one with the people who suffer from it. Marghe’s decision leads her to deeper understanding of gender, as this is a sex-linked plague, and to a trance state that allows her to adjust the conditions necessary for conception on a world without men. Ammonite makes suffering into something useful, something meaningful, rather than just a difficulty to be endured.

  I took Sarah Gailey’s advice about meeting what I needed in a short story and read “Tongtong’s Summer” by Xia Jia (translated by Ken Liu). I followed a girl who cared for her aging grandfather as he recovered from surgery, reading the careful and caring way Xia describes the suffering of the body as it is compounded by age and eased by the love of those close to us. I delighted in Rachael K. Jones’ “Six Fictions About Unicorns,” especially the way she juxtaposes the everyday expense and suffering of a disease like diabetes with the wonders that a magically gifted animal can and cannot perform. Scrolling in the middle of a sleepless, delirious night, I stumbled across a letter by novelist Frances Burney to her sister about her experience undergoing a mastectomy—a process that by 1811 could be completed successfully and leave her to tell the tale, but was as yet administered without the benefit of anesthesia. I found “Desire” by Kiini Ibura Salaam, an indulgently beautiful story that mixes the heavily erotic and sensual with suffering, where the god of disease pursues even as we enjoy the prime use of our bodies. I felt that in my bones—the endless forest fire of desire never surrendering, even when sickness seems it will never abate.