Technology is what makes us super. Every single one of us. Smartphones put us not just in contact with other people anywhere, anywhen, and give us the ability to socially interact, but also give us access to almost any piece of human knowledge. That’s a superpower. We can’t fly, but we have machines that can, and serve you a cocktail while you’re hurtling across the sky. Superhero stories are always about an aristocracy (like vampire stories)—an elite with special abilities and agency: Technology is the great leveller. All of us can have something like that power. As Syndrome says in The Incredibles, “When everyone’s super, no one is.”

Science fiction embraces seduction. Alice Bradley Sheldon, writing under the pen name of James Tiptree, Jr. is adept at taking on this concept. With “And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill’s Side,” first contact is mystical and mysterious. Every action of the Sirians is perceived as sexualized, even when the actions remain normal to the aliens. This is the same kind of enticement and curiosity that drives men and women to pursue ideas and fantastical dreams. At the same time, as a woman writing in a vastly patriarchal field, Sheldon described the plight of women in science fiction, and how essential they would be to the field.

So it is with every hero’s quest—there is a moment when the hero has an opportunity to choose ease and tranquility, where the object is obscured from view, where the sails go slack and resolve fades. And they may choose to give up and give in and give way to bliss and sweetness and sleep—and it is perilous. The Insect is fragile and vulnerable in his spirit, but he is in his body, too. And it was important show that.

This story has a complicated genesis. The short answer is that it’s a tie-in to my new novel, Twinmaker. I’ve been writing a bunch of these stories to explore aspects of the world and the main characters (including “The Missing Metatarsals” and “Face Value,” also published by Lightspeed). “Hobbyist” sprang in part from speculation regarding how death from illness is treated in a post-scarcity society. It would be easy to regard it as a vile injustice, but modern humans have always had a nuanced relationship with mortality, and that’s something I was keen to look into.

I did lots of research into candy-making in the ’20s in Chicago. The candy industry in Chicago was a big deal, and the stuff in the story is pretty accurate as far as that goes, the female workers, the kinds of machinery, although also, given that it’s a story about a candy factory, I went Wonka on the list of things Chet’s father brings in from his travels. Only a little, though—most things in this story are things you might find in the real world. Besides, of course, the talking, tasty mummy.

I would have been thirteen. The anthology was called Flashing Swords, the story was called “Morreion,” and it started me dreaming.

A common part of the experience of cultures facing the threat of loss (via emigration and assimilation, colonial domination, or something else) is the conflict between the older and younger generations as to the value and meaning of that cultural legacy. This story explores three possible resolutions—out of countless other possibilities—of this conflict.

I used to call myself an absurdist writer, back in the early 2000s—in keeping with the fact that I was doing more straight-up comic fiction. And I think that a lot of the goal of writing fiction, for me and maybe for other people too, is to point out how ridiculous and nonsensical a lot of stuff is. In this story, the media frenzy pretty quickly turns into a look at people’s unfulfilled yearning for the kind of power that they think Peter has. People fantasize about having the ability to change the world, without having to pay any price. Fantasy stories often revolve around the idea of paying a price for magic, and I wanted to approach that from a different direction.

The starting point for this story came when I wondered if crime could ever occur in a hive society. If you imagine aliens that are less inherently individual than humans, could there still be enough motive to commit, for instance, a murder? When I began writing, I had no idea how the story would end, but as I went on, it came to me that even under conditions of low individual selfishness, there might be selfishness on the group level. Everything grew out of that. The different genotypes of ammet, which could be redesigned or discontinued or even recalled if they turned out to be defective. The communal living, with refectories and dormitories. The basic drive of every ammet to do its predetermined job.

Marvin Dimitri is inspired by a family friend who has been declared dead about four times. Most of the deaths in the story are his: He went missing in Vietnam, died on the operating table, wandered back to work after they found his wrecked car.