The keys to collaboration are to agree beforehand on what kind of project you’re doing and then understand that the point is that it will come out differently than it would have if you’d done it by yourself.

Thank you. I love the ocean. I’m never so happy as when I’m by a large body of salt water. I’ve snorkeled and scubaed and was part of a four-year marine chemistry program in high school. So oceans have always been a place of fascination and love for me. I really wish there were an ocean-oriented Launchpad-type program for SFF writers.

I had no particular message in mind when I wrote this one. I separate stories from yarns and yarns from throwaway bits of business; this is just one of the many that sprouted from an initial situation, with no particular authorial plan regarding destination.

There’s something about spiders that creeps certain people out, that’s for starters. I doubt the story will ever lose that angle. The story is also told in a sort of fairy tale mode, albeit a dark one, and that might offer some staying power. And the political underpinnings seem to point out a certain insect fear and cold predation that is the heart of politics these days and doesn’t look like it’ll be changing any time soon.

I do love this far future world, but I haven’t written any other stories in it. It’s really an extension of my exploration of where we go, once we can manipulate our genes and achieve immortality. Is death the dividing line between Human and Non-human? I wonder about that.

As a kid, I wanted very much to believe in the supernatural. I sought evidence for it all around me, because there was always this lingering sense of “is this really it?” As I grew older, as life got harder and as my family struggled to make it in tough times, my wonder at the universe seemed to diminish. I took refuge in the idea that Bigfoot might live in the woods behind my house.

I drew on my history writing Mythos and Weird fiction, where things often start off fairly normal and then go abysmally awry, to create that sense of disorientation and “what’s real?” But in the end, this story is probably the most classically SF story I’ve ever written, up to and including riffing on Robert Silverberg.