The tokens are just one of the million weird little details I don’t even try to explain—the story is full of “exposition around the edges,” little throwaway things that imply a vaster universe where the story takes place. In my mind the tokens are sort of like the coins that people used to put on the eyes of the dead to pay the ferryman to take you into the afterlife—some kind of magical token to aid your journey to the land of the dead, a last kindness that a colleague can bestow upon you.

Could any of us resist using [the Device] in some manner? I would probably pop across to an adjacent Earth so I could visit my parents and grandparents, or maybe buy Alfred Bester a drink. … Or would I become obsessed with using it to avert some disaster or personal pitfall? Even if it were nearly impossible to alter events on most Earths, it would be a wondrous tool for historians and scientists, but might be a very dangerous technology for any government to possess.

I liked the idea that, in order for you to study magic, there would have to be some kind of significant price paid, that magic wouldn’t be something you would happen to be born to, or understand intuitively. Thus, the magician who was going to instruct you would be not so much a donor as a vendor.

This was the first story I wrote in which I tapped into, and consciously tried to transmute, my personal tragedies and joys. The discovery of how to do that, and really of the need to do that, was my most important creative takeaway from Clarion—second in value only to the deep friendships that began there and that have changed my life and sustained my art.

This story arose out of my interest in the Algonquin myth of the Windigo. I’ve heard different versions, but the basic idea is that people who resort to cannibalism become these amazing super-powered but cursed creatures. The idea of losing your humanity through the acquisition of greater-than-human power is a fascinating idea, especially when I began coupling it with other cannibalistic mythos.

By using a rather familiar set of genre tropes—one with a history almost as long as the genre itself—you really can observe what social issues have moved in and out of the spotlight over time. Gender fluidity, group dynamics, science without oversight—none of these are new topics in science fiction, but I hope I make observations about each in these two stories that at the very least suggest the flavour of the age I’m writing in and for. If not, that’s certainly something to aspire towards.

Neverland was before Pan; Neverland will be after Pan. There are other routes to the second star on the right, but I think most of them are more individual than this one. This was “everybody into the boat, we’re casting off,” and the kids just ran. Pan comes to your window and promises the most wonderful adventures. I wanted to remind people of that, that Neverland was there a long time before Peter fell out of his pram and got himself Lost.