This story is set in my far-future space-opera-ish Ten Thousand Worlds, a civilization extending up and down our arm of the galaxy. I’ve probably written close to a million words in various novels and short stories set in this universe, all of them at about the time that the big change from rationalism to sympathetic association (magic) is about to happen. Readers who find the setting interesting might visit my webpage and read the excerpts from other works set on Old Earth under the Archonate, as well as others of the Ten Thousand Worlds.

I got the idea for the short story after talking with my husband about a novel idea I had involving a lot of elements on androids. I had been thinking of Philip K. Dick—I always felt that the androids in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? were fascinating, and the Blade Runner interpretations of them were equally intriguing. All these elements combined to spark the story—and another story, a book which I recently sold to Penguin/Razorbill. The short story is in no way similar to the novel I’m writing, but both were written with the same spark of inspiration.

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.