Advertisement
Where is the sacrifice in a martyr who believes he’ll live eternally in paradise? I was trying to think about the idea of true martyrdom—the sacrifice of not just your life, but of the hope for an afterlife.
Welcome to issue seven of Lightspeed! On tap this month… Fiction: “In-fall,” by Ted Kosmatka, “The Observer,” by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, “Jenny’s Sick” by David Tallerman, “The Silence of the Asonu” by Ursula K. Le Guin. Nonfiction: “Black Holes: Starving and Misunderstood,” by Dr. Pamela Gay, “Feature Interview: Greg Bear” by John Joseph Adams and David Barr Kirtley, “Five Upcoming Plagues (We’re Doomed),” by Genevieve Valentine, “Linguistic Expectations,” by Lawrence M. Schoen.
I’ve always favored art that was evocative rather than literal. I think my art is a balance between the two, and that balance shifts depending on the nature of the assignment.
So, in other words, you’re curled up naked on the couch with your new Na’vi hottie which, alas, is really just a bowl of blue Jello. This phenomenon is a well-documented finding in the scientific literature. (Well, maybe not the part about the Jello.)
Halfway through writing “Ej-es,” I emailed Janis Ian to tell her that I had turned her ballad of love and longing into a story about a retro-virus in the brain. She emailed back, “How did you know?”
Our actions now will profoundly change the literal and metaphorical landscape for the next generation. Unfortunately, we’re pretty sure that the future is the last place anybody wants to be.
I wanted the structure of the story to mimic the time-jumps that Hwang endures over and over again, in order to evoke at least a ghost of that instability, that sense of unease. I also had some ideas that I wasn’t sure how to make use of individually.
In every group of humans in known and recorded history, there have been members who modified their bodies. The reasons behind their choices vary widely, even within a single society.
We’re already seeing the emergence of fringe groups who call themselves Otherkin, or therianthropes, or parahumanists. But, I think the point is, there are humans who do not see themselves as humans.
“Respect” and “dungeonmaster” are two words I never thought I’d see in the same sentence in any publication, so your question has fulfilled one of my lifetime goals. As for respect, you’re usually being reviled by either your players (even as they ask when the next session is going to be, sometimes with veiled threats) or the community at large in high school, college, or in the working world, and your dating pool slowly and surely shrinks to the radius of a Lilliputian dime.
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement