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Shelly evolved as I wrote. At the start, I knew that she was a Chinese-American girl. Despite the speculative element, I wanted the story to take place in more or less the present. Given that I wanted to write a figure skating story, that meant the mother had to be this huge Michelle Kwan fan. It’s hard to overestimate the impact Michelle Kwan had on Chinese-Americans of a certain age. Everything else about Shelly more or less fell out of that.
I have no mouth, and I must scream, proclaims the title of Harlan Ellison’s classic work of science fiction. Like most “classic” works of science fiction, it was written by a white man. For centuries, white voices have been boosted, have been heard more than those of POC (a muddled term, to be sure, but one that facilitates a necessary discussion). It’s been their mouths doing the screaming.
I’d like a diverse list of voices taking speculative fiction in all kinds of directions. Any community needs the constant influx of new ideas and new perspectives in order to remain vital and healthy. Although there’s chaos and displacement involved with new voices, a mature community is enriched by them. Personally, I’d like to see writers from cultures I don’t know very well. From an Australian perspective, indigenous writers are underrepresented in speculative fiction.
I just struck on this idea, after seeing reports on VA hospitals and being aware of the issues surrounding the government’s responsibility for returned veterans, that if in the future we created androids to fight in our wars—what would happen to them after? I didn’t want to make the government the Big Bad necessarily—even if they might struggle with how to deal with their decisions and are in some way always catching up to the fallout. I wanted to think that the government would at least try to help their wounded warriors—whether human or android.
Our guest today is Charlie Jane Anders, editor-in-chief of io9, the internet’s most popular science fiction website. She also won a Hugo award in 2012 for her story “Six Months, Three Days.” We’ll be speaking with her today about her first fantasy novel, All the Birds in the Sky, about two friends who find themselves on opposite sides of a war between witches and mad scientists.
In deciding how a story should end, the main things that I consider are what makes sense for the characters and the story, as well as how I want the reader to feel when the story ends. But usually I don’t know how a story will end when I start. For me, stories are a bit like life: When you start, there are many possibilities, and as you go on, you make choices that narrow the possibilities until, inevitably, life ends.
How could I write about damp jungles with dangerous animals if I hadn’t experienced them myself? Somehow I’m always writing about real things, but in my own twisted way.
This month, we take a look at the newest Max Gladstone novel, Four Roads Cross; a collection of Canadian short fiction (Clockwork Canada, edited by Dominik Parisien); and Binti, by Nnedi Okorafor.
The story had its genesis in two seemingly unconnected events. The first was a rainy day when I came out of the Embankment tube station, and was in the upstairs passage that leads to Hungerford Bridge. There was a small, triangular window in the passage, and from there I had this view of a tiny, incredibly verdant wedge of land on the other side of the street.
I find our reactions to the inevitable fascinating. When you are faced with something inevitable, do you accept it? Try to adapt to it? Fight back? That last can present some interesting conflict, since facing the inevitable—and trying to stop it—presents a genuine challenge, both to me and the characters. Me, because I have to figure out some way to get the characters out of that situation, and the characters, because they have to carry out whatever bizarre plan I’ve come up with.
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