Clarkesworld Anthology 2012 (55 page)

From the Editor’s Desk

Neil Clarke

I don’t enjoy writing editorials. I much prefer to be behind the scenes, picking stories or artwork, but this month I feel obligated to say something. As you may have heard, last month, I was nominated for a Hugo Award in the Best Editor Short Form category. It blew my mind. Since
Clarkesworld
is my only editing job, this nomination can only come from you, our readers. I’m very overwhelmed by your support. Thank you! The honor is even more special to me as it is the first time an editor has been nominated purely on the basis of work done in a digital medium. As someone remembers when online fiction was considered second-class, this means a lot to me.

Clarkesworld
is also represented in the Hugos by the fiction of E. Lily Yu (Best Short Story Nominee, “The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees”, April 2011) and Catherynne M. Valente (Best Novella Nominee, “Silently and Very Fast”, Nov-Dec. 2011). Furthermore, two articles originally published in
Clarkesworld
appear in Daniel M. Kimmel’s Best Related Work-nominated book,
Jar Jar Binks Must Die… and Other Observations about Science Fiction Movies.
While not officially a Hugo, the Campbell Award for Best New Writer is part of the Hugo ceremony. This year, we are very pleased to see E. Lily Yu among the list of very talented Campbell nominees. Our congratulations and best wishes go to all of them.

The Hugo’s weren’t the only good news for Catherynne M. Valente. She’s just sold two novels to Tor, one of which is based on “The Radiant Car Thy Sparrows Drew” from
Clarkesworld
#35. Can’t wait for that one!

While I might not enjoy editorials, they are something I need to work on. Last month, I used our social networking presence on Twitter and Facebook to solicit some ideas for future editorials. The suggestions were all over the map, but a few homed in on the changes we’ve gone through over the years and data we’ve collected in regards to reading, writing and online fiction. That seems like a good theme to cover in our fifth anniversary year. Have you ever been curious about our readership, most popular stories, the slush pile or the trends we’ve observed? Now’s your chance to ask. Email me at [email protected] or leave a comment on our website and I’ll try to work those angles into next month’s issue.

Until next time, thanks for reading!

-Neil

About the Author

Neil Clarke is the editor of
Clarkesworld Magazine,
owner of Wyrm Publishing and a 2012 Hugo Nominee for Best Editor (short form). He currently lives in NJ with his wife and two children.

Clarkesworld Magazine

Issue 69

Table of Contents

Immersion

by Aliette de Bodard

If The Mountain Comes

by An Owomoyela

You Were She Who Abode

by E. Catherine Tobler

Energizing Futures: How SF Fuels Itself

by Stephen Gaskell

Neither the Billionaire nor the Tramp: Economics in Speculative Fiction

by Jeremy L. C. Jones

Another Word: Assimilation, Multiculturalism, and Me

by Daniel Abraham

Editor's Desk: Clarkesworld by the Numbers

by Neil Clarke

Target Detected

Art by Max Davenport

© Clarkesworld Magazine, 2012
www.clarkesworldmagazine.com

Immersion

Aliette de Bodard

In the morning, you’re no longer quite sure who you are.

You stand in front of the mirror—it shifts and trembles, reflecting only what you want to see—eyes that feel too wide, skin that feels too pale, an odd, distant smell wafting from the compartment’s ambient system that is neither incense nor garlic, but something else, something elusive that you once knew.

You’re dressed, already—not on your skin, but outside, where it matters, your avatar sporting blue and black and gold, the stylish clothes of a well-travelled, well-connected woman. For a moment, as you turn away from the mirror, the glass shimmers out of focus; and another woman in a dull silk gown stares back at you: smaller, squatter and in every way diminished—a stranger, a distant memory that has ceased to have any meaning.

Quy was on the docks, watching the spaceships arrive. She could, of course, have been anywhere on Longevity Station, and requested the feed from the network to be patched to her router—and watched, superimposed on her field of vision, the slow dance of ships slipping into their pod cradles like births watched in reverse. But there was something about standing on the spaceport’s concourse—a feeling of closeness that she just couldn’t replicate by standing in Golden Carp Gardens or Azure Dragon Temple. Because here—here, separated by only a few measures of sheet metal from the cradle pods, she could feel herself teetering on the edge of the vacuum, submerged in cold and breathing in neither air nor oxygen. She could almost imagine herself rootless, finally returned to the source of everything.

Most ships those days were Galactic—you’d have thought Longevity’s ex-masters would have been unhappy about the station’s independence, but now that the war was over Longevity was a tidy source of profit. The ships came; and disgorged a steady stream of tourists—their eyes too round and straight, their jaws too square; their faces an unhealthy shade of pink, like undercooked meat left too long in the sun. They walked with the easy confidence of people with immersers: pausing to admire the suggested highlights for a second or so before moving on to the transport station, where they haggled in schoolbook Rong for a ride to their recommended hotels—a sickeningly familiar ballet Quy had been seeing most of her life, a unison of foreigners descending on the station like a plague of centipedes or leeches.

Still, Quy watched them. They reminded her of her own time on Prime, her heady schooldays filled with raucous bars and wild weekends, and late minute revisions for exams, a carefree time she’d never have again in her life. She both longed for those days back, and hated herself for her weakness. Her education on Prime, which should have been her path into the higher strata of the station’s society, had brought her nothing but a sense of disconnection from her family; a growing solitude, and a dissatisfaction, an aimlessness she couldn’t put in words.

She might not have moved all day—had a sign not blinked, superimposed by her router on the edge of her field of vision. A message from Second Uncle.

“Child.” His face was pale and worn, his eyes underlined by dark circles, as if he hadn’t slept. He probably hadn’t—the last Quy had seen of him, he had been closeted with Quy’s sister Tam, trying to organise a delivery for a wedding—five hundred winter melons, and six barrels of Prosper’s Station best fish sauce. “Come back to the restaurant.”

“I’m on my day of rest,” Quy said; it came out as more peevish and childish than she’d intended.

Second Uncle’s face twisted, in what might have been a smile, though he had very little sense of humour. The scar he’d got in the Independence War shone white against the grainy background—twisting back and forth, as if it still pained him. “I know, but I need you. We have an important customer.”

“Galactic,” Quy said. That was the only reason he’d be calling her, and not one of her brothers or cousins. Because the family somehow thought that her studies on Prime gave her insight into the Galactics’ way of thought—something useful, if not the success they’d hoped for.

“Yes. An important man, head of a local trading company.” Second Uncle did not move on her field of vision. Quy could
see
the ships moving through his face, slowly aligning themselves in front of their pods, the hole in front of them opening like an orchid flower. And she knew everything there was to know about Grandmother’s restaurant; she was Tam’s sister, after all; and she’d seen the accounts, the slow decline of their clientele as their more genteel clients moved to better areas of the station; the influx of tourists on a budget, with little time for expensive dishes prepared with the best ingredients.

“Fine,” she said. “I’ll come.”

At breakfast, you stare at the food spread out on the table: bread and jam and some coloured liquid—you come up blank for a moment, before your immerser kicks in, reminding you that it’s coffee, served strong and black, just as you always take it.

Yes. Coffee.

You raise the cup to your lips—your immerser gently prompts you, reminding you of where to grasp, how to lift, how to be in every possible way graceful and elegant, always an effortless model.

“It’s a bit strong,” your husband says, apologetically. He watches you from the other end of the table, an expression you can’t interpret on his face—and isn’t this odd, because shouldn’t you know all there is to know about expressions—shouldn’t the immerser have everything about Galactic culture recorded into its database, shouldn’t it prompt you? But it’s strangely silent, and this scares you, more than anything. Immersers never fail.

“Shall we go?” your husband says—and, for a moment, you come up blank on his name, before you remember—Galen, it’s Galen, named after some physician on Old Earth. He’s tall, with dark hair and pale skin—his immerser avatar isn’t much different from his real self, Galactic avatars seldom are. It’s people like you who have to work the hardest to adjust, because so much about you draws attention to itself—the stretched eyes that crinkle in the shape of moths, the darker skin, the smaller, squatter shape more reminiscent of jackfruits than swaying fronds. But no matter: you can be made perfect; you can put on the immerser and become someone else, someone pale-skinned and tall and beautiful.

Though, really, it’s been such a long time since you took off the immerser, isn’t it? It’s just a thought—a suspended moment that is soon erased by the immerser’s flow of information, the little arrows drawing your attention to the bread and the kitchen, and the polished metal of the table—giving you context about everything, opening up the universe like a lotus flower.

“Yes,” you say. “Let’s go.” Your tongue trips over the word—there’s a structure you should have used, a pronoun you should have said instead of the lapidary Galactic sentence. But nothing will come, and you feel like a field of sugar canes after the harvest—burnt out, all cutting edges with no sweetness left inside.

Of course, Second Uncle insisted on Quy getting her immerser for the interview—just in case, he said, soothingly and diplomatically as always. Trouble was, it wasn’t where Quy’s had last left it. After putting out a message to the rest of the family, the best information Quy got was from Cousin Khanh, who thought he’d seen Tam sweep through the living quarters, gathering every piece of Galactic tech she could get her hands on. Third Aunt, who caught Khanh’s message on the family’s communication channel, tutted disapprovingly. “Tam. Always with her mind lost in the mountains, that girl. Dreams have never husked rice.”