IGMS Issue 29 (12 page)

My fourteen-year-old daughter Sophia sets the flower, one of the last from our ruined greenhouse, by the crude headstone I erected several weeks ago. The rose is a bright splash of red against the stark white of August snow.

A recollection comes to me as I look at that flower, a quotation which seems appropriate now. "There was a writer named J. M. Barrie," I say by way of introduction.

She looks up at me, pale blue eyes like her mother's. Eyes that will haunt me as long as I live, though I have good reason to believe that won't be much longer. Good reason as well to believe that it won't be much longer for any of us.

"He's the man who wrote the original Peter Pan story," I tell her. "Over a hundred years ago now. And he once wrote - not in Peter Pan, but in something else - 'God gave us memory so that we might have roses in December.'"

Sophia frowns. "But it isn't December."

"No," I agree. "It's not."

But it might as well be. It's colder now than any December I can remember here in Arkansas. It's been cold now for long, for far too long. First all of the electronics died. No cell phones, no internet, no anything. Then the cold and snow and wicked winds came. Some people drove off, trying to find others, trying to get news. They never returned. No one else arrived.

"Come on," I tap my daughter on her shoulder. It's not wise to be out after nightfall and somehow it seems like it is getting dark earlier than it should these days. "We need to go."

We follow our tracks back towards home. The drifting snow has obscured them in some places, but I'm able to keep a fairly straight track by sighting against landmarks on the horizon.

While we're walking, I return to what I was talking about before. "There was a time when people couldn't have roses all year 'round. So what Barrie was saying was that things that were good and beautiful didn't have to be gone from our minds just because they couldn't be present at that moment."

Sophia doesn't say anything. I can't tell if she doesn't see where I'm going with this or if she's being obstinate. I lost the ability to make that discernment several years ago, somewhere between Barbies and braces. I'm feeling stubborn myself, though. I push my point, make it all the more explicit.

"Your mother, then. Like the roses J. M. Barrie talked about. You can remember her and her love for you. Those memories will always be a part of you. Even though she's gone."

We keep walking. A mile or so back to the house from the gravesite. Are we halfway back yet? Wind kicks up, biting at the bare skin of my face. I think I hear a sound, but I can't tell if it's the wind or something even more sinister.

Finally, she speaks. "But when he wrote that . . . When people would remember roses in December, they could also think about new roses the next year, couldn't they?"

I'm about to answer, to say that yes, I suppose they could. And that it may not be a perfect analogy, but her memories of her mother could still endure . . .

Then Sophia speaks again.

"There isn't going to be a next year this time, is there?"

I hear her words but don't answer. I don't know what I could possibly say. But I have to go on. I can't stop walking, because if I stop now I'll never want to start again. Memories, for me, already were a dagger. Hope for my daughter was all that kept me going. And hope was now, like Barrie's roses in December, only a memory.

Jack McDevitt is a Philadelphia native. He has been, among other things, a naval officer, an English teacher, a customs officer, a taxi driver, and a management trainer for the US Customs Service.

He started writing novels in 1985 when Terry Carr invited him to participate in the celebrated Ace Specials series. His contribution was
The Hercules Text
, which won the Philip K. Dick Special Award. McDevitt has produced seventeen additional novels since then, ten of which have qualified for the final Nebula ballot.
Seeker
won the award in 2007. In 2004,
Omega
received the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best SF novel.

His most recent books are
Firebird
and
Echo
, both from Ace, and
Going Interstellar
, a Baen anthology on which he served, with NASA manager Les Johnson, as co-editor.
The Cassandra Project
, a collaboration with Mike Resnick, will be out in November. McDevitt claims it will reveal the truth behind the Watergate break-in.

His other interests include chess, classical history, the sciences, and baseball.

He is married to the former Maureen McAdams, and resides in Brunswick, Georgia, where, assisted by the requisite German Shepherd and four cats, he keeps a weather eye on hurricanes.

RUBIN
: Were you a fan of science fiction growing up? Were there any specific authors or stories that left a big impression on you?

McDEVITT
: When I was four years old, my father took me to the local movie theater presumably to watch Saturday westerns, but what caught my attention were the Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon serials. I never recovered. When I was able to find them again, as a teenager, they were still magical. Even though by that time I noticed that the rockets weren't really rockets, and that they had no airlocks or washrooms. (The latter could become a serious issue during a flight to Mars.) But it didn't matter.

An eight-year-old friend introduced me to
A Princess of Mars
, another life-altering experience. I don't think there were any paperbacks in those days. And there was very little SF in the library. But eventually I discovered
Startling Stories
and
Thrilling Wonder
. My mother, who must have been shocked by the half-naked women being carried off by robots and aliens for purposes that could only induce shudders, was kind enough to look the other way.

The Superman radio show also provided a substantial dose of SF, though the science tended to be a bit weak. Superman, e.g., used to fly to the Moon without the need of any breathing apparatus, yet there was at least one instance that demonstrated even he could not hold his breath forever.

I fell in love with Bradbury, Clarke, and Heinlein. And Murray Leinster. And a dozen or so others. My favorite books during those years were
The Martian Chronicles
and Heinlein's Future History. I can remember sitting on a dentist's porch waiting to get my teeth drilled (not a pleasant experience in 1948) but forgetting my nervousness because I was so caught up reading the Heinlein collection. I especially remember "Gentlemen, Be Seated" and was absolutely blown away by "The Green Hills of Earth." By then I'd been exposed to a lot of poetry through about seven years of school. But it was that story that gave me an appreciation for what a poem could be.

In 1949, I picked up a copy of
1984.
It had just been published and it was obviously science fiction. So I charged through it, and kept waiting for the good guys to show up. Of course you know how that turned out. No kid should be allowed anywhere near that book. And by the way, I never looked at my TV again in quite the same way.

RUBIN
: "The Green Hills of Earth" was one of Heinlein's better Future History stories. (My personal favorite is "Requiem"; the ending of that story really helped me understand the notion of a "bittersweet" ending.) When you were reading these stories as a youngster, did you recall feeling any desire to emulate? Did you want to be a writer when you read Bradbury, Clarke, Heinlein, and Leinster, or did that come later?

McDEVITT
: I had two ambitions as a kid: To play shortstop for the Phillies, and to become a science fiction writer.

The writing started with comic books, which were one of the best things that ever happened to me. They inspired me, well before Dick and Jane showed up, to figure out what the Phantom was saying. Kids don't have to wait until they're six to learn to read. If they're lucky enough to have parents who read to them, and supply them with the right materials, they can get off to a running start.

I went through a phase at about third grade in which I tried to become a comic artist. Don't know about the writing, but I couldn't draw a circle.

A year or so later, I began my first novel, writing it in an old ledger book. The only thing I can recall about it now is the title:
The Canals of Mars
.

The Boy Scouts took over my life at twelve. We had a chaplain, Father Conway, and I must have said something to him because he gave my father an old typewriter. The first thing I did with it was to write a story about invading Martians - I guess I had a thing about Mars - who picked up radio broadcasts of Buck Rogers clobbering interplanetary bad guys, mistook them for news reports, and got scared off. I submitted it to
Fantasy and Science Fiction
, and actually received an encouraging response from Anthony Boucher. At the time I had no idea how significant that might have been. The only thing it meant to me was that my story had been rejected.

The Phillies, of course, didn't work out. But if I could get only one of those two careers, I'm glad it happened the way it did.

RUBIN
: Wow, an encouraging response from Anthony Boucher! That must have put your submission sometime in the early 1950s? "The Emerson Effect," which I believe was your first published science fiction story, appeared in 1981. That's about a 30 year gap. Did you stop writing after that first rejection?

McDEVITT
: I'm not sure about the date, but I doubt it was later than 1952. I have it in my head that I was still in grade school, but that would make it 1949 at the latest. Not sure when Boucher was at
F&SF
. But the submission was probably made in the early 50's.

The only thing I wrote after that was an entry for LaSalle College's Freshman Short Story Contest. That was in 1954. I won with an SF story, "A Pound of Cure," which they published in the college literary magazine. I thought I was on my way, but at about the same time I started reading the classics.
David Copperfield
was among them. And they blew me away. There was no way I could write at that level, and the message seemed clear enough. I'm still not sure what convinced me I had to compete with Hemingway and Dickens. But whatever, I decided I was in over my head, and did not write or submit another story until "The Emerson Effect" in 1980.

That story, ironically, was about a guy who wants to date a postal clerk, but fears rejection. Ultimately he encounters a long-lost letter from Emerson, arguing that if you can believe in yourself, you can do almost anything.

RUBIN
: Boucher started editing for
F&SF
in 1949 and did so through 1958, I believe. So 1952 was still the early years of the magazine. 1980 seems to be a pivotal year for you and your interests. Not only did the Phillies win the series that year over Kansas City, but you published your first story. What happened in 1980 that made you decide to try your hand at writing again? Is that when you decided that you just couldn't compete with Larry Bowa?