Uncanny magazine issue f.., p.1
Uncanny Magazine Issue Four, page 1
UNCANNY MAGAZINE
“Uncanny Magazine Editorial Staff” by Uncanny Magazine
About Our Cover Artist: Tran Nguyen by Tran Nguyen
“The Uncanny Valley” by Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas
“Planet Lion” by Catherynne M. Valente
“The Practical Witch’s Guide to Acquiring Real Estate” by A.C. Wise
“Restore the Heart into Love” by John Chu
“In Libres” by Elizabeth Bear
“Three Voices” by Lisa Bolekaja
“Young Woman in a Garden” by Delia Sherman
“It’s the Big One” by Mike Glyer
“Top Five Myths about YA” by Julia Rios
“I Don’t Care About Your MFA: On Writing vs. Storytelling” by Kameron Hurley
“The Force That Was Peggy Rae Sapienza” by Christopher J Garcia
“Peggy Rae: Friend, Mentor, Superhero” by Steven H Silver
“For the Gardener’s Daughter” by Alyssa Wong
“From the High Priestess to the Hanged Man” by Ali Trotta
“Apologies for breaking the glass slipper” by Isabel Yap
“Interview: John Chu” by Deborah Stanish
“Interview: Delia Sherman” by Deborah Stanish
“Thank You, Kickstarter Backers!” by Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas
Edited by Lynne M. Thomas, Michael Damian Thomas, and Michi Trota
Ebook generated by Clockpunk Studios.
Copyright © 2015 by Uncanny Magazine.
www.uncannymagazine.com
Uncanny Magazine Editorial Staff
Publishers/Editors–in–Chief: Lynne M. Thomas & Michael Damian Thomas
Managing Editor: Michi Trota
Podcast Producers: Erika Ensign and Steven Schapansky
Interviewer: Deborah Stanish
Podcast Reader: Amal El–Mohtar and C.S.E. Cooney
Submissions Editors: Alex Kane, Andrea Berns, Arkady Martine, Ashley Gallagher, Cislyn Smith, Elizabeth Neering, Heather Clitheroe, Jen R. Albert, Jesse Lex, Jessica Wolf, K.E. Bergdoll, Kay Taylor Rea, Lesley Smith, Liam Meilleur, Mishell Baker, Piper Hale, Shannon Page, Vida Cruz
Logo & Wordmark design: Katy Shuttleworth
About Our Cover Artist: Tran Nguyen
Tran Nguyen is a Georgia–based gallery artist and freelance illustrator. Born in Vietnam and raised in the States, she is fascinated with creating visuals that can be used as a psycho–therapeutic support vehicle, exploring the mind’s landscape. Her paintings are created with a soft, delicate quality using colored pencil and acrylic on paper.
Nguyen has worked for clients such as Playboy, Tor, McDonald’s, Chateau St. Michelle Winery, and has showcased with galleries in California, New York, Spain, and Italy. She is currently represented by Richard Solomon and Thinkspace gallery. (photo by Jo McCune)
The Uncanny Valley
by Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas
Dumbo has been dancing the Cha–Cha with Horton in the middle of this Internet room this past month. We need to acknowledge that it’s been a bit rough for all of us in this community. An award we at Uncanny care deeply about has been tossed into chaos for sketchy, ridiculous reasons, complete with implausible conspiracy theories. We expect you know what we’re writing about, or you can figure it out in a few minutes on Google.
Apparently, our previous work being nominated for and winning certain awards over the past few years is evidence of science fiction and fantasy going horribly wrong.
Rather than engaging with the assholes who’ve created this mess, we think it’s time to restate our principles here at Uncanny Magazine.
We believe in an SF/F community where art, love, community, joy, intelligence, and points of view from every conceivable background across the planet are truly welcome. We strive to bring you a magazine and podcast that push boundaries, and make you think and feel. (They need not be mutually exclusive.) We’ve gathered some tremendously creative people, listed on our Authors page and Staff page. We’re proud to have worked with all of them. Your support has made it possible for us to pay them a decent rate for their work. We hope you’ve enjoyed it, because we believe it’s among the best work we’ve ever edited.
They have a place at the SF/F table, and so do you. (Yes, you.)
The Space Unicorn Ranger Corps builds awesome things… together. Space Unicorns are creative, kind, and inclusive. Space Unicorns try new things and share their enthusiasms with the world. Space Unicorns make art, community, and fun together—as creators, readers, and listeners.
If being enthusiastic, creating a truly welcoming community, and having an awesome time bringing excellent new SF/F from across the planet to our readers is wrong, we are just fine over here in the wrong–verse. It has pretty awesome parties.
Want to help us throw more of them?
WE’RE RECRUITING NEW MEMBERS TO THE SPACE UNICORN RANGER CORPS!
As you know from last month, Uncanny Magazine is working towards sustainability and funding so that we can begin purchasing submissions for Year Two. We need YOUR HELP to SPREAD THE WORD!
There are currently two ways to join:
1. There is a Subscription Drive going on at Weightless Books for a year’s worth of Uncanny Magazine eBooks! The drive will run from May 5th—May 19th. For that limited time, you can receive a year’s worth of Uncanny for $2 off the regular price! We will have some nifty giveaways for a few lucky new subscribers at particular milestones, too.
2. On May 28th, we will be opening the Uncanny Magazine Patreon! Do you love our magazine and podcast and want to see them continue, but aren’t interested in an eBook subscription? This is an excellent way to support our magazine.
If just 10 percent of our online readers purchase subscriptions or back us on Patreon, we could immediately fund Year Two.
And now, onto our current installment! Issue 4 of Uncanny Magazine has a breathtaking cover from Tran Nguyen, Traveling to a Distant Day, and features Catherynne M. Valente’s intense tale of psychic alien cats, “Planet Lion,” A.C. Wise’s whimsically useful “The Practical Witch’s Guide to Acquiring Real Estate,” John Chu’s heart–wrenching tale of knowledge, family, and culture “Restore the Heart into Love,” Elizabeth Bear’s charming library quest “In Libres,” and Lisa Bolekaja’s powerful musical story “Three Voices.” This issue also features Delia Sherman’s classic story “Young Woman in a Garden,” also the title of her recent short story collection from Small Beer Press.
Issue 4 also includes essays about the Hugo Awards by Mike Glyer, young adult fiction by Julia Rios, writing versus storytelling by Kameron Hurley, and remembrances of the late and greatly missed Peggy Rae Sapienza by Christopher J Garcia and Steven H Silver, as well as poetry by Alyssa Wong, Ali Trotta, and Isabel Yap, and Deborah Stanish interviewing John Chu and Delia Sherman.
Podcast 4A (released on May 5) features Heath Miller reading Catherynne M. Valente’s “Planet Lion,” Amal El–Mohtar reading Alyssa Wong’s poem “For the Gardener’s Daughter,” and Deborah Stanish interviewing Catherynne M. Valente.
Podcast 4B (released on June 2) features Elizabeth Bear’s “In Libres” as read by C.S.E. Cooney, Isabel Yap’s poem “Apologies for breaking the glass slipper” as read by Amal El–Mohtar, and additional interviews by Deborah Stanish and Michi Trota.
If you love reading Uncanny as much as we love producing it, please continue spreading the word with your comments, tweets, posts, and messages. Share us with your friends! There will always be room for more members of the Space Unicorn Ranger Corps!
Thank you all so much for your continued support.
Enjoy!
© 2015 Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas
Lynne and Michael are the Publishers/Editors-in-Chief for Uncanny: A Magazine of Science Fiction & Fantasy.
Three-time Hugo Award winner Lynne M. Thomas was the Editor-in-Chief of Apex Magazine (2011-2013). She co-edited the Hugo Award-winning Chicks Dig Time Lords, as well as Whedonistas and Chicks Dig Comics.
Along with being a two-time Hugo Award nominee as the former Managing Editor of Apex Magazine (2012-2013) Michael Damian Thomas co-edited the Hugo-nominated Queers Dig Time Lords (Mad Norwegian Press, 2013) with Sigrid Ellis and Glitter & Mayhem (Apex Publications, 2013), with John Klima and Lynne M. Thomas.
Together, they solve mysteries.
Planet Lion
by Catherynne M. Valente
Initial Survey Report: Planet 6MQ441 (Bakeneko), Alaraph System
Logged by: Dr. Savine Abolafiya, Chief Xenoecology Officer, Y.S.S. Duchess Anne
Attention: Captain Agathe Ganizani, Commanding Officer Y.S.S. Duchess Anne
Satellites: Four
Mineral Interest: Iron, copper, diamond, cobalt, scandium, praesodymium, yttrium. Only diamond in desirable quantities. Nothing sufficient to offset cost of extraction.
Sentient Life: None
Strategic Significance: None
A small, warm world orbiting the white subgiant Alaraph. Average gravity is more or less comfortable at .85 Earth normal, but highly variable depending on how near it passes to 6MQ440, 6MQ439, and 6MQ450. Twenty–hour day, 229 day year. Abundant organic life. Excepting the polar regions, the planet consists of one continuous jungle–type ecosystem broken only by vast salt and fresh water rivers. See attached materials for information on unique flora if you’re into that sort of thing. You won’t find anything spectacular. It does not behoove a xenoecologist to sum
My team came back calling it Bakeneko due to a barely interesting species of feline megafauna they frequently encountered. The place, I’m told, is crawling with them. Dr. Tum found one sleeping in their cook–pit. We’ve been calling them lions. As you’ll see during the dissection this weekend, the species does somewhat resemble the thylacoleo carnifex of late Pliocene Australia.
Except, of course, that they’re the size of Clydesdales, sexually trimorphic, and bright green.
Imagine a giant, six–toed, enthusiastically carnivorous marsupial lion with the Devil’s own camouflage and you’ll have it just about right. The “male” can be differentiated by dark stripes in the fur as well as the mane. The “female” has no stripes, but a ridge of short, dark, dense fur extending from the crown of the head to the base of the tail. The third sex is not androgyne, but simply an entirely separate member of the reproductive circus. We have been calling it a “vixen” for lack of better terminology. No agreement as to pronoun has been reached. The vixen is larger than the male or female and quite a different shade of green—call it forest green instead of emerald green.
The lions represent the only real obstacle to settlement of 6MQ441. Though I have tried to keep my tone light, five attached casualty reports attest to the danger of these creatures. They are aggressive, crepuscular apex predators. There are a lot of them. They show some rudimentary, corvid–like tool–use. (Dr. Gyll observed one wedging a stick between the skull–plates of a goanna–corollary animal to get at the brain. Dr. Gyll does go on to note that he also enjoyed the flavor of the brain more than the meat.)
At present, I recommend a severe cull before any serious consideration of Bakeneko as a habitable world. See supplementary materials for (considerably) more on this topic.
Moving on to the far more pertinent analysis of the Alaraph gas giant archipelago…
A lion moves the world with her mouth. A lion tells the truth with her teeth showing.
One lion rips the name Yttrium from the watering hole. She chews it. She swallows and digests it. She understands her name by means of digestion. One lion’s name signifies a lustrous crystalline superconductive transition metal. This separates one lion from lions not called Yttrium. One lion called Yttrium drinks from the watering hole and digests the smallgod MEDICALOFFICER. She understands the smallgod by means of digestion. She feels the concept of honor. Lions who digest other smallgods do not always know what their names signify. One lion gorges on the bones of the smallgod. The bones taste like anatomical expertise and scalpelcraft. She slurps up the blood of the smallgod. The blood reeks of formulae and the formulae run down the throat of one lion to fill her belly with several comprehensions of anesthetics and stimulants and vaccines and antibiotics. She gnaws at the meat of the smallgod. The meat becomes her meat and the meat has the weight of good bedside manner.
One lion called Yttrium hunts in the steelveldt called Vergulde Draeck. As well she hunts in the watering hole. All lions hunt in the watering hole. The watering hole networks the heart of every lion to the heart of every other lion into a cooperative real-time engagement matrix. The smallgod inside one lion lays down the words cooperative real-time engagement matrix in the den of one lion’s brain. One lion called Yttrium accepts the words though they have no more importance than the teeth and hooves left over after a kill. The words mean the watering hole.
One lion hunts through her steelveldt in the shadow of burnt blueblack rib bones and sleeps in their shadows. As well she sees the watering hole all around her. The watering hole lies over the jungle like fur over skin. One lion stands in the part of the steelveldt where the million dead black snakes sprawl but never rot. She sees her paws sunk deep in the corpses of snakes. As well she sees her paws sunk deep in the cool blue lagoon of the watering hole. Comforting scents hunt in her nostrils and on her tongue. Ripe redpaw fruit. The brains of sunspot lizards. The eggs of noonbirds. Fresh water with nothing sour in it. One lion hunts alone in the steelveldt Vergulde Draeck. As well she hunts with every other lion in the watering hole. She hunts with one lion called Thulium. She hunts with one lion called Bromide. She hunts with one lion called Manganese. She hunts with one lion called Nickel who sired her and one lion called Niobium who bore her and one lion called Uranium who carried one lion called Yttrium in her pouch until she could devour the smallgod and enlist with the pride. In the watering hole every lion swims with every other lion. Every lion swallows the heart of every other lion. Every lion hunts in the den of every other lion’s brain. Two hundred thousand lions hunt in the steelveldt Vergulde Draeck with one lion called Yttrium. Ten million hunt in the watering hole. The watering hole has enough water for everyone.
Every evening one lion called Yttrium wakes in hunger. She washes her muzzle in the Longer Sweeter River which flows beneath the steelveldt Vergulde Draeck. As well she washes her muzzle in the lagoon of the watering hole. She leaps and prowls through the part of the steelveldt where husks of giant redpaw fruit lie broken open. Other lions also leap and also prowl. She greets them in the watering hole. In the watering hole they use each others’ eyes to find the answer to hunger. One lion called Yttrium finds the words triangulation, reconnaissance, target acquisition floating inside her. She thanks the smallgod inside her for this gift.
One lion stops. She becomes six lions. Six lions chase down a pair of sunspot lizards skittering through the burnt blueblack bones of the steelveldt. Six lions sight a horned shagfur. They forget the lizards. The shagfur lumbers across the part of the steelveldt where the hundred thousand dead silver scorpions lie barbed and gleaming. It does not hurt itself but six lions know the scent of carefulness. In the watering hole six lions turn their bellies to the rich sun. In the steelveldt six lions open their jaws. Their green muzzles wrinkle back over black teeth. Out of their mouths the water of the lagoon comes rippling. The water of the lagoon possesses blue heat and blue light. Six lions open their mouths and the water of the lagoon roars toward the shagfur. The shagfur flies upward. The shagfur’s neck snaps. Six lions suck the water of the lagoon back into their throats and with it the shagfur. They tear into its body and its body becomes the body of six lions.
A lion moves the world with her mouth.
Six lions stop. One lion called Yttrium pads alone across the part of the steelveldt where the wings of the billion dead butterflies crunch under her paws. As well she plays with one lion called Tungsten and one lion called Tellurium in the shallows of the watering hole. She bites the green shoulder of one lion called Tungsten. She feels the teeth of one lion called Tellurium in the scruff of her neck. One lion called Tungsten ate the shagfur with her. One lion called Tellurium hunts far away in the steelveldt called Szent Istvan. They growl and pounce in the sun. The sun in the watering hole shines dusk forever. The sun shines bright morning and day on the steelveldts. The watering hole forgot every light but twilight.
One lion called Yttrium enters the part of the steelveldt where the thousand dead squaresloths lie. Hot wind dries the shagfur blood on her whiskers. She feels the concept of holiness. Her paws leave prints in the home of the smallgods. Lions not called Yttrium lie or squat on their green haunches or stand at attention with their tails in the air. They lock their eyes to the heart and the liver of the smallgods. The heart and the liver of the smallgods look like the trunks of eight blue trees. The heart and the liver of the smallgods do not smell like the trunks of trees. The heart and the liver of the smallgods smell like the corpses of the hundred thousand silver scorpions and the light of the watering hole. Each of the blue trees belongs to one smallgod and not to the others. Each lion belongs to one smallgod and not to the others. One lion called Yttrium swallowed the meat of the smallgod MEDICALOFFICER. As well a million lions not called Yttrium chewed this meat in the watering hole. Many also own the name of Yttrium. Yttrium numbers among the one hundred and twenty one sublimities of the smallgods. With one hundred and twenty one words the smallgods move the world and so all lions call each other by these utterings of power.
