Interview: Chris Willrich on “Grand Tour”
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
by stephenm
2y ago
– Tell us a bit about “Grand Tour.” It’s a slice-of-life story set on a future Earth that, while it may not be truly utopian, is peaceful and wealthy, such that it’s not at all crazy for a family to save up for an interstellar cruise. It’s also a future where it’s commonplace — albeit a bit controversial — for parents to choose genetic modifications for their children. Of course, as in any time period, negotiating young adulthood can be tricky, and “Grand Tour” is also about ways of claiming your independence, while staying connected to your roots. – What was the inspiration for this story, or ..read more
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Interview: Andy Stewart on “Typhoid Jack”
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
by stephenm
2y ago
– Tell us a bit about “Typhoid Jack.” In a future where society has relinquished most control to cybernetic custodians known as “Farmers,” Jack Lowe, former Chief of Peace, pursues the not-quite-legal profession of a germ peddler. In this future, almost all sicknesses have been eradicated (except for the common cold, of course). But when Bernadette Maude, CEO of a major corporation under house arrest for mysterious reasons, employs Jack for the challenging task of infecting her, he must make further compromises to get the job done. Along with the technical difficulties required of this job, Ja ..read more
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Interview: Matthew Corradi on “City League”
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
by stephenm
2y ago
– Tell us a bit about “City League.” “City League” is a story about memories, baseball, and being shy.  The setting is a near future in which memories can be isolated and manipulated as commodities, sometimes for personal use, sometimes for commercial use.  The story vehicle is a father/son relationship that revolves around baseball.  In some ways it is a mystery, as the son tries to find out why one of his baseball memories doesn’t match the history books.  But ultimately the story is an exploration of how the son’s outlook on life is influenced not just indirectly, but wi ..read more
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Interview: Sean McMullen on “Electrica”
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
by stephenm
2y ago
‑ Tell us a bit about “Electrica.” The idea behind Electrica is that an intelligence from the geologically distant past has been preserved in amber. While experimenting with a form of electrostatic semaphore using amber, the eccentric Sir Charles Calder realizes that the signals he is detecting are not coming from a distant transmitter, but from within the block of amber in his receiver. He manages to communicate with the time-travelling mind. Meantime, Lieutenant Fletcher, a young code breaker from Lord Wellington’s staff, is called back from the war against Napoleon in Spain to check the mil ..read more
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Interview: Michael Blumlein on “Twenty-Two and You”
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
by stephenm
2y ago
– Tell us a bit about “Twenty-Two and You.”   It’s a tale about genetic engineering and a young couple head over heels in love and faced with a Mephistophelean decision.  Their genetic future (and ours) is full of promise, but not only promise.  As another character tells them, “progress is a god.  A great god.  God of the impossible, but not, alas, a god of mercy.” The title is a riff on one of our wonderful new biotech companies, whose name, to my ears, is even more apt and beautiful than the one in the story.   – What was the inspiration for this story, or what ..read more
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Interview: Richard Bowes on “The Queen and the Cambion”
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
by stephenm
2y ago
– Tell us a bit about “The Queen and the Cambion.”  TQATC is about two British legends, Queen Victoria who reigned for most of the 19th century and Merlin, said to be the son of a demon and a nun, whose story emerged in the murky centuries after the fall of Roman Britain. One was a creature of history, the other a product of Welsh folklore later embellished by medieval minstrelsy and compiled by Mallory.  In the story Merlin is obliged to come to the aid of whichever monarch in whatever year invokes the spell that binds him. The spell’s my invention and we get to see the four occasio ..read more
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Interview: Alexander Jablokov on “The Comfort of Strangers”
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
by stephenm
2y ago
– Tell us a bit about “The Comfort of Strangers.” OK, so it’s an alien sex story. Or at least it started out that way, though it developed a bit more emotional subtext as it developed. While it seems pretty light and funny, it is also an actual hard SF story that struggles directly with the real fact that the more realistic the far-future hard Sfness of a story, the less likely it is to be emotionally engaging to a reader in 2011. So, like any writer in our genre, I bootleg current-day emotional content back in, and translate the incomprehensible emotional connections of that future into terms ..read more
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Interview: Felicity Shoulders on “Small Towns”
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
by stephenm
2y ago
– Tell us a bit about “Small Towns.” “Small Towns” takes place in France in the wake of World War I; it’s the story of a particularly small and sheltered child growing into a young woman, and of a middle-aged man trying to retreat into the world of his childhood. I’ve never set a story in France before. My family is part French and we have strong ties there, but our relatives live in the Massif Central to the south, a long way from the Western Front. I decided when I was drafting the story that I’d write no sentence for which I couldn’t imagine the equivalent in French: essentially, I was tran ..read more
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Interview: Ted Kosmatka on “The Color Least Used By Nature”
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
by stephenm
2y ago
*Tell us a bit about “The Color Least Used by Nature.” From start to finish, this story probably took me longer to write than anything else I’ve ever written.  It took an insanely long time, in fact, for what was supposed to be a short little story.  While I was working on it, I kept thinking that I was only a few weeks away from finishing, so I’d burn the midnight oil in what I thought was the final push, working on it late at night after everyone in the house was asleep.  But it was like some crazy carnival fun room where the exit kept retreating from me the closer I got.  ..read more
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Interview: Naomi Kritzer on “Scrap Dragon”
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
by stephenm
2y ago
-Tell us a bit about “Scrap Dragon.” Back in the spring of 2010, there was an online fundraising auction to raise money to defray the expenses of a liver transplant for a woman I know through fandom. My contribution to the auction was the offer of a short story, written about the winning bidder or the person of their choice.  I would make them the hero (or the villain) of the story, I’d work in their interests and do my best to fulfill requests about storyline and genre. (So, for instance, if someone had a child who was obsessed with both unicorns and rocket ships, and they wanted a story ..read more
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