Category: SFF

Horror, SFF, Short stories

Tidemarks

OJ

I have a new story out! “Tidemarks” is available to read in Professor Charlatan Bardot’s Travel Anthology to the Most (Fictional) Haunted Buildings in the Weird, Wild World, edited by Eric J. Guignard from Dark Moon Books.

When Eric contacted me to ask if I were interested in writing a ghost story for the anthology, there were only two restrictions. First, whatever building was being haunted, it couldn’t be a house. Secondly, it couldn’t take place in any real building. I’m embarrassed to say that I forgot the second condition twice, and my haunted aquarium ended up being dumped further along the Otago peninsula coastline than any similar building which may or may not have inspired the story.

My sole defence is that I was so excited at the prospect of writing a story about ghost penguins that I promptly forgot anything else. Yes, penguins. There was nothing in the brief that said my story had to be about human ghosts so I went straight to the ecological uncanny. Anyway, there are penguins on the Otago peninsula and I would like for them to stay there, so this is a future-set ghost story in which red tides have taken the place of penguins, and those poor extinct birds reappear late at night, suffocating under algal bloom. (Yes, ghost penguins of tragedy, don’t read this for a happy ending to hauntings.)

But still. Ghost penguins!!!

Horror, SFF, Short stories

Seedling

OJ

After seven years of submissions, I’m delighted to say that I finally, finally, have a story in Fantasy & Science Fiction. It has taken a long time, and some of the stories I sent there were very good and were published in other markets, but F&SF is one of those bucket list magazines for speculative writers, and they get a heap of excellent stories every single day, so it’s no surprise that it takes persistence to succeed there. Well, persistence I have.

The story that finally got me there was a flash piece about fairy tales and cake. “Seedling” was inspired by the Hansel and Gretel story, which has the dubious distinction of being one of the fairy tales that has typically interested me the least, as well as being the fairy tale that most inspired every childhood birthday cake. My parents had the old birthday cake book from Women’s Weekly that every New Zealand family had at one point, I’m sure, and there are a lot of delightful cakes in there but, as a kid, nearly every year I picked the gingerbread cottage because it had a roof covered in Pebbles and the whole thing was just marvelous. That’s about the only thing I care about in the Hansel and Gretel story: that cottage made of cake, like a sugary angler fish in the middle of the forest.

Except in this story, it’s not the cottage that’s made of cake. Because if you’re trying to camouflage predation in a forest, surely a better option is baumkuchen…

I never had baumkuchen for a birthday cake. It’s on my baking bucket list, though.

Papers, Science, SFF

Tardigrades and Star Trek

OJ

I have a new paper out! “Ethics, Experimentalism, and Hybrid Purpose: Navigating Science and the Military in Star Trek: Discovery” is out in the latest issue of Interdisciplinary Literary Studies. Sometime last year I saw their call for papers for a special issue on hybridity in Star Trek, and as I’m on a mission to eventually write papers on all my beloved books and media, I knew I had to submit to it. And the I remembered the tardigrade storyline of Discovery’s first season. I remembered, as well, the Manhattan Project, a period of science history that I find endlessly fascinating, and I knew how I could lump the two together.

The Manhattan Project had an interesting organisational structure, with two effective heads: General Groves, who represented the military, and J. Robert Oppenheimer, who represented the scientists. This structure was something that could be clearly mapped onto the tardigrade storyline, hence the following abstract:

In “Context Is for Kings,” “The Butcher’s Knife Cares Not for the Lamb’s Cry,” and “Choose Your Pain,” three season one episodes of Star Trek: Discovery, the hybrid nature of Starfleet becomes apparent when its scientists come into conflict with its soldiers. The order to treat a potentially sentient tardigrade-like creature as a military resource, subject to what is essentially slavery and vivisection, makes scientific ethics subject to strategic value. In each episode, a separate pairing between scientist and soldier develops, which both critiques the competing philosophies and acts as a metaphor for historical conflicts of this kind.

SFF, Short stories

Metamorphosis

OJ

I have a new story out! And it’s basically a love letter to insects. You can find “Metamorphosis” in the latest anthology from Parsec Ink, Triangulation: Habitats. When I saw their call for stories themed around sustainable housing, I knew it was an anthology that I wanted to submit to.

Sustainable housing, you say. Where do insects come into that? Well, “Metamorphosis” is about green roofs, which can increase biodiversity by increasing habitats for insects, among other organisms. But “Metamorphosis” isn’t just about green roofs. It’s about cockroaches and transformation. The title has probably given you a clue. If you’ve read Kafka’s story of the same name, about a man who turns into a cockroach, you’ll have found the connection. In my story, Gregor’s sister Grete, who couldn’t stand her brother when he was a cockroach, is now a primary school teacher in New Zealand. (Gregor gets to be a cockroach. Grete gets to be immortal. She has the better deal.) Anyway, Grete’s teaching kids about green roofs and how good they are for insects, which means that she has to grapple with the fact that her relationship with cockroaches is… difficult.

Sometimes you have to learn appreciation for revolting things. I was surprised to find, when researching Kafka’s original story, that Gregor was never specifically a cockroach. The insect he turned into was left unnamed, but so widespread is the revulsion for cockroaches that readers just assumed that was what he was. Which is both funny and tragic, because it’s not the fault of the cockroaches that, like Grete, I find them so viscerally disgusting.

Maybe habitat building can improve them.

 

Novels, SFF

The Stone Wētā wins SJV

OJ

I’m happy to say The Stone Wētā has won the Sir Julius Vogel Award for best novel! The SJVs are Aotearoa New Zealand’s annual awards for achievement in speculative fiction, so I’m very thankful to everyone who voted for it. Climate fiction is an increasingly notable part of science fiction, and it’s fantastic to have it be represented like this, as climate change is, I feel very strongly, the defining issue of this century.

I’d like to mention, too, some of the other work that was celebrated. To start with, of course, congratulations should go to the other writers who were also nominated for best novel. They were Drew Bryenton for Gad’s Army, B.T. Keaton for Transference, A.J. Lancaster for The Court of Mortals, and Dan Rabarts and Lee Murray for Blood of the Sun. What a fantastic field to be a part of! The other SJV categories were equally well represented, but special mention should go to A.J. Fitzwater for winning both best novella (for No Man’s Land) and best collection (for The Voyages of Cinrak the Dapper) and Casey Lucas, who took out the best short story award for the incredible “For Want of Human Parts.” Finally, I was pleased to see Cassie Hart awarded for her Services to Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror.

The Aotearoa New Zealand speculative community is small but wonderfully talented, and it’s fantastic to have such a pool of supportive and creative people to share pages with. Thank you all! Thank you, especially, to publisher Marie Hodgkinson at Paper Road Press, and the amazing cover artist Emma Weakley, for all their work on the book.