Uncanny Magazine Issue 41
UNCANNY MAGAZINE
“Uncanny Magazine Editorial Staff” by Uncanny Magazine
About Our Cover Artist: Alexa Sharpe by Alexa Sharpe
“The Uncanny Valley” by Lynne M. Thomas & Michael Damian Thomas
“Imagining Place: Reading to a Better World” by Elsa Sjunneson
“The Wishing Pool” by Tananarive Due
“The Graveyard” by Eleanor Arnason
“Diamond Cuts” by Shaoni C. White
“Presque vue” by Tochi Onyebuchi
“Immortal Coil” by Ellen Kushner
“From the Archives of the Museum of Eerie Skins: An Account” by C. S. E. Cooney
“The Chameleon’s Gloves” by Yoon Ha Lee
“Through a Thousand Eyes” by Nisi Shawl
“The Necessity of Slavery Stories” by Troy L. Wiggins
“The Bad Dad Redemption Arc Needs to Die” by Nino Cipri
“WWXD: A Warrior’s Path of Reflection and Redemption” by C.L. Clark
“Sonnet for the Aglæcwif” by Minal Hajratwala
“Hitobashira” by Betsy Aoki
“After The Tower Falls, Death Gives Advice” by Ali Trotta
“Radioactivity” by Octavia Cade
“Interview: Eleanor Arnason” by Caroline M. Yoachim
“Interview: C. S. E. Cooney” by Caroline M. Yoachim
“Thank You, Patreon Supporters!” by Lynne M. Thomas & Michael Damian Thomas
Edited by Lynne M. Thomas, Michael Damian Thomas, and Michi Trota
Ebook generated by Clockpunk Studios.
Copyright © 2021 by Uncanny Magazine.
www.uncannymagazine.com
Uncanny Magazine Editorial Staff
Publishers/Editors–in–Chief: Lynne M. Thomas & Michael Damian Thomas
Managing Editor/Poetry Editor: Chimedum Ohaegbu
Nonfiction Editor: Elsa Sjunneson
Podcast Producers: Erika Ensign & Steven Schapansky
Podcast Readers: Joy Piedmont, Erika Ensign, Matt Peters, & Heath Miller
Assistant Editor: Naomi Day
Interviewers: Caroline M. Yoachim & Lynne M. Thomas
Submissions Editors: Andrew Adams, Cislyn Smith, Coral Moore, Dolores Peters, Heather Clitheroe, Heather Leigh, Jay Wolf, Karlyn Meyer, Kay Taylor Rea, Liam Meilleur, Matt Peters, Piper Hale, Renee Christopher, Tazmania Hayward, Zoe Mitchell, C. E. McGill, Nhu Le, Rowan MacBean, Brahidaliz Martinez, Genevra Littlejohn, Marissa Harwood
Logo & Wordmark design: Katy Shuttleworth
About Our Cover Artist: Alexa Sharpe
Alexa Sharpe is a Filipino-American illustrator specializing in books and comics.
Folklore and decadent historical fashions are the crux of her work. Drawing influence from her fondness of gothic tales, as well as from the superstitions of her Southeast Asian heritage, she seeks to walk the line between elegance and horror.
She uses ephemeral lines and wispy textures to build rich, frenetic scenes—ghostly rooms in old mansions, or dense forests that could swallow you whole. In her lush realms, ruled by spirits, witches, and beasts, she explores the space where terror and beauty meet.
The Uncanny Valley
by Lynne M. Thomas & Michael Damian Thomas
Today is Raiders-of-the-Lost-Ark-melt-your-face-off hot. Thankfully, we have air conditioning and no shortage of things to keep us occupied inside today during one of those terribly muggy Central Illinois summer days. Though the world is theoretically opening up, we’ll be staying in for the time being. Other than the normal awful summer weather, things are improving here at the Uncanny Headquarters. Caitlin has remained healthy since February and has even returned to in-person school. Hugo the Cat continues looking for a way to get to the nefarious squirrels in the backyard, sadly with little success.
Meanwhile, Lynne and Michael are PLOTTING with the rest of Team Uncanny, as it is that time of the year. We will be running an Uncanny Magazine Year 8 Kickstarter starting REALLY SOON! Keep watching our Twitter and Facebook feeds and our newsletter for more information!
Stupendous news, Space Unicorns! “The Inaccessibility of Heaven” by Aliette de Bodard is a Best Novelette Locus Award finalist, “Burn or the Episodic Life of Sam Wells as a Super” by A.T. Greenblatt is a Best Novelette Locus Award finalist, “Badass Moms in the Zombie Apocalypse” by Rae Carson is a Best Short Story Locus Award finalist, “Dresses Like White Elephants” by Meg Elison is a Best Short Story Locus Award finalist, “The Sycamore and the Sybil” by Alix E. Harrow is a Best Short Story Locus Award finalist, and “50 Things Every AI Working with Humans Should Know” by Ken Liu is a Best Short Story Locus Award finalist! Congratulations to Aliette, A.T., Rae, Meg, Alix, and Ken!!! Plus, Uncanny Magazine is a Best Magazine Locus Award finalist, and Lynne M. Thomas & Michael Damian Thomas are a Best Editor Locus Award finalist!
We are so honored!
A huge congratulations to all of the phenomenal finalists!
From the Locus website:
The Locus Science Fiction Foundation has announced the top ten finalists in each category of the 2021 Locus Awards . These results are from the February 1 to April 15 voting, done by readers on an open public ballot. Congratulations to all!
Fabulous news, Space Unicorns! Three Uncanny Magazine stories, 2 poems, and an essay are 2021 Ignyte Award finalists! “The Inaccessibility of Heaven” by Aliette de Bodard a finalist for a Best Novelette Ignyte Award, “My Country Is a Ghost” by Eugenia Triantafyllou is a finalist for a Best Short Story Ignyte Award, “You Perfect, Broken Thing” by C.L. Clark is a finalist for a Best Short Story Ignyte Award, “Fin” by Terese Mason Pierre is a finalist for a Best in Speculative Poetry Ignyte Award, “Hungry Ghost” by Millie Ho is a finalist for a Best in Speculative Poetry Ignyte Award, and “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Excellence” by Nibedita Sen is a finalist for a Best in Creative Nonfiction Ignyte Award! Congratulations to everyone!!!
Plus, congratulations to former Uncanny Magazine Managing/Nonfiction Editor Michi Trota! Michi is a finalist for The Ember Award for unsung contributions to genre!
It is a fabulous ballot! Congratulations to all of the finalists!
From the Ignyte Award website:
The short list is derived from 15 BIPOC+ voters made up of FIYAHCON staff and previous award winners, of varying genders, sexualities, cultures, disabilities, and locations throughout the world. They are referred to as the Ignyte Awards Committee. Committee members were not permitted to nominate their own works or works of which they were a part. The Committee was not limited to selections authored or otherwise created by BIPOC. Public voting on the shortlist does not permit write-in nominations. Each year, we ask one year’s winners to be part of the subsequent year’s committee to ensure fresh perspectives and to help prevent repeated nominations of the same popular authors as recognized in many other genre awards.
More wonderful news, Space Unicorns! The 2021 Aurora Awards finalists have been announced, and two Uncanny Magazine pieces are on the final ballot! “The Death of the Gods” by Leah Bobet is a finalist for the Best Poem/Song Aurora Award, and “So You Want to Be a Honeypot” by Kelly Robson is a finalist for the Best Short Story Aurora Award! Congratulations to Leah, Kelly, and to all of the phenomenal finalists!
From the Aurora Awards website:
This ballot is for works done in 2020 by Canadians. The Aurora Awards are nominated by members of the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Association. The top five nominated works were selected. Additional works were included where there was a tie for fifth place. An online awards ceremony will be held on Oct 16, 2021 hosted by Can-Con ( http://can-con.org/ ). Voting will being on July 31, 2021 and close at 11:59 pm EDT on September 4, 2021. NOTE: Due to C
ovid-19, works normally in Fan Organizational are in the Fan Related Work category.
And now the contents of Uncanny Magazine Issue 41! The spectacular cover is Seelie Springs by Alexa Sharpe. Our new fiction includes Tananarive Due’s exploration of family, health, and hard choices “The Wishing Pool,” Eleanor Arnason’s tale of ghosts and cultural differences “The Graveyard,” Shaoni C. White’s story of sacrifice and rebellion “Diamond Cuts,” Tochi Onyebuchi’s journey through a lifetime and beyond “Presque vue,” Ellen Kushner’s Elizabethan drama of friendship and art “Immortal Coil,” and finally C. S. E. Cooney’s yarn of betrayal and revenge “From the Archives of the Museum of Eerie Skins: An Account.” Our reprint is “The Chameleon’s Gloves” by Yoon Ha Lee, originally published in Cosmic Powers.
Our provocative and compelling essays this issue include “Through a Thousand Eyes” by Nisi Shawl, “The Necessity of Slavery Stories” by Troy L. Wiggins, “The Bad Dad Redemption Arc Needs to Die” by Nino Cipri, and “WWXD: A Warrior’s Path of Reflection and Redemption” by C.L. Clark. This month also includes a new editorial column by Nonfiction Editor Elsa Sjunneson called “Imagining Futures: Reading to a Better World.” Our gorgeous and evocative poetry includes “Sonnet for the Aglæcwif” by Minal Hajratwala, “Hitobashira” by Betsy Aoki, “After The Tower Falls, Death Gives Advice” by Ali Trotta, and “Radioactivity” by Octavia Cade. Caroline M. Yoachim interviews Eleanor Arnason and C. S. E. Cooney about their stories.
The Uncanny Magazine Podcast 41A features “The Wishing Pool” by Tananarive Due, as read by Matt Peters, “Sonnet for the Aglæcwif” by Minal Hajratwala, as read by Joy Piedmont, and Lynne M. Thomas interviewing Tananarive Due. The Uncanny Magazine Podcast 41B features “Presque vue” by Tochi Onyebuchi, as read by Matt Peters, “Radioactivity” by Octavia Cade, as read by Erika Ensign, and Lynne M. Thomas interviewing Tochi Onyebuchi.
As always, we are deeply grateful for your support of Uncanny Magazine. Shine on, Space Unicorns!
© 2021 Lynne M. Thomas & Michael Damian Thomas
Lynne and Michael are the Publishers/Editors-in-Chief for the four-time Hugo and Parsec Award-winning Uncanny Magazine.
Nine-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 (with Tara O’Shea) as well as Whedonistas (with Deborah Stanish) and Chicks Dig Comics (with Sigrid Ellis).
Along with being a six-time Hugo Award-winner, Michael Damian Thomas was the former Managing Editor of Apex Magazine (2012-2013), co-edited the Hugo-finalist Queers Dig Time Lords (with Sigrid Ellis), and co-edited Glitter & Mayhem (with John Klima and Lynne M. Thomas).
Together, they solve mysteries.
Imagining Place: Reading to a Better World
by Elsa Sjunneson
As a writer, editor, activist, and community builder, my job has many components. I write essays (like these), watch movies, do media criticism, listen to other peoples’ experiences, research, do so many things that look like work.
But there is a part of my job that I often forget to look at as my work. I prioritize it less when the days are long, when the deadlines are many, when the people I need to speak with and the e-mails I need to write are endless.
I forget that it is my job to read.
I think I forget this because reading was my first love. My safe place. The thing that kept me from feeling alone. I remember reading while my father was dying. Reading while I flew across country to move to an entirely new city called New York. I read to forget, I read to remember, I read to process and to grow and to feel.
To me, after so many years of reading being my happy place, it is difficult to consider reading “work.”
But with the pandemic, I stopped being able to read. My reading days became a surprise—times when I was able to pick up a book and devour it were special, and the books that caught my attention were precious.
Seamus Heaney, C.L. Polk, Seanan McGuire, Maria Dahvana Headley, Nikita Gill—they all found me in my distracted places, their words filling the silence, catching my attention when I struggled to give it freely.
I am working toward treating reading as my job now, remembering that to read is to fill my mind with voices that are not my own, perspectives that educate me.
Reading may never be a simple joy for me again—I long for the days when I hid under blankets with a flashlight and devoured new stories. But it will be the thing that brings me back into the world.
And it will be the thing that makes me better as a human, not just as a writer or editor.
I think to build a better future we must read widely. Reading outside of our comfort zones is a matter of survival. Whether you’re not an SF/F reader and you turn to try a new genre, or you’re a hardened Heinlein fan and you read some litfic, the ability to hear and listen to new styles, consume a new medium, understand a new voice…these are the things which help us build the future we want to see.
Reading is a gift, it is the thing that makes us understand one another. Sometimes I think that the ability to disappear into a good book is a bit like meditation. To be consumed by story gives us a space to breathe.
When you come out of a book, you are forever changed by the story and by the author.
So I encourage you this summer to make space, not just to read, but to read something new. To read something that challenges you, that makes you shift your perspective. Kick yourself out of the ordinary, because it might just make you a better person, and that will help you build a better world for all of us.
© 2021 Elsa Sjunneson
Award winning editor Elsa Sjunneson is a Deafblind hurricane in a vintage dress. She writes fiction, non-fiction and game design materials which can be found in many exciting places. She lives in Seattle, WA, and fights structural ableism in her free time. Her debut memoir, Being Seen: One Deafblind Woman’s Fight To End Ableism, releases in 2021 from Simon & Schuster.
The Wishing Pool
by Tananarive Due
Joy nearly got lost on the root-knotted red dirt path off of Highway 99, losing sight of the gaps between the live oaks and Spanish moss that fanned across her hood and windows like fingertips. Driving back to her family’s cabin twenty years later reminded her that the woods had rarely been restful for her. Once, Dad had made her play outside instead of sitting on the couch with her Virginia Hamilton books, and she’d stepped in an anthill up to her shin. She howled so loudly from the vicious stinging that Dad and Mom heard her all the way from the lake, and when they reached her they expected to find her half dead. She’d never forgotten that wild, frightened look in their eyes. No, Joy did not like the woods.
If she’d started her trip closer to dark, she would have had to turn around and wait out the night at the overpriced Hampton Inn off of I-10. (Like her father, she didn’t want to sleep alone at her parents’ main house in the ashes of her childhood ten miles back toward civilization.) But her father’s old Bronco finally appeared in the glare of orange dusk light fighting through the treetops, parked in front of the cabin.
And the cabin looked so, so small—much smaller than she remembered. The trees and wildly growing ferns dwarfed it, with no obvious path to the door from the red-brown dirt driveway. She’d imagined that she and her brother might fix the cabin up as a rental one day, but in real life it was puny and weather-beaten and sad, more relic than residence. Their great-grandfather built this cabin in the 1920s to hide from lynch mobs roused by their envy that a Negro businessman could afford a shiny new Ford Model T.
Every inch of the cabin was sagging a hundred years later, weary of standing. The slanted roof had collected a thick blanket of dead leaves at the heart of the L shape that separated the cabin’s main room from its single bedroom. The bathroom her parents had added in the rear in the ’90s wasn’t in great shape, Jesse had warned, but it was better than the outhouse she still saw a few yards beyond the cabin, its wood blackened with age.
How had Dad been l
iving there alone for two months? Maybe longer, if her brother’s theory was true: that he’d moved into the cabin soon after Mom’s funeral a year ago. Almost to the day.
“How?” she said aloud.
Gaps between walls’ wooden slats gaped like missing teeth, so the cabin probably had no insulation just when the weather was getting cold. Joy was wearing a jacket and it wasn’t dark yet. North Florida wasn’t New York, where she lived now, but it wasn’t South Florida either. The temperature was dipping to the forties at night. Jesse had warned her to bring extra blankets to supplement the coal stove, which was still the main heating source.
The cabin looked abandoned. But dim light bled through the threadbare curtains she recognized in the window, the ones with patterns of fish Mom had found at a garage sale with Joy a million years ago. Or yesterday. Time was a mystery and a lie since Mom had died.
Joy was glad that Dad wasn’t waiting outside, since she might have forgotten to prepare herself to see him look smaller too. Thinner. More frail. Grayer. Jesse had warned her what to expect after his visit a week ago—the reason she was here—but she might have forgotten if the cabin had looked anything like she remembered it.
Joy checked her cell phone: NO SIGNAL. Shit. No wonder Dad never picked up his cell phone. Jesse said he’d made an appointment to install a land line, but the technician couldn’t come for another thirty days. She wished she could call Jesse now; she was a year older, but he was a better fit for this job. He’d been deployed in Afghanistan most of Mom’s last year with cancer, so Joy was the one who had cleaned and fed her and raged at negligent nurses. They both knew it was Jesse’s turn now. She could not have faced another round of nursing home applications and medical assessments on her own, not so soon. Jesse had already taken Dad to a neurologist in Jacksonville to confirm the dementia they already suspected before Mom died.
But Jesse’s last visit had worried him so much that he’d promised Joy he would drive from Jacksonville to stay with Dad in the cabin every weekend. He just wanted to be sure she didn’t think Dad needed more than that. All he’d asked from Joy was one weekend.