Uncanny Magazine Issue 20 Read online

  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 & Michael Damian Thomas

  “She Still Loves the Dragon” by Elizabeth Bear

  “Contingency Plans for the Apocalypse” by S.B. Divya

  “The Hydraulic Emperor” by Arkady Martine

  “Lines of Growth, Lines of Passage” by Marissa Lingen

  “Your Slaughterhouse, Your Killing Floor” by Sunny Moraine

  “The Utmost Bound” by Vivian Shaw

  “The Date” by R.K. Kalaw

  “Conservation Laws” by Vandana Singh

  “We Will See You Now” by Fran Wilde

  “The Stories Our Games Tell Us: Excellent Narrative Games of 2017” by John Wiswell

  “Mobile Matchmaking Hell” by Iori Kusano

  “Postcards from the Apocalypse” by Rebecca Roanhorse

  “How to Make a Witch-Hunt: Salem 1692” by Sarah Monette

  “The Early Ones” by Sofia Samatar & Del Samatar

  “The Knight of the Beak” by Sofia Samatar & Del Samatar

  “The Cat’s Daughters” by Nitoo Das

  “Shadow-Song” by Sonya Taaffe

  “1532” by Ana Hurtado

  “Interview: S.B. Divya” by Caroline M. Yoachim

  “Interview: Sunny Moraine” 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 © 2017 by Uncanny Magazine.

  www.uncannymagazine.com

  Uncanny Magazine Editorial Staff

  Publishers/Editors–in–Chief: Lynne M. Thomas & Michael Damian Thomas

  Managing Editor: Michi Trota

  Poetry/Reprint Editor: Mimi Mondal

  Podcast Producers: Erika Ensign & Steven Schapansky

  Podcast Readers: Stephanie Malia Morris & Erika Ensign

  Interviewers: Caroline M. Yoachim & Lynne M. Thomas

  Submissions Editors: Cislyn Smith, Heather Clitheroe, Jesse Lex, Jay Wolf, Kay Taylor Rea, Liam Meilleur, Piper Hale, Shannon Page, Lena Ye, Eileen Wu, Heather Leigh, Susheela Bhat Harkins, Jaime O. Mayer, Andrew Adams, Dolores Peters, Matt Peters, Karlyn Ruth Meyer

  Logo & Wordmark design: Katy Shuttleworth

  About Our Cover Artist: Tran Nguyen

  Tran Nguyen is an award-winning illustrator and gallery artist. At the age of three, she and her family were given the opportunity to immigrate to the States, escaping their impoverished life in Vietnam. Growing up in a more developed country, she was able to pursue her passion for the arts and is currently working as a freelancer.

  Tran’s paintings are created with a soft, delicate quality using colored pencil and acrylic on paper. She has worked for clients such as VH1, Tiger Beer, World Wildlife Fund, and has showcased with galleries across the world. (photo by Greg Preston)

  The Uncanny Valley

  by Lynne M. Thomas & Michael Damian Thomas

  The sun streams through leafless branches in our Urbana neighborhood as I write the first editorial for 2018. The brisk wind hurtles across the plains, but we are safe and cozy inside our new house, listening to Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings funking up a soul Christmas party, mostly happy in the glow of the blinking lights of our tree.

  2017 is nearly over. It was both a nightmare and sort of magnificent. The Trump regime was as horrific as we expected—equal parts corrupt, bigoted authoritarianism and total incompetence. We all resisted. We fought. We came together as a community. The resistance won on the ACA for the moment, but lost on many other things. Hopefully, the results of the Alabama special senatorial election bode well for the 2018 elections and a blue wave flipping our legislature.

  For the Thomases, this was the year everything changed (as you know if you follow these editorials or our social media accounts). Lynne’s dream job and our large move were phenomenal successes, but we also suffered losses, as one often does with such big changes. Most recently, our beloved Marie Cat passed away. She was a gentle, sweet cat who has been through so many things with her family. We miss her greatly. We are, and remain, deeply grateful to the friends who were there for us during this turbulent year.

  Entering 2018, Caitlin is happy and healthy (and in HIGH SCHOOL!), which is really all we hope for every year.

  Thank you, Space Unicorns. Thank you for sticking together and fighting back against the darkness with love, art, beauty, stories, friendship, activism, and moxie. We will continue to do this together.

  As many of you know, it’s the time of year when people post their year-in-reviews to remind voters for the different SF/F awards what’s out there that they might have missed and which categories these stories are eligible in (especially for the Hugo Awards and Nebula Awards ). 2017 was the third full year of Uncanny Magazine (Issues 14 through 19). We are extremely proud of the year we had.

  This year, Uncanny Magazine is still eligible for the Best Semiprozine Hugo Award . Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas are also still eligible for the Best Editor (Short Form) Hugo Award. (Note: If you are nominating the Thomases in this category, please continue to nominate them together on the same nomination line. They are a co-editing team.)

  The stories listed on the website blog post are eligible in either the short story, novelette, or novella categories of the SF/F awards. If you are a SFWA member nominating for the Nebula Awards, you can find eBook copies of these stories in the SFWA Forums .

  Please also note that essays are eligible for the Best Related Work Hugo Award, and poetry is eligible for the Rhysling Award . As Uncanny is a semiprozine, all of the essays and original art also contribute towards the creators’ Best Fan Writer and Best Fan Artist Hugo Award eligibility.

  Another World Fantasy Convention came and went in November. Uncanny didn’t win any awards, but much fun was had. Michael and the ICFA alligator wandered San Antonio with friends, ate a lot of Tex-Mex food, and Michael perhaps pretended to be a dinosaur with Sarah Pinsker in a very odd, random hallway stone garden that looked like an empty diorama. We are very happy for all of the World Fantasy Award winners, and look forward to the next WFC in Baltimore.

  A few weeks after WFC, the Uncanny Magazine staff of the Thomases, Michi Trota, Steven Schapansky, and Erika Ensign were all at Chicago TARDIS in Michi’s former hometown of Lombard, Illinois. There were plenty of shenanigans amongst the friends. Also, some people who performed in Doctor Who were there.

  The Thomases will be home for all of January and February, unless something odd happens.

  In exciting Thomas convention news for the spring, we will be Guests of Honor at Mo*Con from May 4-6th, 2018, in Indianapolis, Indiana, with Mikki Kendall, John Urbancik, and Jennifer Udden! Mo*Con is a “mini-convention built around food, community, and conversations (typically around the topics of spirituality, art, and social justice)” hosted by author, editor, and wonderful troublemaker Maurice Broaddus. We hope to see you there!

  We have some staff news for this issue. First, this is Mimi Mondal’s first issue as Poetry Editor along with being Reprint Editor. Woo Mimi!

  We also have some bittersweet staff news. Shana DuBois will be moving on from her interviewer position here. Shana is sensational, and we wish her all the best on her future projects. In the interim, fabulous author Caroline M. Yoachim conducted the print interviews, and Lynne is handling the podcast interviews.

  Finally, Uncanny Magazine will be adding a paid intern. They will likely have already started working with Michi as thi
s issue goes to press!

  The Uncanny Magazine Year 4 Kickstarter featured two upcoming special issues—Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction and a shared-world dinosaur issue. Both will have open submissions, and we posted the guidelines in case you would like to submit something for either.

  Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction Guidelines !

  Uncanny Magazine Dinosaur Special Issue Guidelines !

  We can’t wait to see your pieces!

  And now the contents of Uncanny Magazine Issue 20! The marvelous cover is the stunning Sleepless on the Silk Road by Tran Nguyen. Our new fiction this month includes Elizabeth Bear’s powerful character study “She Still Loves the Dragon,” S.B. Divya’s heartbreaking and heart-racing “Contingency Plans for the Apocalypse,” Arkady Martine’s tale of collecting and sacrifice “The Hydraulic Emperor,” Marissa Lingen’s smart and snarky magical exploration “Lines of Growth, Lines of Passage,” Sunny Moraine’s visceral and angry “Your Slaughterhouse, Your Killing Floor,” Vivian Shaw’s intense story of discovery “The Utmost Bound,” and R.K. Kalaw’s fun and dangerous “The Date.” Our reprint fiction is Vandana Singh’s “Conservation Laws,” originally published in her 2008 collection The Woman Who Thought She Was a Planet and Other Stories (collection reprinted in 2013).

  This month’s essays include a personal journey by Fran Wilde, a list of favorite 2017 narrative games by John Wiswell, a tale of tech and matchmaking by Iori Kusano, a look at a true apocalypse by Rebecca Roanhorse, and an examination of the Salem witch trials by Sarah Monette.

  Issue 20’s gorgeous poetry includes “The Early Ones” by Sofia Samatar (illustrated by Del Samatar), “The Knight of the Beak” by Sofia Samatar (illustrated by Del Samatar), “The Cat’s Daughters” by Nitoo Das, “Shadow-Song” by Sonya Taaffe, and “1532” by Ana Hurtado. Finally, special guest interviewer Caroline M. Yoachim interviews S.B. Divya and Sunny Moraine.

  The Uncanny Magazine Podcast 20A features “She Still Loves the Dragon” by Elizabeth Bear, as read by Stephanie Malia Morris, “The Cat’s Daughters” by Nitoo Das, as read by Erika Ensign, and Lynne M. Thomas interviewing Elizabeth Bear. The Uncanny Magazine Podcast 20B features “Lines of Growth, Lines of Passage” by Marissa Lingen, as read by Erika Ensign, “1532” by Ana Hurtado, as read by Stephanie Malia Morris, and Lynne M. Thomas interviewing Marissa Lingen.

  As always, we are deeply grateful of your support of Uncanny Magazine. Shine on, Space Unicorns!

  © 2018 by Lynne M. Thomas & Michael Damian Thomas

  Lynne and Michael are the Publishers/Editors-in-Chief for the two-time Hugo and Parsec Award-winning Uncanny Magazine.

  Five-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 two-time Hugo Award-winner, Michael Damian Thomas was the former Managing Editor of Apex Magazine (2012-2013), co-edited the Hugo-nominated Queers Dig Time Lords (Mad Norwegian Press, 2013) with Sigrid Ellis, and co-edited Glitter & Mayhem (Apex Publications, 2013), with John Klima and Lynne M. Thomas.

  Together, they solve mysteries.

  She Still Loves the Dragon

  by Elizabeth Bear

  She still loves the dragon that set her on fire.

  The knight-errant who came seeking you prepared so carefully. She made herself whole for you. To be worthy of you. To be strong enough to reach you, where you live, so very high.

  She found the old wounds of her earlier errantry and of her past errors, and the other ones that had been inflicted through no fault of her own. She found the broken bones that had healed only halfway, and caused them to be refractured, and endured the pain so they would heal swift and straight, because dragons do not live in the low country where the earth is soft and walking is easy.

  She sought out the sweet balms and even more so she sought out the herbs bitter as unwelcome truth, that must nevertheless be swallowed. She paid for both in time, and grief, and in skinned palms and pricked fingers.

  She quested, and she crafted potions: to make her sight bright in the darkness; to make her hands strong on the stone.

  The knight-errant, when she decides for the first time to seek the dragon, has with her many retainers, loyalty earned and nurtured through heroism and care. She has an entourage, pavilions, a warhorse, and a mare. She has armaments and shields for combat mounted and afoot.

  They cannot climb with her.

  She leaves them all among the soft grass and the gentle foothills below. She tells them not to wait for her.

  She tells them to go home.

  She climbed your mountain for you. She was afraid, and it was high.

  The winter lashed there. The strong sun scorched her. She ducked the landslide of snow and boulders the flip of your wings dislodged, when you resettled them in your sleep. She smelled the sulfur fumes emerging from long vents, and watched the pale blue flames burn here and there, eerie among the barren rust-black stone.

  She drank melted snow; she tried to step around the ochre and yellow and burnt umber ruffles of the lichens, knowing they were fragile and ancient, the only other life tenacious enough to make its home in this place of fire and stone and snow.

  The knight-errant sings a song to herself as she climbs, to keep up her courage. It is an old song now, a ballad with parts that can be traded between two people, and it goes with a fairytale, but it was a new song when she sang it then.

  This is the song she is singing as the basalt opens her palms:

  Let me lay this razor

  At your throat, my love.

  That your throat my love

  Will be guarded so.

  But my throat is tender

  And the blade is keen

  So my flesh may part

  And the blood may flow.

  No harm will you come to

  If you’re still, my love.

  So be still my love,

  That no blood may flow.

  Still as glass I might be

  But my breath must rise,

  For who can keep from breathing?

  So the blood may flow.

  Sharp as glass the blade is,

  If you’re cut, my love

  You must trust my love

  That you’ll feel no pain.

  So the flesh was parted,

  For the blade was keen

  And the blood did flow

  And they felt no pain.

  She is still singing as she achieves the hollow top of the mountain where the dragon nests, glaciers gently sublimating into steam against its belly. No one would bother to try to sneak up on a dragon. It doesn’t matter, however, as she is struck silent by the sight that greets her even as she comes to the end of her song.

  How does a dragon seem?

  Well, here is a charred coil like a curved trunk that has smoldered and cracked in a slow fire. And there is a flank as rugged as a scree slope, broken facets slick with anthracite rainbows. And there is a wing membrane like a veil of paper-ash, like the grey cuticle and veins of an enormous leaf when some hungry larva has gnawed everything that was living away. And over there is a stained horn or claw or tooth, deeply grooved, blunted by wear, perhaps ragged at the tip and stained ombre amber-grey with time and exercise and contact with what substances even the gods may guess at.

  And here is an eye.

  An eye, lit from within, flickering, hourglass-pupiled, mottled in carnelian shades.

  An eye that as one regards it, is in its turn regarding one as well.

  She took off her armor for you. She set it aside, piece by piece, even knowing what you are.

  So that you could see her naked.

  She showed you her scars and her treasures.

  She stretched out her arms to the frost and her tender flesh prickled. Her breath plumed. She shook with the cold, unless it was fear that rattled her d
ark feet on the ice.

  “Did you come to destroy me?”

  The dragon’s voice is not what she expected. It is soft and sweet, spring breezes, apple blossom, drifting petals all around. Ineluctably feminine. Everything the knight is not, herself.

  The dragon sounds neither wary nor angry. Mildly curious, perhaps.

  Intrigued.

  The woman shakes so hard in the cold that she feels her own bones pulling against, straining her tendons.

  “I came because you are the only challenge left to me,” the woman says. “I have crossed the ocean, yes, and sounded it too. I have braved deserts and jungles and caverns and the cold of the North. I have cooked my dinner in a geyser, and I have scaled mountains, too.” Here, she taps her bare heel ruefully on icy basalt. Her toes turn the color of dusk. They ache down to the bone.

  She will put her boots back on soon enough, she decides. But she still has something to prove.

  She says (and she only sounds, she thinks, the smallest amount as if she is boasting, and anyway all of it is true), “I have won wars, and I have prevented them from ever beginning. I have raised a daughter and sewn a shroud for a lover. I have written a song or two in my time and some were even sung by other people. I have lost at tables to the King of the Giants and still walked out of his hall alive. I even kissed that trickster once, the one you know, who turns themself into a mare and what-not, and came away with my lips still on.”

  Maybe now she sounds a little like she is boasting. And anyway, still all of it is true.

  And maybe even the dragon looks a little impressed.

  “And now you’re naked in front of a dragon,” the dragon says, amused.

  “That’s how it goes.” She wraps her arms around herself. Her words are more chatter than breath.

  “Am I another item on your list?” the dragon asks. “Will you tick me off on your fingers when you climb back down?”

  She looks at the dragon. An awful tenderness rises in her.

  “No,” she says. “I do not think I will.”

  “Come closer,” says the dragon. “It is warmer over here.”