Uncanny Magazine Issue 7 Read online

  UNCANNY MAGAZINE

  Uncanny Magazine Issue Seven

  “Uncanny Magazine Editorial Staff” by Uncanny Magazine

  About Our Cover Artist: Julie Dillon by Julie Dillon

  “The Uncanny Valley” by Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas

  “Wooden Feathers” by Ursula Vernon

  “And the Balance in Blood” by Elizabeth Bear

  “A Call to Arms for Deceased Authors’ Rights” by Karin Tidbeck

  “Interlingua” by Yoon Ha Lee

  “I Seen the Devil” by Alex Bledsoe

  “Love Will Tear Us Apart” by Alaya Dawn Johnson

  “The Call of the Sad Whelkfins: The Continued Relevance of How To Suppress Women’s Writing” by Annalee Flower Horne and Natalie Luhrs

  “Please, Judge This Book By Its Cover” by Aidan Moher

  “The Alien Says Don’t Take Your Meds: Neurodiversity and Mental Health Treatment in TV SF/F” by Tansy Rayner Roberts

  “Everyone Has a Ghost Story” by Deborah Stanish

  “The Thirteenth Child” by Mari Ness

  “Something Different from Either” by Sonya Taaffe

  “Aboard the Transport Tesoro” by Lisa M. Bradley

  “Interview: Yoon Ha Lee” by Deborah Stanish

  “Interview: Alex Bledsoe” by Deborah Stanish

  “Thank You, Patreon Supporters!” by Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas

  “Thank You, Year Two Kickstarter Supporters!” 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

  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, Lena Ye

  Logo & Wordmark design: Katy Shuttleworth

  About Our Cover Artist: Julie Dillon

  Julie Dillon is a Hugo Award–winning artist living in California. She has had a lifelong love of fantasy and sci–fi art and literature, and is excited to be making her own contribution to the field. Over the years, she has worked on book covers, magazine illustrations, gaming illustrations, and a variety of other commissions, and she is currently working on branching out into creating more of her own work. Her website is www.juliedillonart.com and you can follow her on Twitter at @juliedillon.

  The Uncanny Valley

  by Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas

  One month of Tweets, guest blog posts, costumes, videos, giveaways, constant Internet refreshing, trying to answer emails in rural Quebec, and two million ways trying to keep things fresh and fun later, the Uncanny Magazine Year Two Kickstarter is OVER. The fact that you’re reading this tells you that we were successful. Not only did Year Two fund, we reached every initial stretch goal. Year Two will have all of the content that Year One had, plus a spiffy new webcomic by the amazing Liz Argall. Thank you to all of our backers, people who donated nifty things, folks who boosted the signal, interviewed us, or hosted guest blogs, people who made and starred in our video, and our amazing staff of Managing Editor Michi Trota, Podcast Producers Erika Ensign and Steven Schapansky, Interviewer Deborah Stanish, and Reader Amal El–Mohtar.

  We are so grateful and honored to be doing this again. We love Uncanny Magazine, and we believe we’re publishing important, quality Science Fiction and Fantasy stories, poems, podcasts, and essays, featuring diverse voices and pieces with a certain Uncanny point of view. Based on the fact that so many people support us with Kickstarter, through subscriptions, and on Patreon, clearly a large portion of the community of SF/F readers, creators, and fans agree.

  While this industry has its disagreements and kerfuffles, what keeps us here at the end of the day is a loving and supportive community. Not a week goes by when the SF/F community doesn’t rally around causes from sick authors without enough health insurance to bookstores that can’t remain open without help. In our own case, in 2013 Jim C. Hines and others raised a tremendous amount of money by recreating sexist cover poses and donated the proceeds from the fundraiser, and the calendar that followed , to the Aicardi Syndrome Foundation . The head of the foundation was near tears when he thanked us and explained that Jim and our SF/F community made it possible for them to hire people to create a proper website that now offers great information and support to all of the families of children with our daughter’s syndrome. It wasn’t possible without all of you.

  Uncanny Magazine isn’t a charity, of course. We created it because we want to bring more art, beauty, fun, and kindness into the world, and perhaps make a little money to help with Caitlin’s increasing healthcare costs. We want to share gorgeous, amazing things with this wonderful community, and we want everybody to feel like they’re a part of that. This is how we give back for all of your warmth and love. Thank you for making Uncanny Magazine possible, and joining the Space Unicorn Ranger Corps on this special, ongoing mission.

  So begins Year Two, the second of many!

  If you missed our second Kickstarter and still want to help support Uncanny Magazine, we have great news for you. There are many ways to support what we’re doing, including a spiffy Patreon and subscriptions from our friends at Weightless Books . As of this issue, we also have a new, exciting option. We now offer Amazon Kindle subscriptions ! For only $23.88 per year, you will automatically receive all of the content on the day of the release on your Kindle rather than waiting a month for the second half of the issue. It couldn’t be easier!

  If you can’t financially support Uncanny Magazine, there is still another way to join the Space Unicorn Ranger Corps. Please spread the word about the magazine and its contents. That’s it! By sharing the awesome on social media, blogs, and review sites, you make it possible for more people to experience the thoughtful essays, passionate poetry, vibrant covers, and stupendous stories.

  Where in the World Are the Thomases?

  Sadly, we won’t be at the World Fantasy Convention this year. We will, however, be at a pair of Chicago area conventions this November— Windycon and Chicago TARDIS . We love both, especially Chicago TARDIS which is one of our home conventions. We will also be attending ConFusion in the Detroit area this year in January. This is the first time the entire family has attended, and we’re positively thrilled. If you see us at any of these conventions, please come up and say hi (we’re the ones pushing the adorable girl in her wheelchair).

  Year Two of Uncanny Magazine kicks off with a fantastic cover by Julie Dillon, “The Archivist.” (Which is especially neat for us since Lynne’s day job is being a Curator/Archivist in a library.) Our new fiction features Ursula Vernon’s delightfully askew update of a familiar tale “Wooden Feathers,”Elizabeth Bear’s wonderful novelette of aging heroism “And the Balance in Blood,” Karin Tidbeck’s important message to all writers “A Call to Arms for Deceased Authors’ Rights,” Yoon Ha Lee’s majestic tale of gaming and space travel “Interlingua,” and Alex Bledsoe’s Southern Gothic yarn “I Seen the Devil.” Our reprint this month is Alaya Dawn Johnson’s twisted zombie love story “Love Will Tear Us Apart,” originally published in the Zombies vs. Unicorns anthology.

  Our
essays this month feature Annalee Flower Horne and Natalie Luhrs discussing the continuing relevance of Joanna Russ’s How to Suppress Women’s Writing, Aidan Moher’s discussion with top SF/F artists and art directors about the importance of cover art, Tansy Rayner Roberts taking SF/F television to task for its treatment of mental health, and Deborah Stanish looking at how creepy events in our lives affect us later. Our poetry includes Mari Ness’s powerful “The Thirteenth Child,” Sonya Taaffe’s beautiful “Something Different from Either,” and Lisa M. Bradley’s haunting “Aboard the Transport Tesoro.”

  Finally, Deborah Stanish interviews Yoon Ha Lee and Alex Bledsoe about their stories.

  Podcast 7A features Ursula Vernon’s “Wooden Feathers” as read by Max Gladstone and Amal El–Mohtar, Mari Ness’s “The Thirteenth Child” as read by Erika Ensign, and Deborah Stanish interviewing Ursula Vernon. Podcast 7B features Karin Tidbeck’s “A Call to Arms for Deceased Authors’ Rights” as read by Erika Ensign, Lisa Bradley’s “Aboard the Transport Tesoro” as read by Amal El–Mohtar, and Deborah Stanish interviewing Karin Tidbeck.

  This issue also has some comings and goings in the Submissions Editors’ ranks. Alex Kane is leaving us to focus on other projects. We wish him well in his future endeavors and are grateful for all of his hard work. Meanwhile, Lena Ye has joined us as a poetry Submissions Editor. Welcome, Lena!

  Please enjoy the latest issue of Uncanny Magazine, and thank you all so much for your continued support.

  © 2015 by 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.

  Wooden Feathers

  by Ursula Vernon

  The carving was going badly.

  Sarah examined the duck decoy before her and sighed. The bill was shaped entirely wrong. It was supposed to be a mallard, but she hadn’t taken enough off before she began shaping and now the bill was half again as long as it should be.

  I’ll flare the bill and make it a Northern Shoveler, she decided. Nobody has to know that it was supposed to be a mallard.

  Two customers came in, so she set down the knife and put on her best customer service expression. “Hi, there!”

  Two middle–aged women nodded to her. They gave the stall a professional once–over, looking for bargains or hidden treasure, then left again without speaking.

  Give it up, ladies. The internet got rid of all that. Go bid on storage units or estate trunks or something if you’re hoping to strike it big.

  Well, you didn’t say things like that aloud. Not to the customers, anyway. Sarah picked up the knife and turned the decoy around. The hind ends of many ducks looked alike. She wouldn’t have to change anything much to transform her mallard.

  Rauf, who ran the stall across the way, waved to her. She liked Rauf. He sold popcorn and boiled peanuts and curry rub and never complained about sawdust getting tracked across the floor.

  The sawdust got everywhere, but people liked to watch a carver work. On a good day they would come in and stare for long enough that they felt guilty and bought something small. She did a pretty good business in tiny duck keychains that way.

  Given that there were three other woodworkers in the flea market, all of them better than she was, Sarah figured that she needed all the help she could get.

  She didn’t talk to the other carvers much. The old–timers at the market wouldn’t talk to you until you’d been there at least a couple of years.

  Another customer came in. She looked up and stifled a sigh.

  “Hey, there,” she said. “Good to see you again.”

  The old man nodded.

  He was a repeat customer, but she’d never learned his name. He wore a dusty black suit with frayed bits at the cuffs. The only things that moved quickly about him were his hands. When he picked up one of her carvings, his face stayed old but his hands became young, gnarled but deft. He ran his thumbs over the carved edges of the feathers, traced a circle around the glass eye, and looked up at her inquiringly.

  “Common Goldeneye,” she said. Which was true enough, and nobody needed to know that it had started life as a Long–Tailed Duck, but she’d knocked the tail off and then had to get creative.

  He nodded. He set the duck down and his hands were old again. He slowly opened his wallet and began to pull out wrinkled bills. The wallet was even more frayed than the suit.

  Sarah took the money. She could smell him on it—old man smell, Bengay and fabric washed so many times that it had lost any hope of getting clean.

  He came in every week and bought the cheapest of her decoys. He paid cash and brought his own shopping bag over his arm. Sarah worried about him.

  “There’s a fifteen percent discount,” she said, sliding the change back.

  “There is?” His voice was so quiet she had to strain to hear it over the sounds of the market.

  “Yeah,” said Sarah, who had just made it up on the spot. “To celebrate—um—the new duck stamp coming out.” She waved her hand toward the wall, where she’d put up a poster just this morning. “It’s a Ruddy Duck.”

  “Is it?” He looked at the poster thoughtfully. She sometimes thought, for a man who bought so many decoys, that he knew very little about ducks.

  He took the change and put it very slowly away, then slipped the decoy into his bag. She had stopped offering to wrap them months ago. Then he made his slow way out of the stall and vanished into the crowd.

  She slumped back on her stool. She needed the money, but she felt strange taking it from the old man. Why would anyone buy a carved duck decoy every single week?

  On good days, she pretended that he was secretly a millionaire, one of the ones who lived cheap, but that he was overcome by admiration for her duck carvings and had to own them.

  On most days, she figured that he had a shopping addiction.

  Rauf came over, holding a bag of popcorn. “Here,” he said. “We’re about to start a new batch and you haven’t eaten all morning.”

  “Thanks, Rauf.” She wiped her hands off and took a handful. “How’s it going?”

  “Slow.” He shrugged. “August is always bad. Everybody’s spent all their vacation money and now they’re looking at back to school sales.”

  Sarah nodded. Hand–carved ducks sold much worse than popcorn.

  “I see old Jep came by.”

  “Who?”

  “Jep. Just now.” Rauf waved toward the gap in her line of carvings. “Comes in every week, doesn’t he?”

  “Oh, him! Yeah. Didn’t know he had a name.” Jep. It seemed like a name for a mountain moonshiner, not an old, frayed man. Then again, maybe he’d been a moonshiner in his youth, who knew?

  “He used to be a carver,” said Rauf, promptly dashing the moonshiner fantasy. “Had a stall over on the high–rent side. That was years ago, though.”

  “He was?” Sarah blinked.

  “Oh, yeah.” Rauf grinned. “He did a big carousel over in Nag’s Head. Had photos up in his stall. Horses and dolphins and seagulls big enough to ride.”

  Sarah stared down into the bag of popcorn, wondering how she should feel about that.

  “You said he used to be a carver…” she said.

  “He stopped after his wife got sick,” said Rauf, the grin fading. “Closed up his stall. They sell custom hammocks or something in it now. I don’t know if he’s done anything since.”

  “He must’ve,” said
Sarah. She could not imagine not carving. Even when business was dreadful and she had to spend half the income from waitressing just to keep the stall open, it never occurred to her to quit.

  She wouldn’t have lasted three days. She’d be sitting on the couch and her hands would start to itch for sandpaper and a knife. She’d end up carving the arm of the couch if she couldn’t get a wooden blank.

  Rauf shrugged. “I don’t know. You could ask him.”

  Sarah turned the regrettable mallard–turned–shoveler around. “Maybe I will.”

  But when he came in the next week, she asked him a different question instead.

  “Did you make these?”

  Jep looked up at her. No emotion crossed the long, dragged lines of his face, but she thought that she’d surprised him.

  She held out her phone, with the pictures of the carousel in Nag’s Head on it.

  He did not take it, but he bent down to look at the screen. After a moment he said “Yes. Those were mine.”

  He did not look like a man who was proud. He looked like a soldier admitting that he had been to war. He bought the cheapest decoy, put it into his bag, and shuffled out of the shop.

  Sarah stared after him, and then down at the photos of the carousel.

  Many carousels were works of art. This was more. This was—she didn’t have the words—glory.

  The horses were a riot of color, gilded and painted, their heads thrown back or bowed far forward under scarlet reins. Smiling dolphins leapt and cavorted between the horses. There was a gull with its beak open, laughing, and a narwhal with a golden horn and a pelican so large that a child could ride in the pouch.

  Sarah’s favorite was a walrus. It was snow white, with a blue saddle, and its tusks were scrimshawed with starfish and ships. Its lumpy, bristly face was screwed up in a grin of delight. In the photo, a little girl had her arms as far around it as they could go, and she was grinning too.

  A carousel like that must have cost a million dollars, she thought. He must have charged tons for it. I hope he’s rich. I hope.