Uncanny Magazine Issue 10 Read online

  UNCANNY MAGAZINE

  Uncanny Magazine Issue Ten

  “Uncanny Magazine Editorial Staff” by Uncanny Magazine

  About Our Cover Artist: Galen Dara by Galen Dara

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

  “Ye Highlands and Ye Lowlands” by Seanan McGuire

  “The Sound of Salt and Sea” by Kat Howard

  “The Blood That Pulses in the Veins of One” by JY Yang

  “You’ll Surely Drown Here If You Stay” by Alyssa Wong

  “The Drowning Line” by Haralambi Markov

  “The Plague Givers” by Kameron Hurley

  “Diversity: More Than White Women” by Foz Meadows

  “Where Do We Find Community as Gamers?” by Tanya DePass

  “Ludo and the Goblin King” by Sarah Monette

  “In the Hands of the Goblin King” by Stephanie Zvan

  “Deeper Than Pie” by Beth Cato

  “Brown woman at Safety Beach, Victoria, in June” by M Sereno

  “Alamat” by Isabel Yap

  “Interview: Kat Howard” by Deborah Stanish

  “Interview: Alyssa Wong” by Deborah Stanish

  “Thank You, Patreon 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 © 2016 by Uncanny Magazine.

  www.uncannymagazine.com

  Uncanny Magazine Editorial Staff

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

  Managing Editor: Michi Trota

  Reprint/Poetry Editor: Julia Rios

  Podcast Producers: Erika Ensign and Steven Schapansky

  Interviewer: Deborah Stanish

  Podcast Reader: Amal El–Mohtar

  Submissions Editors: Ashley Gallagher, Cislyn Smith, Elizabeth Neering, Heather Clitheroe, Jen R. Albert, Jesse Lex, Jessica Wolf, Kay Taylor Rea, Liam Meilleur, Mishell Baker, Piper Hale, Shannon Page, Vida Cruz, Lena Ye, Eileen Wu, Heather Leigh, Susheela Bhat Harkins

  Logo & Wordmark design: Katy Shuttleworth

  About Our Cover Artist: Galen Dara

  Galen Dara likes monsters, mystics, and dead things. She has created art for Escape Artists, Uncanny Magazine, 47North Publishing, Skyscape Publishing, Fantasy Flight Games, Tyche Books, Fireside Magazine, and Lightspeed Magazine. She has been nominated for the Hugo, the World Fantasy Award, and the Chesley Award. When Galen is not working on a project you can find her on the edge of the Sonoran Desert, climbing mountains and hanging out with a friendly conglomeration of human and animal companions. Her website is www.galendara.com . You can follow her on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter @galendara .

  The Uncanny Valley

  by Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas

  The weather is ping–ponging between snow, rain, and sun today, so clearly we are writing this during a Chicago April. Despite the wacky weather, the daffodils and tulips are still fighting the elements in front of our Sears catalog house to declare THEY ARE NOT GIVING UP ON THIS SPRING THING. Before we know it, the Thomases will be walking to the gorgeous, newly remodeled DeKalb Public Library to check out this year’s Hugo Award–nominated novels. (At least the ones we don’t already own.)

  For along with the budding of trees, award season is in full bloom. As we type this, the Hugo nominating period is over, and the Nebula winners are already in an envelope on SFWA’s orbiting satellite headquarters. (If you are attending the SFWA Nebula Conference, please say hi to the Thomases and Michi!)

  Yes, we buried the lede a bit. UNCANNY MAGAZINE IS A FINALIST FOR THE BEST SEMIPROZINE HUGO AWARD! We are beyond thrilled about this. There are so many great magazines in that category. We are truly, truly honored to be a finalist in our very first year of eligibility. And that’s not all! Hao Jingfang’s “Folding Beijing” (translated by Ken Liu) is A FINALIST FOR THE BEST NOVELETTE HUGO AWARD AND A FINALIST FOR THE STURGEON AWARD! We wish huge congratulations to Jingfang and Ken!

  We are so, so proud of our 2015 issues. Many of our remarkable stories, essays, poems, and covers have been nominated for different awards, or have been included in Year’s Best collections. For the first complete year of a new magazine, this is a phenomenal accomplishment. We truly are grateful to work with the best creators and staff in the world.

  The accolades are great, but that’s not what is most important to us. When we created Uncanny, we wanted it to be a place for community—readers and creators making and consuming art, beauty, kindness, insight, challenges, and gorgeous emotions. After 10 issues, what means the most to us is the wonderful enthusiasm we see from our readers and creators. People are giddy about each issue, talking about their favorite pieces, recommending things to friends, and there seems to be a general feeling that Uncanny is a gathering place for a marvelous, diverse SF/F community. That is the greatest award of all.

  So, do you want to help support the continuation of this community? WE’RE RECRUITING NEW MEMBERS TO THE SPACE UNICORN RANGER CORPS!

  As you know, Uncanny Magazine is trying to find as many revenue streams as possible so we can begin purchasing submissions for Year Three. We need YOUR HELP to SPREAD THE WORD!

  There are many ways to join:

  1. There is a Subscription Drive going on at Weightless Books for a year’s worth of Uncanny Magazine eBooks! The drive will run from May 3—May 17. For that limited time, you can receive a year’s worth of Uncanny for $2 off the regular price! We will have some nifty giveaways for a few lucky new or renewing subscribers at particular milestones, too. (T–shirts! Back issues! Fancy custom tea blends! Tote bags!). AND ALL NEW AND RENEWING WEIGHTLESS SUBSCRIBERS WILL GET AN EXCLUSIVE COLOR VINYL SPACE UNICORN RANGER CORPS STICKER!

  2. The Uncanny Magazine Patreon! Do you love our magazine and podcast and want to see them continue, but aren’t interested in an eBook subscription? This is an excellent way to support our magazine! You can support us for as little as $1 per month! And you can get UNCANNY SWAG at other levels!

  3. You can subscribe through Amazon Kindle! It’s simple and easy and every wonderful Uncanny eBook issue magically arrives on day of release on your Kindle without any fuss!

  If just 10 percent of our online readers purchase subscriptions or back us on Patreon, we could immediately fund Year Three.

  Finally, here are the magnificent contents of our tenth issue! Our outstanding original cover this month is from Galen Dara and is called “Bubbles and Blast Off.” Our fiction this month includes Seanan McGuire’s haunting tale of first contact and misunderstandings “Ye Highlands and Ye Lowlands,” Kat Howard’s evocative tale of death and duty “The Sound of Salt and Sea,” JY Yang’s tale of longing “The Blood That Pulses in the Veins of One,” Alyssa Wong’s gut–wrenching western, “You’ll Surely Drown Here If You Stay,” and the struggle to overcome a family curse in Haralambi Markov’s “The Drowning Line.” Our reprint this month is the inimitable Kameron Hurley’s “The Plague Givers.”

  Our essays this month include Foz Meadows examining inclusivity trends in television and film, Tanya DePass asking where gamers find community, and Sarah Monette and Stephanie Zvan celebrating the 30th anniversary of the film Labyrinth through two different lenses. Our new poetry includes Beth Cato’s evocative, stunning “Deeper Than Pie,” M Sereno’s pointed “Brown woman at Safety Beach, Victoria, in June,” and Isabel Yap’s powerful “Alamat.” All of this excellent new fiction and poetry is rounded out with Deborah Stanish’s in–depth interviews with Kat Howard and Alyssa Wong.

  Podcast 10A features Amal El–Mohtar reading Seanan McGuire’s “Ye Highlands and Ye Lowlands,” Erika Ensign reading Beth Cato’s “Deeper Than Pie,” and Deborah Stanish interviewing Seanan McGuire. Podcast 10B features Heath Miller reading Haralambi Markov’s “The Drowning Line,” Erika Ensign reading Isabel Yap’s “Alamat,” and an interview conducted by Deborah Stanish.

  Finally, the circle of Submission Editor life continues. After some amazing work, Andrea Berns, Arkady Martine, Elizabeth Neering, K.E. Bergdoll, and Jen R. Albert are all leaving us. We wish them well in all of their future endeavors. But there is happy news! We have been joined by new Submission Editors Eileen Wu, Susheela Bhat Harkins, and Heather Leigh. Welcome, new Space Unicorns.

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

  © 2016 by Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas

  Lynne and Michael are the Publishers/Editors–in–Chief for Uncanny: A Magazine of Science Fiction and 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.

  Ye Highlands and Ye Lowlands

  by Seanan McGuire

  Ye Highlands and ye Lowlands,

  Oh, where have you been?

  They have slain the Earl of Moray,

  And they laid him on the green.

  —Child Ballad 181, “The Bonny
Earl of Moray.”

  Things have consequences.

  Kids figure that out around the time they’re old enough to realize that when they touch a hot stove, they pull back burnt fingers. Things have consequences. Pull a cat’s tail, the cat will scratch. Drop a glass, the glass will break. Things have consequences. Everybody knows that.

  But somehow, when science has consequences, when science touches the hot stove and pulls back burnt fingers, when science pulls the cat’s tail, the consequences are “unforeseen” and “just the cost of progress.” Science is immune from bad results. All results are good results, coming from science.

  Angie is shivering like she’s going to fly apart, like her bones have turned to ice inside her skin. Nate isn’t sleeping. He isn’t even closing his eyes. He’s watching everything with the harried silence of a wounded child, and every time he looks at me, it’s like he’s waiting for me to take it all back, to say that no kids, it’s all right, if science doesn’t have consequences, you don’t either. If science doesn’t have to pay the piper, it’s not fair that you should have to foot the bill.

  I can’t tell him that he’s wrong and I can’t make them understand what’s happened and I can’t take back what we did, and so I reach over and I stroke Angie’s hair, and I wonder when the sky is going to fall.

  Science has consequences.

  Why the fuck didn’t we figure that out sooner?

  “This is not just a great day for American ingenuity and progress,” boomed the President of the United States, gripping the sides of the podium like he thought that leaning forward with just a little more intensity, speaking with just a little more religious fervor, would somehow bring his flagging approval numbers back up from the graveyard of political hopes and dreams. And maybe they would: after all, he was in the process of dedicating the greatest advancement in transportation science since some brave Cro–Magnon first said “What if we made this thing on the bottom round?” Of such accomplishments are Presidential legacies made.

  “No,” he continued. “This is a leap forward for the human race as a whole. Our children’s children will look back upon this day and say ‘That was the moment, that was the time when we turned our eyes away from the cool, green hills of Earth and turned them toward the bright and shining promise of the galaxy.’”

  “Nice Heinlein reference,” murmured Lo Hsien. She was one of the astrophysicists who had dedicated the last six years of their lives to the star charts that made the Hephaestus Project feasible, much less functional. She was exhausted and smirking, and looked like she was on the verge of collapse.

  I smirked back. “Bets that his scriptwriter snuck it in without telling him what it was?” I asked, and she swallowed her laughter, and we were rulers of the world in that moment; we were at the peak of our careers. The President of the United–goddamn–States was praising us! Nothing was ever going to be that good again.

  “I still say we should have pressed for the name ‘Stargate,’” she said, and I elbowed her, and everything was perfect.

  We’d known, even then, even at the height of our triumph, that it was all going to be downhill from there. If we’d had any concept of how far downhill, I would have smashed the machine that had defined the past decade of my life with my own two hands, accepted whatever consequences came with the action, and been glad. But I had no idea. No one had any idea.

  The President spoke, and the band played, and NASA unveiled Hephaestus as everyone ooh–ed and ahh–ed and pretended to understand what they were looking at: a screen, roughly the size of a suburban garage, ringed with lights and complex electrical systems. Nothing special. It could have been a particularly extravagant flat screen TV.

  Until the crew up in the control room flipped the switch to turn it on.

  Until the screen began to crackle with bolts of rainbow light, turning into a burning prism so bright and so beautiful that it hurt to look at directly.

  Until the prism turned clear as water, and we were looking out on the surface of an alien planet, like something out of science fiction, but it was real, it was happening, it was there in front of us, and even though I had seen that particular view dozens of times, my heart still stuttered in my chest and my mouth still went dry with the wonder and the importance of it all.

  “Millions of light years, ladies and gentlemen,” boomed the President. “That’s what we’ve just skipped over: millions of light years of distance, of empty space, between us and another world.”

  That was the cue for the control team. They rolled out a bevy of little robots, intentionally anthropomorphic things, designed to look adorable and non–threatening on magazine covers and news blogs all around the world. They rolled on treads instead of walking on legs, but they had things people would recognize as “faces,” and they had arms with grasping hands at the ends, and they were going to be our ambassadors to a whole new world.

  They weren’t the first things we’d sent through—that would have been hubris, making our first crossing for a live audience and the President. More traditional robots were already on the other side, building a return gate, gathering samples, doing the things explorers have always done. These robots were our ambassadors to the human race as much as to the stars. Look, they said, with their adorable faces and their relatable forms, look; humanity is conquering this new place. Look, they said, this isn’t just science, this is adventure. This is discovery. And you’re part of it, every single one of you. Look.

  The President was explaining how each of the robots had been loaded with recordings explaining their purpose in every known human language—including Klingon, which got a laugh from the watching journalists. They would tell our story to the stars until we were ready to go out there and tell it for ourselves. They would tell anything that moved who we were and that we were coming in peace.

  (And I do mean “anything that moved.” We didn’t know what life might look like, that far out and that far away from home. Maybe it would be mammalian, bipedal, alien life through the Roddenberry lens. Or maybe it would be glittering and silicate, or a sequence of musical notes suspended in an organic wind. We had no way of predicting what our first contact would be, and so we had programmed the robots to stop and deliver their spiel to anything that seemed like it might be even potentially receptive. A lot of rocks were going to hear about how peaceful humanity was.)

  The sun was shining and the reporters were asking the President questions he was in no way qualified to answer, and my team had done what no other group of people past, present, or future had been able to do: we had given mankind the stars. We had changed the universe forever.

  Things have consequences.

  Angie isn’t shivering anymore. I have to resist the urge to reach over and shake her, to confirm with my hands what I can see with my eyes: she’s just asleep. She’s exhausted, she’s fifteen, and she’s sleeping. The fact that she’s stopped shivering is a mercy, not a warning sign. Maybe. Maybe.

  It’s not like it makes any difference one way or the other. I can’t help her. I can’t save her. I can’t do anything for her, or for Nate, except to keep them moving, keep them fleeing from the epicenter, while the people who were able to get into clean rooms—the people who had no one outside the compound that they cared about—keep arguing with our visitors, trying to make them understand that they got it wrong, they got it wrong, this isn’t what we asked for. This isn’t what we asked for at all.

  Nate still isn’t sleeping. I offer him as much of a smile as I can dredge up from the bottom of my broken heart, leaning a little closer and saying softly, “Hey, buddy, try to get some rest while you can, okay? We’re going to be moving again soon.”

  He looks at me with narrow, wary eyes, and he doesn’t say anything. I don’t think he’s ever going to say anything again. I don’t think—honestly—I don’t think he’s going to have time to get over the shock and remember what it is to scream.

  The last email I got before the Internet went down like the house of electronic cards it always was indicated that the chemical compounds our visitors (not guests, never guests; guests don’t do this to their hosts, guests bring wine and cheese and platitudes, not wind and chaos and pathogens) have been pumping into the atmosphere are heavy. They’re taking out the lowlands first. Denver is supposedly fine. Thriving, even, as waves of refugees come staggering past the city limits with their worldly possessions on their backs, ready to pay anything for a glass of water and a place to sleep.