Invaders: 22 Tales From the Outer Limits of Literature Read online

  Praise for the anthologies of editor Jacob Weisman

  The Treasury of the Fantastic (with David M. Sandner)

  “From the evocative images of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s ‘Kubla Khan’ andLord Byron’s ‘Darkness’ to Mark Twain’s devil tale, ‘The Mysterious Stranger,’ and Max Beerbohm’s devil plus time travel fantasy, ‘Enoch Soames,’ the 44 stories and poems in this compilation of fantastic literature provides a solid grounding in the development of the genre. Because most of the writers are ‘mainstream’ rather than genre authors, this collection also makes a good case for fantasy as literature, while the presence of Edgar Allan Poe, H. G. Wells, and Lord Dunsany alongside Edith Wharton, Emily Dickinson, and E. M. Forster breaks down the barrier between literary and genre fiction. VERDICT: This is an important collection for all lovers of fantasy and literature.”

  —Library Journal

  “The Treasury of the Fantastic truly is a treasury of wonderful stories. . . . Turns out there’s not a dud to be found.”

  —Fantasy and Science Fiction

  “A marvelous mix of classics and rarely seen works, bibliophile’s finds and old favorites . . . a treasury in every sense and a treasure!”

  —Connie Willis, author of Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog

  “The fantasy tradition in English and American literature is rich and varied and strange. This is the book to read to find out what you never knew you needed to know.”

  —David G. Hartwell, editor of the Year’s Best Fantasy series

  “It was an absolute delight to see so [many] of these authors collected here and finding new treasures I hadn’t realized really fell into the realm of fantasy.”

  —Tabitha Perkins, My Shelf Confessions

  “The Treasury of the Fantastic is truly that, a comprehensive collection of fantastical literature from throughout the many years covering the romanticism era to the early twentieth century . . . an exquisitely curated collection. . . .”

  —The Arched Doorway

  The Sword & Sorcery Anthology (with David G. Hartwell)

  “Heroes and their mighty deeds populate the pages of this delightfully kitschy yet absorbing anthology of sword and sorcery short stories from the 1930s onward. Hartwell and Weisman have selected some of the best short-form work in the genre, starting with the originator, Robert E. Howard, and his tales of Conan the Barbarian. The heroes are tough, savvy, and willing to knock a few heads in to get the job done. The soldier of Glen Cook’s Dread Empire and Fritz Leiber’s Grey Mouser make strong appearances, as does Michael Moorcock’s Elric of Melniboné and his dread sword, Stormbringer. Female heroes are as ruthless as their male counterparts: C. L. Moore’s Jirel of Joiry walks through Hell and back to get her revenge, while George R. R. Martin’s Daenerys Stormborn becomes a true queen by outmaneuvering an entire city of slavers. This is an unbeatable selection from classic to modern, and each story brings its A game.”

  —Publishers Weekly, starred review

  “The 19 stories in this volume span a time period from 1933 to 2012 and provide a strong introduction to this fantasy subgenre.”

  —Library Journal

  “Awesome collection, very highly recommended.”

  —Nerds in Babeland

  “Superbly presented . . . reignited this reader’s interest.”

  —SF Site

  “A big, meaty collection of genre highlights that runs the gamut from old-school classics to new interpretations, it serves as an excellent introduction and primer in one.”

  —Green Man Review

  INVADERS:

  22 TALES

  FROM THE

  OUTER LIMITS OF LITERATURE

  Edited by Jacob Wesiman

  TACHYON || SAN FRANCISCO

  Invaders: 22 Tales from the Outer Limits of Literature

  Copyright © 2016 by Jacob Weisman

  This is a collected work of fiction. All events portrayed in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form without the express permission of the publisher.

  Introduction copyright © 2016 by Jacob Weisman

  Pages 381–822 constitute an extension of this copyright page.

  Interior and cover design by Elizabeth Story

  Cover art “Marshland Crows” copyright © 2014 by Goro Fujita

  Tachyon Publications LLC

  1459 18th Street, #139

  San Francisco, CA 94107

  www.tachyonpublications.com

  [email protected]

  Series Editor: Jacob Weisman

  Project Editor: James DeMaiolo

  ISBNs; epub: 978-1-61696-225-8; Mobi: 978-1-61696-226-5; PDF: 978-1-69616-227-2

  First Edition: 2016

  For Sheila Williams, friend and mentor since the beginning.

  Special thanks to James Patrick Kelly & John Kessel, James DeMaiolo, Ellen Datlow, Gordon Van Gelder, Lettie Prell & John Domini, and Bernie Goodman for their help in assembling this anthology.

  CONTENTS

  INTRODUCTION | Jacob Weisman

  PORTAL | J. Robert Lennon

  BEAUTIFUL MONSTERS | Eric Puchner

  THE SQUID WHO FELL IN LOVE WITH THE SUN | Ben Loory

  FIVE FUCKS | Jonathan Lethem

  LIMBs | Julia Elliott

  WE ARE THE OLFANAUTS | Deji Bryce Olukotun

  THE REGION OF UNLIKENESS | Rivka Galchen

  A PRECURSOR OF THE CINEMA | Steven Millhauser

  IN THE BUSHES | Jami Attenberg

  FUGUE STATE | Brian Evenson

  REPORTS CONCERNING THE DEATH OF THE SEATTLE ALBATROSS ARE SOMEWHAT EXAGGERATED | W. P. Kinsella

  LAMBING SEASON | Molly Gloss

  CONRAD LOOMIS & THE CLOTHES RAY | Amiri Baraka

  TOPICS IN ADVANCED ROCKETRY | Chirs Tarry

  THE INNER CITY | Karen Heuler

  ESCAPE FROM SPIDERHEAD | George Saunders

  AMOROMETER | Kelly Luce

  THE YOGURT OF VASIRIN KEFIROVSKY | Max Apple

  MONSTRO | Junot Díaz

  MINOTAUR | Jim Shepard

  HELP ME FIND MY SPACEMAN LOVER | Robert Olen Butler

  NEAR-FLESH | Katherine Dunn

  Extended Copyrights

  JACOB WEISMAN

  Introduction

  Jacob Weisman is the editor and publisher at Tachyon Publications, which he founded in 1995. He has been nominated for the World Fantasy Award three times and is the series editor of Tachyon’s Hugo, Nebula, Sturgeon, andShirley Jackson award–winning novella line, which includes original fiction by Nancy Kress, James Morrow, Brandon Sanderson, Alastair Reynolds, and Peter V. Brett. Weisman is also the co-editor (with David G. Hartwell) of The Sword & Sorcery Anthology. His writing has appeared in the Nation, Realms of Fantasy, the Louisville Courier-Journal, the Seattle Weekly, and the Cooper Point Journal. Weisman lives in San Francisco, where he runs Tachyon Publications in the same neighborhood in which he grew up.

  There’s a long tradition of writers with serious literary credentials who have occasionally written works of science fiction: Kingsley Amis, Margaret Atwood, Angela Carter, Pat Frank, Russell Hoban, Aldous Huxley, Doris Lessing, George Orwell, Marge Piercy, Kurt Vonnegut, and Bernard Wolfe among others.

  In recent years, however, as the barriers between science fiction and literature have begun to crumble, the crossovers are becoming even more commonplace. In 2014 a trio of very accomplished sf novels were published and shelved outside the science fiction section.

  The Martian by Andy Weir is the straight up s
cience-fiction story of a NASA scientist marooned on Mars, which harkens back to the works of Hal Clement and Arthur C. Clarke. It made all of the bestseller lists and is now a motion picture starring Matt Damon. The Martian won the Seiun Award for the best long sf story translated into Japanese, but did not garner any nominations for the larger sf awards.

  Emily St. John Mandel’s beautifully evocative Station Eleven is a post-apocalyptic novel following the exploits of a troupe of Shakespearean actors. Like The Martian, Station Eleven won a single science fiction award, the Arthur C. Clarke Award for the best science fiction novel published in the United Kingdom. It received no nominations from any of the other sf awards, but did manage nominations for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and the National Book Award.

  The final novel in this trio is Nigerians In Space by Deji Bryce Olukotun. Nigerians in Space is a taut thriller about a fictional Nigerian space program. The space program turns out to be something of a MacGuffin, but there are other elements that will make the book very appealing to fans of sf. However, so far Nigerians in Space has not received a wider audience.

  Olukotun was the last author selected for this anthology. I’d not heard of him when I began work on this book, nor even really when I sat down to read his story, “We Are the Olfanauts.” I was impressed by the story (hopefully you will be too) and intrigued enough by the title of his lone novel that I immediately tracked down a copy of Nigerians in Space. Once the book arrived, I read through most of it that evening and finished it later the next morning. Nigerians in Space deserves not only to be rediscovered (or perhaps discovered), but should rightfully garner a seat at the table with The Martian and Station Eleven.

  My own interest in these types of writers began with a book I commissioned in 2009, The Secret History of Science Fiction, which was edited by James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel. Secret History wasn’t originally conceived as the throwing down of the gauntlet, as the challenge to the very fabric of science fiction that it was taken to be in some circles. It was intended to be a serious investigation of the intersection between literary writers who occasionally dabbled in science fiction and science fiction writers who occasionally dabbled in something resembling literary fiction. In Secret History, literary writers including Margaret Atwood, T. C. Boyle, and Don DeLillo were found hobnobbing with the likes of sf legends such as Ursula k. Le Guin, Connie Willis, and Gene Wolfe.

  The reviews were mostly positive, except when they weren’t. Then they tended to be angry, defensive, and sometimes bewildering. “This is another book,” the critic John J. Pierce said to me and John Kessel on a panel that we were all on together at Readercon, “telling us how we should write.”

  Well no, not really. The Secret History of Science Fiction does show how certain types of writers might tackle somewhat similarly themed subject matter. But I don’t think John Kessel (or I) would ever tell anybody that they should write like Don DeLillo (if only it were that easily accomplished). The book was much more about facilitating a reconciliation between two branches of literature as opposed to issuing a challenge.

  But Pierce was genuinely upset. And it is plainly easy to see how science fiction writers and critics might bridle after toiling in one of the poorest of literary ghettos for decades upon decades. “Thanks for all your hard work,” they are worried they will hear from the literary establishment, “but we’ll take it from here.” It becomes a very real concern when science fiction becomes what is shelved over in science fiction and “serious” literature is what is not, whether a book is about marooned astronauts or about a plague that wipes out the majority of the human race.

  The most consistent thread of criticism received by Secret History is that somehow the work by the bona fide science fiction writers in the book was somehow superior to the other stories. Or, as the critic Paul Kincaid put it in a (mostly positive) review on the Strange Horizons website, “the stories written by the science fiction writers are almost invariably stories written in the knowledge of science fiction, written as a way of exploring what it is that makes the story science fiction.” But the implication here, and stated explicitly in other reviews, is that these other writers, writing without the necessary knowledge of the history of the genre, were somehow off the mark or ignorantly reinventing old tropes.

  This concept of science fiction exceptionalism is, in fact, a long held belief of the science fiction genre. In the earliest days of the science fiction pulps, fiction was mostly a vehicle to expound upon the advances in technology that would lead to a more exciting, and perhaps better, or even utopian, future. Science fiction readers were true believers in a shared vision of the world(s) to come, who found each other through letters columns of the various magazines and fanzines (the Internet of the early twentieth century). They formed social clubs, held conventions, and communicated vigorously among themselves. The majority of science fiction’s writers came from within its own ranks.

  In his collection of essays The Jewel-Hinged Jaw Samuel R. Delany lays out what he now famously calls “the protocols of science fiction,” arguing that there is a not only a set of rules and skills that is required of the reader to decode a work of science fiction, but also a necessary knowledge of themes and concepts that science fiction writers have been building on for years. Delany posits that a phrase like “the door dilated,” as employed by Heinlein in one of his novels, will only baffle a reader unfamiliar with the concept of iris doors or the technology that they imply. Delany goes on to suggest that due to the added burden of the continual dialogue between its writers and readers, it is not only wrong to judge science fiction against the standards of literary fiction, it is also irrelevant to do so.

  Delany’s eloquent defense of sf exceptionalism may have been slightly exaggerated at the time but is almost certainly no longer true. The Jewel-Hinged Jaw was published in 1977, the same year that Star Wars set new box office records. Much has changed since then. Locus, the trade magazine of the of the science fiction field, estimated that in 1977 there were just 315 sf titles published. In comparison, they estimated that there were 2177 sf titles brought out by traditional print publishers in 2014. Add in the many thousands of self-published books and it becomes clear that it’s no longer possible for anyone to keep up with everything published in science fiction, or even with very much of it. At the same time, the general public’s knowledge of science fiction tropes has also increased exponentially, with film after film borrowing heavily from the most successful sf novels. Add in a renaissance of television shows that began years ago with Firefly, Farscape, Battlestar Galactica, and several generations of Doctor Who and was followed by countless others.

  Whether it’s time travel, iris doors, or an Internet that jacks directly into the brain of the user, we’ve all seen it, probably more than once. To find something truly new, we have to turn to the works of Hannu Rajaniemi, Kameron Hurley, and other writers further out on the cutting edge, where there are fewer road maps to follow than before.

  What I set out to discover in Invaders was the answer to a simple question, posed indirectly by the critics of The Secret History of Science Fiction: If non-genre writers are indeed writing something different from the rest of the science fiction field, what are they actually writing? The answer is that it can indeed be different, or not so different at all. Mostly it depends on the writer.

  Let’s say a writer grows up watching sci-fi movies and TV and reading science fiction novels, but then gets an MFA in literature and writes for mainstream fiction in commercial markets as diverse as The New Yorker or Tin House. Could that person be considered a science fiction writer at all, even if he or she only publishes something like sf from time to time? What if the story appears in a science fiction magazine, like a couple of the stories published in this book?

  Gordon Van Gelder, the publisher and former editor of Fantasy & Science Fiction, suggests that the difference between stories published in mainstream outlets and his magazine is mostly one of markets and reader expectations. In
Invaders you’ll find a lot more stories about sex and relationships because that’s what you’ll find in mainstream magazines. But you’ll also find squids, spaceships, zombies, plagues, time travel, alternate dimensions, and aliens. You’ll find a myriad of authors tackling the very essence of science fiction, whether the authors consider themselves to be writing science fiction or not. Or whether or not they’re aware that they are writing in a tradition that goes back over a century—or ninety years if one dates science fiction publishing back to the first issue of Hugo Gernsback’s Amazing Stories.

  Most of the writers collected here are still actively publishing. Some of them are young writers who grew up surrounded by the science fiction tropes pervasive in popular culture. Many of them are older writers intrigued by the possibilities of exploring a new medium. All of them are extremely talented writers who refuse to limit their ability to tell a good story because of arbitrary restrictions of genre. And that cross-pollination is ultimately a positive and important step for both literature and for science fiction.

  —San Francisco, 2015

  J. ROBERT LENNON

  Portal

  J. Robert Lennon is the author of two story collections, Pieces for the Left Hand and See You in Paradise, and seven novels, including Mailman, Familiar, and Happyland. He teaches writing at Cornell University.

  In “Portal,” Lennon explores the familiar trope of a doorway to other dimensions without much concern toward the devise’s origins. This story was first published as the lead story in Lennon’s most recent collection, See You in Paradise.