Asakiyume mita

It's a cold, surreal post-apocalyptic world, plagued by meteor showers, crumbling apartments patrolled by tigers, one where former tar-spreading technicians repurpose themselves as morning soup sellers. Bobby is wakened by a knocking at his door. He doesn't open it, but he's told, through the closed door, that Belle-Medusa, an immensely huge jellyfish, needs his help. Belle-Medusa has a library of scents in her memory, but they're mainly ocean scents. She wants Bobby to collect and convey land scents to her:

In truth, she only had one passion anymore: she collected smells. Aromas, perfumes, whiffs, and scents of all types. She numbered them and she put them in tiny special cases in her memory, in a classification system that nobody, apart from herself, was able to understand.

For this purpose, Belle-Medusa has already "plugged into" Bobby. There are various ways he can convey the scents to her, but the way he settles on is to plunge his face into water and speak them.

I had my cheek pressed against the windowpane. Just under my nose, fed by the steam that escaped from my mouth, the frost drew branching ice wisps, which imprisoned the dust. If I had had to specify the smell that lingered on the surface of the glass, I would have spoken of a dusty ice floe, of frozen goose down, of dark sherbet. Wait, I thought, maybe I could send that to Belle-Medusa, in order to check that the communication between us is well established.

I left my observation post. I groped my way to the bathroom and I filled the sink with what flowed from the faucet, water that carried with it cubes and needles of ice. Before immersing my face, I had to stir it with my hand so as not to use the end of my nose to break the film threatening to form ... I sank my head into it to my ears.

"It's me, Belle-Medusa," I said.

( Heh, this got long. Let's put in a cut. )

It's a strange and wonderful story, and I recommend it. I read it in an anthology called XO Orpheus: Fifty New Myths, edited by Kate Bernheimer and published in 2013. The anthology was lent to me by a friend who had picked out that story especially for me to read because (I'm flattered to say), they said it reminded me of the story of mine they'd read--and also, I suspect, because the story's important to them: it's entered their vocabulary. They talk about their scent library. The other stories in the collection look promising too; while I'm borrowing the book, I think I'll read some more.

It also exists as a 64-page standalone publication, but only in its original French, as Belle-Méduse. For the anthology, the translation was done by Sarah and Brian Evenson.

*Manuela Draeger is a fictitious author, a librarian whose stories are intended as distraction for children in containment camps. The author of her world is Antoine Volodine ... which is in turn a pen name of the writer Jean Desvignes.

I have so many saved up for this! And I'm actually writing on a Wednesday. Wohoo, win condition!

What I've just finished

A Family of Dreamers, by Samantha Nock. radiantfracture put me onto this collection by quoting one of the poems. Samantha Nock is an indigenous poet, and her poems reflect that heritage, but also explore family relations, love, self doubt--you know: the stuff we write poetry about.

( Some quotes )

* * *

Ideias Para Adiar O Fim Do Mundo, by Ailton Krenak
This has also been translated into English (Ideas for Postponing the End of the World). Ailton Krenak is an indigenous activist from Brazil, of the Krenak people, and this very short book collects talks that he's given, including the title one. He's very, very good at reminding his listeners that there's more than one way of understanding things, more than one way of approaching problems, and that for some people, the end of the world has been happening for a long, long time. (My Goodreads review has quotes that give a feel for it)

* * *

Besty and Tacy Go over the Big Hill, by Maud Hart Lovelace
They do, and they discover a community of Syrian refugees. The more things change...

This story mulls over kings and queens in lots of different ways. Early on the girls write a letter to Alfonso XIII, who upon turning sixteen has become king of Spain. The girls tell him that they'd love to marry him but realize that, sadly, they can't, since they're not of royal blood (also they're only ten, but they don't mention that), but that nevertheless they wish him the best. And then at the end of the story they get a letter back from the royal secretary, telling them the king appreciates their thoughts! And I was thinking how much smaller the world was then--that girls could write a letter to the royal palace in Madrid, and that a palace secretary would actually answer! ... Well, assuming that that incident is based on something that actually happened in MHL's life--it might not be. But it's conceivably possible. Alfonso XIII came into his majority in 1902. Wikipedia tells me that in 1900, the human population was a much more intimate 1.6 billion. Not like our current 8 billion. Palace secretaries could write to little girls in Minnesota!

What I'm reading now

Braiding Sweetgrass, by Robin Wall Kimmerer. My approach to this has been very roundabout. I'm not a big fan of long books of serious essays, even when I should like them. So I started by just dipping in. But it's won me over, so I'm going to read it straight through.

* * *

Why Didn't You Just Leave, edited by Julia Rios and Nadia Bulkin. A collection of horror stories that answer the question of why people don't just leave the haunted place they're in. Excellent so far.

* * *

Lady Eve's Last Con, by Rebecca Fraimow. A rom-con romcom in SPACE that I've only just started but is highly delightful already, with lines like this:

Ever since we got in on the luxury-liner gambit, money had been dropping into our hands like coolant from a leaky ceiling

and

It wasn't so hard to get someone like Esteban to think that you were their romantic ideal; all you had to do was present an attractive outline and leave plenty of space, and they'd fill in the rest all by themselves.

I think I can see what the end state is going to be, but I am here for the ride!

Coming Soon
Betsy and Tacy Go Downtown, the next of the Betsy-Tacy books.

So those two stories in Consolation Stories that I mentioned last entry--I think I’m going to write about them one at a time. Today will “This Is New Gehesran Calling,” by Rebecca Fraimow (on here as skygiants, though I have had the hardest time linking that name and her author name in my head).

I *loved* this story. I was so absorbed by every detail of it—it was truly wonderful, and perfect for the anthology. It’s about a pirate radio broadcast to a very far-flung set of refugees, and how the broadcast touches their lives—and the story manages to do that and show that so economically and yet without stinting at all—it’s so rich—and yet you can follow everything.

It starts like this:

There wasn't a New Gehesran anymore. Three years ago, the renaming had become official, in a municipal whirlwind of new-printed signage and digital batch-edits, but the people who'd packed themselves into refugee ships when the final city domes fell knew that New Gehesran had ceased to exist well before that.

Okay. Situation established. From there we go to an “intrasolar doublewide unit”—the spacefaring equivalent of a refugee tent, “barely bigger than a six-stall barn.” This one is housing two adolescents, two parents, and the sister of one of the parents. Tir, one of the adolescents, is playing with the radio dial:

“and here were the words, crackling but clearly distinguishable: ‘This is New Gehesran calling.’

The voice was jazzy, smooth, evenly paced – just like any other broadcaster on air, just as if they weren't calling up a ghost. ‘This is New Gehesran calling, so don't change the channel, because we're bringing you the freshest tunes, hottest issues, furious debates, plus! Special tonight! Did you lose track of someone during evac? Make sure not to miss our twelve-step guide to short-cut you through your search –‘”

Tir and Suki figure out the broadcast pattern, and soon the whole family is listening to these voices recalling a time when there was a New Gehesran.

Then the story shifts to the broadcasters, so we get to see what they’re like, and then to other listeners elsewhere, each shift making connections to earlier sections as the pirate broadcast brings the refugees themselves closer to one another. You feel like you, too, are among the listeners. You’re connected too.

Really I want to take you through it scene by scene—this is like when you buy someone the perfect present and you’re so excited about it that you want to open it for them—but *possibly* you would like an un-Asakiyume-mediated experience, so I'll exercise great restraint.

I’ll just say that there’s a scene where the broadcasters have brought together a group of elders to talk about making a traditional treat, poracake, and OMG, if you’ve ever been around people arguing about the authentic way to make something, acceptable substitutions (if any!), you will recognize the perfection of this scene.

And the ramification of that broadcast segment are delicious and heartwarming—truly a perfect consolation story.

(It might be a good time to mention again that the anthology is raising money for a COVID-19 appeal being run by a UK charity that supports the University College London Hospitals NHS Trust. The editor says, “It supports patients, families and frontline workers, as well as providing funding for new facilities and for research.” If you’re interested in buying it, the links can be found here.)

I’ve just finished Kaleidoscope: Diverse YA Science Fiction and Fantasy Stories. This excellent collection succeeds in every possible way: not only does it fulfill its mission to deliver fantasy stories with diverse protagonists (along many axes of diversity: ethnic, geographical, physical and mental status, sexual orientation, and gender¹), written by equally diverse authors, but it also delivers diversity of mood, tone, and style. The stories are all excellent, some of them breathtakingly so. One editor, Julia Rios, is American; the other, Alisa Krasnostein, hails from Australia, and perhaps for that reason there’s also a nice hemispheric balance in the collection.

You know a story’s good when you’re compelled to share it, which happened to me several times while reading—first with Ken Liu’s “Seventh Day of the Seventh Moon.” The title refers to the Qixi Festival, commemorating the yearly meeting of the celestial lovers Zhinü, the Weaver Maiden, and Niulang, the Cowherd, on that date. When the story opens, Yuan, who lives in Hebei, China, is about to be separated from her friend and lover Jing, who is going to America for school. I assumed—wrongly!—that I was in for a connect-the-dots parallel between the two girls’ present-day situation and the folktale. In fact, Liu had something better planned—a fantastic journey, and touching, unexpected advice, which an aged Zhinü shares with the lovers. I shared the story with a friend of mine who was suffering a separation from a friend, and she too was surprised and moved by it.

The second story I shared was the very next story in the anthology, “The Legend Trap,” by Sean Williams. Three friends enter a d-mat booth to test the urban legend that entering the destination “Bashert Ostension” will take you to an alternative universe, just a hair’s breadth away from our own. I knew my sixteen-year-old son would love this: I had him read it to me, and we kept talking about it for days. It’s a tense, exciting story with the atmosphere of an updated version of The Twilight Zone. Big applause for the names of all the neverwhere destinations that Williams comes up with—things like Addison’s Adit, the Fistula, and the Long Way Home. (But where’s the diversity? you may be asking—more on that later.)

On the third occasion, I read the story to my son: it was Karen Healey’s hugely inventive “Careful Magic.” Helen is an outsider in her school in part because of her OCD compulsions and in part because she’s chosen to declare for Order magic, whereas most of her classmates prefer Chaos magic (her own mother has the rank of Chaos Queen). Healey deftly introduces these magic systems and their differences in the context of an enchantment an unscrupulous fellow student has cast, which Helen must break. There’s a whole novel’s worth of invention and characterization in this story, in which Helen’s OCD is emphatically not a source of her strength, but a reality she has to live with.

My final most-favorite story, Sofia Samatar’s “Walkdog,” takes the form of an essay by teen student Yolanda Price, complete with footnotes and occasional spelling errors. Writing on the topic “Know Your Environment,” Yolanda describes for her teacher, Ms. Patterson, the mythical Walkdog, sourcing her information primarily from a lonely boy’s imagination, supplemented with scraps of news, scholarship, and the songs of blueswoman Maisie Oates. Yolanda’s voice is superb, and her transition from somewhat scornful of her main source of information—the geeky Andrew Bookman—to remorseful and bereft is masterful and heart wrenching. This is a true gem of a story, a compelling mix of humor and sorrow.

( thoughts on the other stories, individually )

Now to return to the question of diversity and how noticeable it is, or isn’t, in the stories. An important part of having diverse stories with diverse protagonists is having stories that aren’t focused primarily on the fact of the diversity itself. The protagonist’s difference—whatever it might be—from the majority population is just one of their characteristics and may be incidental to the plot itself. So, for instance, Yolanda, the protagonist of “Walkdog,” says, “I mean I consider myself a New Jersey native, what else would I be, even though I’m African and German and Spanish and God knows what else,” but her ethnic makeup isn’t the focus of the story. The Walkdog itself, part canefield legend and part blues fragment, shows more clearly the way in which minority voices can be present and powerful, and yet go unnoticed by the dominant culture—and yet, important as this element is to the story, it’s secondary to the themes of friendship and remorse.

Similarly, in “The Legend Trap,” two of the three friends are lesbians, in a relationship with each other, and while the fact of their relationship adds tension and drama to the story, it’s the relationship, not the fact that it’s a lesbian relationship, that’s important.

In many of the stories, the protagonist’s difference is more important to the story. This is the case with Helen’s compulsions in “Careful Magic,” Rene’s schizophrenia in “Kiss and Kiss and Kiss and Tell,” Neha’s South Asian family life in “Krishna Blue,” and Anisa’s Lebanese background in “The Truth about Owls.” These tales aren’t about compulsion or schizophrenia or coming from a South Asian or Lebanese family, but those realities are central to the story.

“Terms of Service,” by contrast, is actually about the harshness of the life of overseas workers, and the toll the arrangement takes on their families. Similarly, “The Lovely Duckling” and “Celebration” are about the protagonists’ differences. And the presence of this spectrum of emphasis is as it should be: wanting to normalize difference and diversity doesn’t mean we should forgo stories that focus on the hardships associated with those differences.

In the end, though, I think the shining achievement of this anthology is that the stories are exciting, funny, moving, and powerful; they’re thought provoking, and they’re fun to read. I’m sure you’ll end up with at least as many favorites as I did.

¹ The only imbalance I could perceive in the anthology is in the sex of the protagonist: the protagonists are almost all female.