Bull Spec #1 - Sample by Bull Spec

FICTION

BULL SPEC a magazine of speculative fiction

C. S. FUQUA PETER WOOD & N ATANIA BARRON

GRAPHIC SHORT

I NTERVIEWS

D. H ARLAN WILSON LEE H AMMOCK & SCI -FI GENRE

CLOSED SYSTEM BY M IKE G ALLAGHER PART 1 OF 4

EXCERPT

A GATHERING OF DOORWAYS BY M ICHAEL J ASPER

ISSUE #1

SPRING 2010

& POETRY & ART & REVIEWS & M ORE

DURHAM, NC

BULL SPEC a magazine of speculative fiction

Fiction

Interviews

C. S. FUQUA

D. H ARLAN WILSON

38 70

ART

& More

N ATANIA BARRON

SCI -FI GENRE

LEE H AMMOCK

CLOSED SYSTEM

N OVEL EXCERPT

ISSUE #1

PETER WOOD

SPRING 2010

46 Reviews 60 Poetry 61 There Are 71

No Orcs Events

EDITORIAL:

WELCOME TO BULL SPEC

elcome to the premiere issue of Bull Spec, a quarterly magazine of speculative fiction published from Durham, North Carolina. I hope you find stories, poems, and art which entertain and intrigue you and interviews and reviews which enlighten and amuse you. While Bull Spec does and will focus to a large extent on local authors, whether it is C. S. Fuqua, writing from Alabama, or Mike Gallagher, writing and illustrating from Pennsylvania, or local authors Peter Wood, Natania Barron, Michael Jasper, and Lee Hammock, these pages reflect my interest in stories that speculate—stories that ask “What if?” about our world and human nature. They also reflect my hope that stories that are “bullish” at some level as to the answers to those questions are stories that can bring people together in a shared conversation about our shared future. That in essence is the power of not just fiction in general but in particular speculative fiction. Science fiction and fantasy allow authors a limitless landscape for their stories and allow readers a space in which to suspend their disbelief and engage their imaginations. That is not to say that flights of fancy and advanced technology for the sake of it are not welcome or not to be found—far from it! It simply reflects my belief that the best of these stories not only bring us wonder, but also make us think. And now, some thanks are in order. While there are many people I turned to for help and ideas, there are two people whose time and advice for which I am in the most debt: Kaolin Fire of GUD Magazine and Beth Wodzinksi of Shimmer. Thank you for your advice and encouragement. Another round of thanks goes out to the writers and artists who have entrusted me with their creations: Chris, Pete, Natania, Harlan, Lee, Mike, Mike, Josh, and on and on—thank you. Another round for local bookstores The Regulator Bookshop, Quail Ridge Books & Music, and Internationalist Books, who ensured that Bull Spec would have a home on at least one shelf in the three corners of the Triangle. Nearly lastly, and certainly mostly, I thank Kendra, my wonderful wife of 10 years, for all her support while I have poured myself into this first issue. She has put up with magazines and notes spread across tables and floors, late night design sessions from which I emerged with only frustraiton, and cheered me on as my biggest fan. Gratefully, I thank my dad for my life-long passion for fantasy and science fiction and my mom for her unwavering love and so many, many trips to the Marion Public Library in search of yet more stories. And to all my family and friends who have wondered why they haven't heard much from me in several months: this is it. I hope you will agree it has been worth it, and I hope you will all join me again in a few short months. —Samuel Montgomery-Blinn, Editor & Publisher, Bull Spec

[creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0]

C O N TRI 1

Natania Barron (1, author, “Doctor Adderson's Lens”) is a local writer with a penchant for the speculative; she is also an unrepentant geek. Her work has appeared in the Gatehouse Gazette, Thaumatrope and Steampunk Tales, and will be included in Dark Futures dystopian anthology. She has released the most recent draft of her steampunk novel, The Aldersgate, as a podcast at [www.aldersgatecycle.com]. Ralan Conley (2, author, “Ratang”) has seen his work featured in numerous publications. To the consternation of almost everyone, especially his old writing teachers, many of his works have also won contests, awards, and reader’s polls. Not this work, however. Kaolin Imago Fire (3, author, “Inspired By Windmills”) is a conglomeration of ideas, side projects, and experiments. Web development is his primary occupation, but he also develops computer games, edits Greatest Uncommon Denominator Magazine, and occasionally teaches computer science. He has had short fiction published in Strange Horizons and Escape Velocity, among others. C. S. Fuqua (4, author, “Rise Up”) has a long list of published stories, and his books include Big Daddy's Gadgets, The Swing: Poems ofFatherhood (2008 EPIC selection for Best Poetry Collection), Divorced Dads: Real Stories ofFacing the Challenge, Notes to My Becca, Music Fell on Alabama, along with Deadlines, a four-novel audio series. A collection of his short fiction is scheduled for 2010 publication by Mundania Press. This is the second story utilizing the Sharps & Flats music store and its owner in a secondary role to the plot. The first story, “The Sharps & Flats Guarantee,” was chosen by Karl Edward Wagner to appear in the annual Year's Best Horror Stories XX. Mike Gallagher (5, cover art to accompany “Rise Up” and all story/art for “Closed System”) will be a part of each issue of Bull Spec in 2010 through his serialized graphic short story. What can be said about Mike Gallagher? You could say he graduated IUP with a BFA in drawing/printmaking. You could say he has made hundreds of t-shirt and tattoo designs. You could say he has selfpublished a comic and was the co-creator on Ruin, a three issue mini-series. Several of his comics have been published in anthologies, and he has even designed a gated community. But none of this speaks as loud and as proud as his art! Tennille Heinonen (6, photo for “Doctor Adderson's Lens”) was born and raised in Sudbury, Ontario. She grew up surrounded with comic books and fantasy films and loves photography along with all other mediums art wise, and is forever looking to better her talent. She is currently a freelance artist/photographer and her gallery can be found at [heinonen.deviantart.com].

ISSN 21 52-5242 is published quarterly by BULL SPEC / PO Box 1 31 46 / Durham, NC 27709 / United States [+1 .877.867.6889] and is copyright © 201 0 BULL SPEC & its contributors. Find it in your local book shop! Burning Catalonian Bull photo originally by Stuart Yeates, used and available under a Creative Commons BY-SA 2.0 license. Last Soundtrack Bleeding Cowboys font used by permission. EAN barcode by [milk.com].

BU TO RS Michael Jasper (7, author, A Gathering ofDoorways) has published three novels, plus over four dozen short stories in Asimov’s, Strange Horizons, Polyphony, Writers ofthe Future, the Raleigh News & Observer, and other fine venues. Find him online at [michaeljasper.net]. Jamie Keys (artist, “Environments Exercise Part 1”) is a United Kingdom-based artist whose work you can see more of at [strangechildsbrain.deviantart.com]. This piece was an exercise in 30 minute speed painting on the theme “desert planet.” J. David Osborne (8, reviewer, Peckinpah) lives in Norman, Oklahoma. His first novel, By the Time We Leave Here, We’ll Be Friends will be published by Swallowdown Press in 2010. To keep tabs on what he is up to, visit his website at [jdavidosborne.wordpress.com]. Charles Tan (reviewer, Panverse One) has seen his fiction appear in publications such as The Digest ofPhilippine Genre Stories and Philippine Speculative Fiction. He has contributed nonfiction to websites such as The Nebula Awards, The Shirley Jackson Awards, The World SF News Blog, and SF Signal. In 2009, he won the Last Drink Bird Head Award for International Activism. You can visit his blog Bibliophile Stalker at [charles-tan.blogspot.com] or the Philippine Speculative Fiction Sampler at [philippinespeculativefiction.com]. Blue Tyson (reviewer, The Windup Girl) is likely the most prolific rater of speculative fiction in recorded history. On his blogs Not Free SF Reader [notfreesf.blogspot.com] and Free SF Reader [freesf.blogspot.com] he has rated an astounding 20,000 short stories, 3,000 novels, …

Josh Whiton (9, author, “There Are No Orcs”) is CEO of the tech company TransLoc, and recommends studying Gandhi and composting. Peter Wood (author, “Almost a Good Day to Go Outside”) grew up in Ottawa, Canada and Tampa, Florida and now calls Raleigh home. He developed a life long love of science fiction watching reruns of The Outer Limits, The Twilight Zone and the original Star Trek, along with listening to the classic science fiction radio show, X Minus One. His literary heroes include Philip K. Dick, Ray Bradbury and Kurt Vonnegut. Christopher Woods (photo artist, “The Clairvoyants' Hotel”) is a writer, photographer and teacher who lives in Houston and in Chappell Hill, Texas. More of his photography can be found at [moonbirdhill.exposuremanager.com].

Bull Spec is

edited, designed, & published by Samuel Montgomery-Blinn. To learn more visit [bullspec.com] or email [bullspec@bullspec.com] with your questions. Document layout created in Scribus with additional text editing performed using OpenOffice.org and additional image editing performed using GIMP and Inkscape.

RISE UP

BY S. FUQUA

Illustrated by Mike Gallagher

BULL SPEC—ISSUE #1

“U NDERGROWTH TORE AT THE CAR, AND A TREE SLAMMED INTO THE PASSENGER SIDE. THE AIRBAGS EXPLODED.”

ISE U P

BY C.

S. FUQUA

YNNE SHOUTED BOBBY’S NAME AS THE GUITAR CASE IN THE BACKSEAT bounced against the ceiling, then back down.

Time suspended.

Undergrowth tore at the car, and a tree slammed into the passenger side. The airbags exploded. Sometime later—he had no idea how long—Bobby lifted his head off the steering wheel, groggy, confused, his right eye crusted shut. The deflated airbag slid slowly down the wheel. He raised a trembling, heavy hand and touched above his eye, damp and sticky. His head lolled back against the headrest as he tried to get his bearings. He swallowed hard and forced the crust to give way, his eye to open. His head throbbed, but he remembered the deer. He’d yanked the wheel, and everything slowed—the car shooting into the woods, limbs and brush slapping the sides, Wynne shouting his name. Wynne.

He groaned and reached for her in the dash lights’ emerald glow. His fingers found her hair, then her shoulders, and he grasped and pulled her as close as he could, her head flopping hard against him. “Wynne.” He tried to brace her up, but he didn’t have the strength, and her body slumped to the side. He felt her neck for a pulse that wasn’t there. Bobby pushed open the door and struggled into the darkness, nearly fainting as he stumbled through the brush to the passenger side to find it curved inward against a massive oak. He clambered back around, falling twice in the thick growth. He crouched into the driver’s seat, reaching over to Wynne to shift her body so he could grip her under the arms to pull her out through the driver’s side. He braced, pulled, and collapsed. Darkness pressed in for several terrifying seconds before he regained full awareness. He held Wynne as close as possible, mumbling, “Don’t die, not now…” Bobby pressed his face into her hair, the essence of Wynne’s muted fragrance engulfing him the

PHOTO: NASA/JPL-CALTECH /U NIV. OF ARIZONA

BULL SPEC—ISSUE #1

“AND THE FAMILY PLAYED CARDS, JUST LIKE ON TELEVISION .”

LMOST A G OOD DAY TO G O OUTSIDE

BY PETER WOOD

ICARDO STEPPED FROM THE AIRLOCK INTO THE LIVING ROOM WITH THE new television. His kids ran up, screaming, “Daddy, you got it!” It bothered him sometimes how pale they were, but there was nothing to be done about it. Everybody was pale. Everybody was inside, always. “Set it up, Daddy,” pleaded Anna. She was seven. She had been born in the colony hospital. “It’s huge,” said nine year old Javier. He was born on the interstellar ship, two months out from Earth. Ricardo staggered to the corner and placed the chunky contraption in front of the sofa. He paused to catch his breath. It looked like a television from the mid-twentieth century. The twice a year supply ship brought hundreds of them yesterday. Some Earth company had created them to pull in the ancient broadcasts that were only now reaching the distant colonies. The colonists started catching the signals on the two year voyage from Earth. The further out the ship went, the older the shows. It was impossible to follow any story arcs. Catching any particular program was happenstance and the next episode was an earlier broadcast. Thank God, when they landed the episodes starting coming in order. His wife, Lori, came out of the kitchen. She smiled. “Wow! You kids will enjoy this.” She pointed to the opposite side of the room. “Wouldn’t it look better over there, honey?” Ricardo groaned. “You’ve got to be kidding.” “Of course I’m kidding.” She turned to Javier and Anna. “Isn’t Daddy silly?” Ricardo shook his head in defeat, the perpetual low man on the family totem pole. “Set it up!” squealed Anna. “Set it up, Ricardo. We haven’t got all day,” said Lori. She pretended to look at a watch and winked at Anna. “Daddy’s good at setting up stuff, isn’t he?” Anna giggled. Ricardo turned it on. Anna and Javier leaned forward expectantly. A tiny dot appeared on the screen. It popped and there was a picture.

“THERE HAD BEEN MORE THAN A HALF-DOZEN OCCASIONS

DURING MY APPRENTICESHIP WHERE AN URGENT MESSAGE WAS FOLLOWED BY A CLEAR INDICATION OF THE DOCTOR’ S PREDICAMENT, WHETHER IT BE SMOKE, FOG, HAIL, FIRE, OR, ON ONE SUNNY DAY LAST SPRING, A GAPING CHASM IN THE MIDDLE OF EUPHRASTUS STREET CEMETERY ACROSS THE STREET.”

PHOTO: TENNILLE H EINONEN

BULL SPEC—ISSUE #1

OCTOR ADDERSON ' S LENS

BY N ATANIA BARRON

HE DAY I LEARNED ABOUT THE BIRDS BEGAN WITH ALL THE MUNDANITY I had come to expect as Dr. Adderson’s laboratory aid. I was working at his home laboratory, toiling through one of his more nebulous equation exercises—the series assigned to quell my propensity toward hysterics, as he claimed—when I heard something fall with a hollow thunk in the entryway. I sat up from my work, moving the green glass lamp to see a little better, but nothing looked out of the ordinary. “Doctor Adderson?” There was no answer, just a low, mournful moan. Thinking it was the doctor himself, and that he had done something irreversible—tried to off himself, for instance, since even then he talked about it far too often—I rushed to the door toward the source of the sound, a brass candlestick in hand, just in case. However, my fear was unfounded, for it was not Dr. Adderson at all, but my brother Anton. “You shouldn’t…” he said, his voice ragged and full, as if he were speaking through a mouth of glass beads. He was only a few paces from the heavy brass-enforced front door, curled up like a wood shaving. His face was waxy and wan, his lips chapped and white, the flesh at his neck bearing a striking resemblance to curdled milk. However, considering that Anton had been dead for the last year, his appearance did not surprise me. He had succumbed to an infection the year before, brought on by acute gangrene to the genitalia—acquired, no doubt, during one of his forays to the brothels of the Market District. The singular fact that he was now here, at least marginally animated and speaking, raised a series of uncomfortable questions in my mind, not the least of which was how I was going to remove the gray-green fluid he had leaked on the front carpet. With a quick look about me, I deduced that Anton had entered the top level from the basement, for the door was open. He’d had access to the laundry room as well, for he was also clothed haphazardly in garments belonging both to the Doctor and myself. The blue striped bloomers were a particularly nice touch, I thought distantly. And while I had heard of some people falling into a death-like sleep for a few months due to illness, drink, or drug, I was certain that the Anton I knew had truly died, and by all rational means, should still be in that state. “Don’t… touch…” he said. “I assure you, I had no intention,” I replied. “The Doctor… needs you…” As he thrashed his head in an apparent seizure, I noticed for the first time an odd device se-

A sinister search, confrontation and revelations await in this often creepy story. — Blue Tyson, Not Free SF Reader A GATHERING OF DOORWAYS

by Michael Jasper Prime Books

NOVEL EXCERPT

Prologue: A Remembrance of Dreams

This all began a while back, when Noah was just out of diapers, and I started having these messed-up dreams. Got so I wasn’t sleeping much any more, big surprise there, thanks to my dreams of that place. I’d wake from one of them panting and dry-throated and disoriented, staring up at the ceiling until the blackness turned to blues and grays, and the world took shape again. I would listen to the whisper ofmy wife’s breathing next to me and wait—as I’d done ever since his birth—for my son to stir or cry out in his bedroom down the hall, shaken from sleep by bad dreams ofhis own.

I didn’t dare get up and risk waking Melissa, a painfully light sleeper. She’d want to know what was wrong and then probably try to come up with some sort ofassessment or treatment for my insomnia. No thanks. I had enough on my plate as it was, with her and Noah, the farm and the water. The fucking polluted water. So I’d lie there—aching to return to that place from my dreams, that almost-familiar city—but afraid that if I did, I’d keep searching its endless side streets and abrupt dead ends and deja-vued neighborhoods until either my car or I broke down. The dreams always started offthe same way: me driving in my old puke-green Ford Escort, two hundred thousand miles on it and still rolling, just the slightest tang ofburnt oil coming from under the hood. The tired engine shuddered like an irregular heartbeat as I made my way up steep hills on tire-blackened streets four lanes wide, traffic slicing past me, all gray sedans with blacktinted windows and motorcycles with faceless helmeted riders, with the occasional out-of-place blue pickup rushing past in a burst ofcolor and a roar ofmuffler. I spent all my time squinting through the windshield at this shifting city unfolding in front ofme, watching the buildings slip back out of sight when I turned my head this way or that, rearranging themselves like a kid’s oversized set ofblocks. I always felt like I was just two or three synaptic firings away from remembering the exact path to get to my destination. The place was a mash-up ofall the cities I’d ever been to, sketchy neighborhoods right next door to grand squares and restored mansions. I had no maps. Each dream I’d go a bit deeper, but never arriving anywhere in the Undercity. The Undercity. What the hell kind ofmade-up name was that? Sometimes I’d make it to the upper reaches ofthe city, up impossible inclines that led to blocky unpainted houses with shuttered windows, houses built into the sheer purple rock ofthe mountain range that somehow cut through this sprawling metropolis. Sometimes down to the inner neighborhoods ringed with green parks and lined with pink pedestrians. At other times, I’d be stuck creeping through stop-and-go traffic in the bustling downtown, the road a valley between sharp concrete towers without windows. I could never get where I needed to go. My frustration grew, night after night, accumulating layers like a pearl, or a tumor. I’d wake from those dreams with the smell of rot and car exhaust in my nose, body thrumming with the muscle memory of traveling by car. I’d lay there in the dark, aching to remember more, wishing I could wake Melissa, knowing I didn’t dare. Our lives had been enough ofa nightmare ever since Sophie. If only I could blame all that happened that day on the damned Undercity. &

Chapter One: Strange Fruit

BULL SPEC—ISSUE #1 You were supposed to be watching him, Gil.

Her words created a backbeat to each step he took, his boots pounding on the sun-baked trail that led to the forest—the last place he wanted to go. But his son was in there; Gil knew it. His boy, Noah. And he was lost. Gil kicked at the dry, scarred ground and scrambled over blackened tree roots reaching up to trip him. Each step took him farther from the farm, but closer to Noah. Gil knew where his boy was, knew the name of the place. He just had to find it and get there. Noah. He’d already wandered off twice this summer, a typical spacey, curious five-year-old. And Melissa was right—Gil had been responsible. Three times now. The world turned white as the late-morning sunlight beat on Gil’s bare head, the smell of dust and dead vegetation sharp in his nose. Not even an hour ago, Noah had been sitting on his lap, squirming with impatience as he waited for Gil to continue telling him the latest story about Prince One-Eye and his band of Black Hoods. An eternity ago. Now the boy was gone. Lost. Gil pushed through the trees, ignoring the dull jabs of pain in his bad hip as he walked, grabbing frustrated fistfuls of leaves dried by the sun. He hadn’t been up here on the trails adjacent to the farm in weeks, and the lack of rain had started frying the trees already. Nothing wanted to grow this summer; even the pines looked parched. Sometimes the forest eats you, Gil thought, sometimes you eat the forest. Pushing his way through the trees, he let the elastic, dustcovered limbs snap back before realizing that the man walking behind him might catch one in the face. Ray, Gil’s sixty-five-year-old neighbor, was already chuffing air, sounding like he’d been running all-out with a pack of rabid dogs at his heels instead of just walking on the trail for the past fifteen minutes. Ray lifted his bullet-shaped head as he fiddled with the translucent cord that ran from his nose back up his shoulder and into the hissing pack of oxygen on his broad back. Supposed to be watching him, Melissa’s voice reminded Gil. He winced and picked up the pace. Next to Ray walked his fawn-colored greyhound Bullitt, straining against his leash. Ray had shown up a few seconds after Gil had broken the news about Noah to Melissa, and Gil had been stung by her response. Twenty steps outside their farmhouse, knowing where he had to go to find Noah, he had simply detoured around the unexpected appearance of Ray in his gravel driveway. Gil had avoided the black leash attached to Ray’s skittish yellow dog and figured that was it—he was free of the old man and anyone else foolish enough to want to help.

But Ray and Bullitt had decided to follow Gil up here, and Gil didn’t have the energy to tell them to back off. “Forget calling the cops,” Ray said now. He exhaled a crackly breath. “They wouldn’t even… give us the time of day. Not after that… false alarm last month.” Already he was making himself part of this, Gil noticed, saying “us” instead of “you.” But with Noah out there somewhere, trying to find his way back home—can’t think about that, can’t think about that—Gil figured he’d take whatever help he could get. “Cops don’t matter, Ray,” he said, all confident voice and no hesitation. Fooling exactly no one. He touched the cell phone in his jeans pocket, wondering if he might have missed a call from Melissa. “Noah can’t be far off, I tell ya. He’s okay, probably just exploring, as usual.” Melissa’s reaction still baffled him. After he’d realized Noah had slipped off, and he’d done his best to find him on his own, Gil had found her orchestrating the day’s activities in the kitchen with Julio, Mariana, and Herschel. When he asked her if she’d seen Noah, she rushed toward him with this look of intense—what? Fear? Hatred?—on her face. “What happened?” Her voice had a dull clang to it, like a doorframe echoing after the door it holds has been slammed. Not waiting for a response, she pushed past him on her way outside. Gil knew she wanted to have their discussion away from the hired help. Melissa hated showing that anything was wrong. Ever. “You were supposed to be watching him, Gil,” she said over her shoulder as soon as he was outside, crunching over gravel. “He was just playing outside, on the swings,” he began, moving closer to her only to be pulled up short by fresh pain in his injured hip. “He was right there…” His words dried up when she showed him her back, once again, and put both hands to her head. He could tell without seeing her face that her eyes were clenched shut, that she’d be claiming another migraine soon. Gil wanted to grab her, turn her around and wrap her in his arms the way he used to. She was too quick to turn away from him lately. What he wanted to do was hold her and feel her heart beating as madly as his own, giving them both the strength to face this together. But he didn’t dare reach for her. Instead, he started walking away from the house, her words stinging like cold sleet thrown by the winter wind. He swallowed his anger and turned his gaze south, to the old trails leading up to the forest at the edge of their property. A heartbeat later, Ray and his dog had arrived. Ray and Bullitt and Gil trudged over the uneven ground rising up on the last few acres of Gil’s land. He had no idea who owned the forest looming ahead of them (it certainly wasn’t Ray), but he needed to move faster, had to get in there

D H ARLAN WILSON A

POSTCAPITALIST SILHOUETTE

I NTERVIEW AND REVIEWS OF AN I RREAL POSTMODERNIST

prose. Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake is a seminal example. But that was a different cultural climate, and the literary world has changed significantly since then. You asked me specifically about the kind of creative freedom I express. I write some straight “literary” stories, but most of my short fiction, and all of my longer works, blend different elements of the speculative genres, namely science fiction, fantasy and horror, but also minor genres like irrealism, splatterpunk, steampunk, etc. There are strict rules of narrative conduct for these genres. I break the rules. Not to be an asshole, or to show off, or to prove a point. Instead, I have found that breaking the rules leads to more interesting narratives with greater depth and dynamic modes of meaning and perception. Breakage, in other words, educes innovation. You could say that I experience creative freedom in narrative catastrophe—albeit catastrophe with order and purpose.

Portrait by Brandon Duncan

D. HARLAN WILSON: A POSTCAPITALIST SILHOUETTETE Interview by Samuel Montgomery-Blinn

You’re also an accomplished and well-respected literary critic and analyst. How would you say, if indeed it does, that side of your work influences the other? My fiction and criticism have always deeply informed one another. Over the years, I’ve found that producing criticism sharpens my fiction writing, and vice versa. But I also write things that combine them in the form of critifiction. My latest short novel, for instance, Peckinpah: An Ultraviolent Romance, is a full-blooded critifiction in which I tell a story while exploring and analyzing the cinema of Sam Peckinpah. I really enjoyed writing this book—it’s the best fiction I’ve written, and it’s beautifully illustrated by Danny Evarts. And it’s been long-listed for the Bram Stoker Award. I don’t think it will receive an official recommendation. Too experimental, metanarrational, and playful. Anyway, my formal training is in the critical study of literature and I have little training in fiction; in graduate school, I always did my creative writing on the side. But, like I said, doing both simultaneously facilitated my development in each mode.

Can you talk a bit about the kind of creative freedom you express, which I’ve read you elsewhere as saying, “I write whatever the hell I want, transgressing genre boundaries at my leisure.” I’ve always written what I want, more or less, sometimes to Since we’re talking about Technologized Desire: Selfhood my detriment, sometimes not. This isn’t to say I haven’t and the Body in Postcapitalist Science Fiction and Peckincatered to an audience. When I began writing, I did it for my- pah: An Ultraviolent Romance in particular here, can you self, i.e., I wrote the type of fiction that I wanted to read. I give a specific example when writing Peckinpah that your still do that. But I’m also conscious of an objective readership postcapitalist critique of SF led you to steer toward or, that comes to my writing with different perspectives, ideoloconversely, clear of some theme or scene or character? gies, degrees of life experience and intelligence, etc. Writing 101, right? VE ALWAYS WRITTEN WHAT WANT MORE OR LESS You must demonstrate an awareness SOMETIMES TO MY DETRIMENT SOMETIMES NOT of audience, however experimental, innovative or batshit your writing is. Maybe this wasn’t always the case. Some experimental modThere isn’t a lot of symmetry between Technologized Desire ernists got away with a lot of alienating, esoteric, yabbadabba and Peckinpah, the latter of which is only remotely science fic-

I ,

BULL SPEC—ISSUE #1 tional, exhibiting elements of fantasy, horror, and the techniques of filmmaking. I suppose cinema is the common link. In Technologized Desire, I read films, especially SF films, as markers for a sociocultural pathology fabricated by the increasing science fictionalization of reality. In other words, cinema denotes a certain corporeal, psychological and emo-

started to unfold. The book that resulted is a combination of my own experience living in small town Ohio, which I hated, and my studies of Peckinpah, whose oeuvre I explore and to some degree lionize yet also problematize and put in question. That’s how it works for me, anyway. Readers will take away different things from it. Preliminary reviews have been mixed. Some folks really like it. Some don’t INEMA DENOTES A CERTAIN CORPOREAL know what to make of it. The first word in a PSYCHOLOGICAL AND EMOTIONAL review of Peckinpah by a writer at Bookgasm, for instance, is: “Huh?”

MECHANIZATION , SHOWING US MORE AND MORE THE DEGREE TO WHICH WE ARE BECOMING ELECTRONICALLY TECHNOLOGICAL CREATURES. tional mechanization, showing us more and more the degree to which we are becoming electronically technological creatures. In Peckinpah, I try to represent this idea. Again, though, the book is not set in a science fictional diegesis, but rather a kind of alternate, irreal present in a fictional Midwestern American town called Dreamfield, Indiana.

While I’m very eager to talk about Technologized Desire, let’s talk more in depth about Peckinpah first. When and how were you introduced to the late Sam Peckinpah’s works and what gave you the idea to write a book like this? My brother-in-law, David Smith, who I dedicated the book to, turned me on to Peckinpah’s films, e.g., Straw Dogs, Bring Me the Head ofAlfredo Garcia and The Wild Bunch. I had seen The Wild Bunch years ago but didn’t remember it very well. One day I noticed the director’s cut lying on David’s coffee table and we started talking about the film and Peckinpah’s technique and biography. Around the same time I read an article in Wired about Alfredo Garcia, and within days somebody randomly asked me if I had ever seen Straw Dogs. I was piqued by the synchronicity and started doing research. I realized that Peckinpah and I had a lot in common, both as artists and people, although I like to think that I’m not as much of a maniac as he was. He was, for lack of a better word, extreme, according to biographers, to his advantage and disadvantage. If nothing else, a Type A personality. Above all, I liked the schizophrenic texture of his films and the themes he addressed, foremost among them violence, sexuality and masculinity in America. Some critics accused him of being this hate-monger who glorified sex, drugs and violence, but for me his work exhibits a poignant, if at times oblique, critique of these things. Critique via representation. That’s precisely what I try to do, especially in my longer narratives. So a story

Alan Moore called your novel a “bludgeoning celluloid rush of language and ideas served from an action-painter’s bucket of fluorescent spatter,” and said that “Peckinpah is an incendiary gem and very probably the most extraordinary new novel you will read this year.” That had to feel pretty good, to have your work so lavished with praise by an author whose work you admire. Yes, I’m very happy about Alan’s kind blurb. I’ve been a fan of his since the first time I read Watchmen about 15 or so years ago. A lot of Alan’s graphic novels are metanarrational and that’s probably one thing about Peckinpah that resonated with him: the book is acutely aware of itself as a narrative production. Peckinpah is also extremely visual, imagistic and descriptive, consumed with fine details of landscape and character, as all of my novels are. I like reading and writing stuff that favors imagery over exposition and forces readers to think about things, challenging them intellectually while at the same time entertaining them. But I shouldn’t speculate about why Alan liked my book. Needless to say, I’m very glad and proud that he did. Describe the path this story took from your brain to Shroud Publishing. Who over there did you have to convince that this story needed to be told? The head publisher at Shroud Publishing is Tim Deal. A wonderful guy. Peckinpah was actually brokered in a casual way at Context Convention in Columbus, Ohio, in 2008. I had sold a story called “They Had Goat Heads” to Shroud Magazine and Tim asked me if I wanted to attend a party and author signing he was sponsoring at Context. It was a great spread—among the best I have attended at any convention. At some point, Tim asked me if I was interested in doing a book for Shroud’s new Signature Novella Series. So far they had only released one novella, Cindy Little’s Intruder, with the intention of releasing a slue of books in 2009. I said sure, asked him to give me a rough idea of what he was looking for, and that was it. I figured something like Peckinpah would work

BULL SPEC—ISSUE #1 LEE HAMMOCK

Lead Game Designer, Fallen Earth Interview by Samuel Montgomery-Blinn

How are things going with Fallen Earth? It’s going pretty well. It’s the sort of situation where we’ve got a lot of good reviews, you know, we got an 8.5 on IGN, we got Massively’s MMO of the Year, Best Crafting of the Year, tied for Best Studio and Best Roleplaying Game Environment in an MMO. Gamereactor TV, which is from Scandinavia, I want to say Sweden, they said it was the best MMO of the year. So we’re getting a lot of good critical praise, the problem is we’re a niche game so we need to just get in front of more people, a lot of people don’t know who we are. So we’re working on getting the word out and letting people know we’ve got an awesome game. We’re kind of doing as we expected; we never planned to launch like Conan and launch with huge numbers of subscribers and try to blow everything out, we figured we’re going to go for the slow build and be more like Eve—build up over time as opposed to trying to hype everything up and blow it out the door so we’re doing about

this! It’s not like we have a money tree that we can pick our funding off, we have to figure all this stuff out. But so far it’s been really, really good. So far it’s been very positive, it’s been really interesting to see it take on a life of it’s own. We have an in-game radio station that’s popped up, we have an in-game comedy newspaper kind of thing, the Wasteland News which has popped up. Really the best part is seeing the players take parts of it and really make it their own and kind of run with it going forward. We’ve got a great community that has been really big on doing that sort of stuff. We have a podcast put on the Lag War guys called “Life Net” which is fantastic, and they’ve got info on there every week. The most heartwarming part has been seeing other people really start investing in it.

You mentioned IGN, which rated the game as an “impressive” 8.1, as “unique and challenging” but also “not for everyone.” Do you think you’ve ended up doing a good job balancing the line between “challenging” and “frustrating?” Overall we have a steeper learning curve than the mainline MMO these days. We are more complex than World ofWarcraft. Right out the door we hit you with E RE GETTING A LOT OF GOOD CRITICAL PRAISE “OK, you can go crafting, you can go exploring, you can go do PvP, you can go THE PROBLEM IS WE RE A NICHE GAME SO WE do all this stuff” right at the beginning of the game if you want to. So we’ve created NEED TO JUST GET IN FRONT OF MORE PEOPLE at times the problem of the paralysis of where we want to be. choice: If you have too many options, you don’t know what you want to do. Also our skills advancement system is a classFinally released in September 2009, Fallen Earth represents less one, so you basically get a bunch of points you can buy thousands and thousands of man hours of development whatever skills you want. But if you don’t know what and art, but it’s also kind of your baby. What’s it like for it everything does, it’s again a paralysis of choice. OK, I don’t to be out in the world and out of your control now? know what any of these do, what am I going to do, what if I It’s interesting at times. Most of the time it’s awesome. Gener- spend my points wrong? So that’s really where I think our ally we get pretty good feedback and people seem to be really feeling of challenge to some extent lies. The actual combat is engaged. We made a game for a lot of people who didn’t really not that difficult. But at the same time, there are other aspects have an MMO that was made for them before. In that respect of the game structure that are challenging. Depending on who it’s really good, I mean, it’s really great to see your baby go you talk to it’s either too challenging or not challenging out there and do well and stuff like that. But there are other enough. We are basically shooting for in between World of times that I see people who are effectively judging my baby Warcraft and Eve in our overall difficulty and learning curve. Eve is really hard to learn how to play, but E MADE A GAME FOR A LOT OF PEOPLE WHO DIDN T WoW is really easy, so REALLY HAVE AN THAT WAS MADE FOR THEM BEFORE basically try to do something in between for things that aren’t really fair, or are just things it was never to say, OK, there’s a lot of depth so you are constantly learnmeant to do. People say “You should have kept it in developing stuff, but at the same time it’s not quite as difficult. ment for six months” or “You should have spent more money on it” but there are things that are beyond our control on all Let’s step back and out of the video game itself—the

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INTERVIEW—SCI-FI GENRE COMICS & GAMES SCI-FI GENRE COMICS & GAMES:

Jennifer Bedell, Owner Zachary Boyd, Manager

Interview by Samuel Montgomery-Blinn

Jennifer, this store has become a Durham epicenter for speculative fiction, especially comics and games and even more so as a get together place for gaming. What made you think that Durham was the place for a sci-fi genre comics and games store? When we opened the website, it was from the beginning my husband Mark’s dream to have a brick and mortar store, and it was impractical for a long time. We thought, “Oh, that’s crazy, those things fail all the time.” He was always in the habit of poking around at real estate ads online “just in case.” And when we found this place he came to me and he said, “Oh my God. This is perfect.” And I said, “For that price there’s going to be a thousand things wrong with it.” And there were! But here we are. They weren’t things that we hadn’t dealt with at a warehouse in the middle of Durham. Durham’s been great, because we’re at the center of a ND bunch of universities, and at the time we deTO BE cided to open a store there was already a store in Chapel Hill and Raleigh, but there was ND nothing in Durham. And we had a really active gaming group and we knew that there were gamers in Durham. So this just ended up being an ideal location for us.

come in here and completely redo everything, and it was a nightmare getting opened because we set a really aggressive schedule. We got the place at the end of May and we opened at the end of July, and we didn’t have a lot of free time to spend because we had to get the revenue stream going. So trying to get carpet, paint, fixture, you know, everything. When you’re running a warehouse, all you really need is racks. But the idea was that we were just going to move in here and figure it out. At the time, we were young and crazy, and—really crazy. Looking back, we would have made a lot of different decisions, but as it happens sometimes you just gotta take that leap and go with it and figure it out as you go. I remember pre-employment I stopped in because I was the organizer for a card game that has long since died. But I remember the manager at the time had me stop in and meet some different people, meet Jennifer and see the location. And there was just boxes of product, and—product. Everywhere. Where the register is now, it was just a bunch of stuff laying on the ground. And Jennifer, the first memory that I have of her is her sitting in a chair plinking away at her laptop, try-

A I SAID, “FOR THAT PRICE THERE’ S GOING A THOUSAND THINGS WRONG WITH IT.” A THERE WERE! BUT HERE WE ARE. —J

Any funny stories about finding rats in the belfry, moving mishaps, that kind of thing? Well, the people who were here previous to us was a furniture store. And they left the place in kind of… wow. We found water stains everywhere, where they’d had a foun-

L2R: Jennifer Bedell and Zachary Boyd.

tain that overflowed. The carpet was taped with duct tape down the middle, so the first thing we had to do was just

ing to figure, with a really haggard and worried look on her face, trying to figure things out and trying to direct people. “No, take that over there.” “Build that. Built that!” It was the weekend we opened, all the product went up. And in the meantime, while everybody else was hanging fixtures and building things, we were trying to hire staff. I was writing the back end software to run the register and to deal with inventory in the store and stuff like that. So, you know, we’ve written all of our own custom software, and so also the idea of producing that on a limited three month schedule while also doing everything else was… you know, I told Mark over and over “We’re not gonna have it done. There’s no way we’re gonna have it done. Returns won’t work. You know, all these things are not gonna work.” And he said, “That’s OK, we can do those later.” And I said, “We’re not gonna have time later!” And he said, “It doesn’t matter!”

It’s obviously been a great decision. It’s been an incredible experience, because it’s different from running a store, really. It doesn’t feel like a store, because people come in and they want to talk to you, and it’s not just, it’s not like going to Wal-Mart. It’s not like, “Hey, do

BULL SPEC—ISSUE #1 you have a box of cereal at the right price?” It’s, you know, “What’s new?” and “What are you guys doing?” and “Hey, what do you like?” And people get attached to it in a way that they don’t get attached to a big box store. When we did the expansion I thought, “That’s great, we’re gonna have so much more gaming space and that’s really exciting.” But I didn’t expect how excited the customers were going to be about it. And people literally came up to me and said, “Hey, we really

many times we’ll be in here for a pre-release and Zach says, “Grab the truck and run and buy some more chairs! We’re not going to be able to seat everybody.” And people are such good sports. They’re sitting in office chairs and they’re hovering on stools. It’s a great time because we get so many people in for that. That’s coming up in the spring. Sci-Fi Genre actually goes to different conventions. Like we’re going to attempt, fingers crossed, to be at the M USUALLY TAKING A NAP AND THEN WAKING Carrboro Collector’s Fair this year, asI can figure out how to register UP AND PEOPLE ARE HERE AND THEY RE LIKE suming for that. There’s an anime convention that happens, it was in Durham, but EY HAVE YOU BEEN HERE ALL NIGHT ES last year was their first year at the appreciate you” and “We’re really glad you did this” and “Tell Raleigh convention center, which is really awesome. If you us what we can do to help out.” And to me, that was just the like anime, or just seeing lots of crazy people— neatest experience ever, to realize that the customers really A lot of cosplay. had grown to have a stake in the store, to where they felt like they had some ownership and some responsibility for it. Yeah. Definitely check it out, that’s in late May, and we’ll And lots of people have commented on just the general rebe there for that. We’re looking forward to a couple of organization of everything, and they love the wall of new comic book conventions we’re going to this year. I mean board games, because you can see everything. You don’t have it’s just really exciting. And we’ve got the space, and this will to go looking around. be a full year with the space, which is cool. We are really hoping by the end of this year to open a Zachary, as the manager of the store, for the local sci-fi manga section for the first time. We have people come in fans who haven’t made it into the store yet, what are they every now and then and ask for it, and they say, “You know, I missing, and for the folks who have come often, what’s new? Well, we’re pretty excited about 2010 for multiple reasons. I mean, we’ve got Magic right of the gate here at the end of the month. Magic is always an interesting topic. It’s a CCG, it’s been around for years and years and years, it’s probably the longest running one, and it’s by Wizards of the Coast. Every few months they’ll have two events back to back, a pre-release and a launch party for their new product. In this case it’s going to be World Wake. And what we do is on Friday nights I’m crazy enough that we have a midnight tournament for it. That lasts until about 7 the next morning. L2R: Samuel Montgomery- Blinn and Jennifer Bedell. Which means he’s just leaving as the warehouse staff comes in. just, I hate getting this stuff at Barnes and Noble, because Actually I’m usually taking a nap, and then waking up, they don’t really know what they’re talking about. Why don’t and people are here, and they’re like, “Hey, have you you guys get some manga in here?” So that’s really one of our been here all night?” Yes. So then we get the Saturday tourna- big goals. ment rolling. And it’s just a cascade of “there’s another tournaAs far as products go, D&D has been releasing a new setment today.” And the next week doesn’t really exist because I ting every year, so that’s been pretty exciting. In 2010 it is never went home really. That’s coming up. Dark Sun, which is a throwback to a 2nd edition setting that It’s fantastic though, because for that we get players from was really, really popular. People clamored for it a lot in 3rd a little bit farther out. It’s a pre-release so people are exedition, but they did Forgotten Realms, was the big thing for cited about the new set, so we get to sort of hob-nob with a 3rd edition and 3.5, and they also did Eberron which was new lot of players we don’t see very often. I can’t tell you how for 3, and which was a cool little steampunk almost type set-

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