BU L L SP E Ca magazine of speculative fictionFICTION

C. S. FUQUAPETER WOOD& NATANIA BARRON

GRAPHIC SHORT

CLOSED SYSTEMBY MIKE GALLAGHERPART 1 OF 4

INTERVIEWS

D. HARLAN WILSONLEE HAMMOCK& SCI-FI GENRE

EXCERPT

A GATHERING OFDOORWAYSBY MICHAEL JASPER

& POETRY & ART & REVIEWS & MORE

ISSUE #1 SPRING 2010

BU L L SP E Ca magazine of speculative fictionFICTION

C. S. FUQUAPETER WOOD& NATANIA BARRON

GRAPHIC SHORT

CLOSED SYSTEMBY MIKE GALLAGHERPART 1 OF 4

INTERVIEWS

D. HARLAN WILSONLEE HAMMOCK& SCI-FI GENRE

EXCERPT

A GATHERING OFDOORWAYSBY MICHAEL JASPER

& POETRY & ART & REVIEWS & MORE

ISSUE #1 SPRING 2010

Fiction

Interviews

& More

C. S. FUQUA PETER WOOD NATANIA BARRON

D. HARLAN WILSON LEE HAMMOCK SCI-FI GENRE

6 14 20

39 50 62

BU L L SP E Ca magazine of speculative fictionDURHAM, NC

33

38

70

Reviews46

There AreNo Orcs61

CLOSED SYSTEMART

SPRING 2010ISSUE #1

26

NOVEL EXCERPT 71 Events60 Poetry

BU L L SP E Ca magazine of speculative fiction SPRING 2010ISSUE #1 EDITORIAL: WELCOME TO BULL SPEC

Welcome to the premiere issue of Bull Spec, a quarterly magazine of speculativefiction published from Durham, North Carolina. I hope you find stories, poems,

and art which entertain and intrigue you and interviews and reviews which enlighten andamuse 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 fromPennsylvania, or local authors Peter Wood, Natania Barron, Michael Jasper, and LeeHammock, these pages reflect my interest in stories that speculate—stories that ask “Whatif?” 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 bringpeople together in a shared conversation about our shared future.

That in essence is the power of not just fiction in general but in particular speculativefiction. Science fiction and fantasy allow authors a limitless landscape for their stories andallow 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 notwelcome or not to be found—far from it! It simply reflects my belief that the best of thesestories not only bring us wonder, but also make us think.

And now, some thanks are in order. While there are manypeople I turned to for help and ideas, there are two peoplewhose time and advice for which I am in the most debt:Kaolin Fire of GUD Magazine and Beth Wodzinksi ofShimmer. Thank you for your advice and encouragement.Another round of thanks goes out to the writers and artistswho have entrusted me with their creations: Chris, Pete,Natania, Harlan, Lee, Mike, Mike, Josh, and on and on—thankyou. Another round for local bookstores The RegulatorBookshop, Quail Ridge Books & Music, and InternationalistBooks, who ensured that Bull Spec would have a home on atleast one shelf in the three corners of the Triangle.

Nearly lastly, and certainly mostly, I thank Kendra, mywonderful wife of 10 years, for all her support while I havepoured myself into this first issue. She has put up with magazines and notes spread acrosstables 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 passionfor fantasy and science fiction and my mom for her unwavering love and so many, manytrips to the Marion Public Library in search of yet more stories. And to all my family andfriends who have wondered why they haven't heard much from me in several months: thisis it.

I hope you will agree it has been worth it, and I hope you will all join me again in a fewshort months.

—Samuel Montgomery-Blinn, Editor & Publisher, Bull Spec

[creativecommons.org/l icenses/by-nc-nd/3.0]

C O N T R I B U T O R S

ISSN 21 52-5242 is publ ished quarterly by BULL SPEC / PO Box 1 3146 / 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!

Natania Barron (1, author, “Doctor Adderson's Lens”) is a local writer with a penchant for thespeculative; 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. Shehas 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 theconsternation of almost everyone, especially his old writing teachers, many of his works have alsowon 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 computergames, edits Greatest Uncommon Denominator Magazine, and occasionally teaches computerscience. 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 BigDaddy'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, alongwith Deadlines, a four-novel audio series. A collection of his short fiction is scheduled for 2010publication by Mundania Press. This is the second story utilizing the Sharps & Flats music storeand its owner in a secondary role to the plot. The first story, “The Sharps & Flats Guarantee,” waschosen 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”) willbe a part of each issue of Bull Spec in 2010 through his serialized graphic short story. What can besaid 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 self-published a comic and was the co-creator on Ruin, a three issue mini-series. Several of his comicshave been published in anthologies, and he has even designed a gated community. But none of thisspeaks 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 photographyalong with all other mediums art wise, and is forever looking to better her talent. She is currently afreelance artist/photographer and her gallery can be found at [heinonen.deviantart.com].

Burning Catalonian Bull photo original ly by Stuart Yeates, used and avai lable under a Creative Commons

BY-SA 2.0 l icense. Last Soundtrack Bleeding Cowboys font used by permission. EAN barcode by [milk.com].

1

2

3

4

5

C O N T R I B U T O R S

Bull Spec is edited, designed, & published by Samuel Montgomery-Bl inn. To learnmore visit [bul lspec.com] or email [bul lspec@bullspec.com] with your questions.

Michael Jasper (7, author, A Gathering ofDoorways) has published three novels, plus over fourdozen 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 workyou can see more of at [strangechildsbrain.deviantart.com]. This piece was an exercise in 30 minutespeed painting on the theme “desert planet.”

J. David Osborne (8, reviewer, Peckinpah) lives in Norman, Oklahoma. His first novel, By theTimeWe Leave Here, We’ll Be Friends will be published by Swallowdown Press in 2010. To keeptabs 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 towebsites such as The Nebula Awards, The Shirley Jackson Awards, The World SF News Blog, andSF Signal. In 2009, he won the Last Drink Bird Head Award for International Activism. You canvisit his blog Bibliophile Stalker at [charles-tan.blogspot.com] or the Philippine Speculative FictionSampler at [philippinespeculativefiction.com].

Blue Tyson (reviewer, TheWindup Girl) is likely the most prolific rater of speculative fiction inrecorded history. On his blogs Not Free SFReader [notfreesf.blogspot.com] and Free SFReader

[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, andrecommends studying Gandhi and composting.

Peter Wood (author, “Almost a Good Day to Go Outside”) grew up in Ottawa, Canada andTampa, Florida and now calls Raleigh home. He developed a life long love of science fictionwatching reruns of The Outer Limits, The Twilight Zone and the original Star Trek, along withlistening to the classic science fiction radio show, X Minus One. His literary heroes include PhilipK. Dick, Ray Bradbury and Kurt Vonnegut.

Christopher Woods (photo artist, “The Clairvoyants' Hotel”) is a writer, photographer andteacher who lives in Houston and in Chappell Hill, Texas. More of his photography can be foundat [moonbirdhill.exposuremanager.com].

Document layout created in Scribus with additional text editing performed using

OpenOffice.org and additional image editing performed using GIMP and Inkscape.

6

7

8

9

RISE UPBYC. S. FUQUA

Illustrated by Mike Gallagher

RISE UPWYNNE 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. Heraised a trembling, heavy hand and touched above his eye, damp and sticky. His head lolled backagainst the headrest as he tried to get his bearings. He swallowed hard and forced the crust to giveway, his eye to open.

His head throbbed, but he remembered the deer. He’d yanked the wheel, and everythingslowed—the car shooting into the woods, limbs and brush slapping the sides, Wynne shouting hisname.

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 hardagainst him. “Wynne.” He tried to brace her up, but he didn’t have the strength, and her bodyslumped 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 stumbledthrough the brush to the passenger side to find it curved inward against a massive oak. Heclambered 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 outthrough the driver’s side. He braced, pulled, and collapsed. Darkness pressed in for several terrify-ing 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

RISE UP

BY C. S. FUQUA

7

BULL SPEC—ISSUE #1

“UNDERGROWTH TORE AT THE CAR, AND A TREE

SLAMMED INTO THE PASSENGER SIDE. THE AIRBAGS

EXPLODED.”

PHOTO: NASA/JPL-CALTECH/UNIV. OF ARIZONA

RICARDO STEPPED FROM THE AIRLOCK INTO THE LIVING ROOM WITH THEnew television.

His kids ran up, screaming, “Daddy, you got it!” It bothered him sometimes how pale theywere, but there was nothing to be done about it. Everybody was pale. Everybody was inside, al-ways.

“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 an-cient broadcasts that were only now reaching the distant colonies.

The colonists started catching the signals on the two year voyage from Earth. The further outthe ship went, the older the shows. It was impossible to follow any story arcs. Catching any par-ticular 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.

ALMOST A GOOD DAY TO GO OUTSIDE

BY PETER WOOD

15

BULL SPEC—ISSUE #1

“AND THE FAMILY PLAYED CARDS,

JUST LIKE ON TELEVISION.”

PHOTO: TENNILLE HEINONEN

“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.”

THE DAY I LEARNED ABOUT THE BIRDS BEGAN WITH ALL THE MUNDANITYI had come to expect as Dr. Adderson’s laboratory aid. I was working at his home laborat-

ory, toiling through one of his more nebulous equation exercises—the series assigned to quell mypropensity toward hysterics, as he claimed—when I heard something fall with a hollow thunk inthe entryway. I sat up from my work, moving the green glass lamp to see a little better, but noth-ing 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 talkedabout it far too often—I rushed to the door toward the source of the sound, a brass candlestick inhand, 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 shav-

ing. His face was waxy and wan, his lips chapped and white, the flesh at his neck bearing a strik-ing resemblance to curdled milk. However, considering that Anton had been dead for the lastyear, 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 thebrothels of the Market District.

The singular fact that he was now here, at least marginally animated and speaking, raised aseries of uncomfortable questions in my mind, not the least of which was how I was going to re-move 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 base-ment, for the door was open. He’d had access to the laundry room as well, for he was also clothedhaphazardly in garments belonging both to the Doctor and myself. The blue striped bloomerswere a particularly nice touch, I thought distantly. And while I had heard of some people fallinginto a death-like sleep for a few months due to illness, drink, or drug, I was certain that the Ant-on 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-

DOCTOR ADDERSON'S LENS

BY NATANIA BARRON

21

BULL SPEC—ISSUE #1

A sinister search, confrontation and revelations await inthis often creepy story.— Blue Tyson, Not Free SFReader

A GATHERING OF DOORWAYS

byMichael Jasper

Prime Books

NOVEL EXCERPT

Prologue: A Remembrance of Dreams

This all began a while back, when Noah was just out ofdiapers,

and I started having these messed-up dreams. Got so Iwasn’t sleep-

ing 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 wa-

ter.

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 Imade my way up steep hills on tire-blackened streets

four lanes wide, traffic slicing past me, all gray sedans with black-

tinted 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, re-

arranging themselves like a kid’s oversized set ofblocks. I always

felt like I was just two or three synaptic firings away from re-

membering 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 any-

where in the Undercity.

The Undercity. What the hell kind ofmade-up name was that?

Sometimes I’d make it to the upper reaches of the city, up im-

possible inclines that led to blocky unpainted houses with

shuttered windows, houses built into the sheer purple rock of the

mountain range that somehow cut through this sprawling metro-

polis. 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 ex-

haust 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

26

27

BULL SPEC—ISSUE #1

You were supposed to be watching him, Gil.

Her words created a backbeat to each step he took, hisboots pounding on the sun-baked trail that led to theforest—the last place he wanted to go. But his son was inthere; Gil knew it. His boy, Noah. And he was lost. Gilkicked at the dry, scarred ground and scrambled overblackened tree roots reaching up to trip him. Each step tookhim farther from the farm, but closer to Noah. Gil knewwhere his boy was, knew the name of the place. He just hadto find it and get there.

Noah. He’d already wandered off twice this summer, a typ-ical spacey, curious five-year-old. And Melissa was right—Gilhad been responsible. Three times now. The world turnedwhite as the late-morning sunlight beat on Gil’s bare head, thesmell 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 continuetelling him the latest story about Prince One-Eye and hisband of Black Hoods. An eternity ago. Now the boy wasgone. Lost.

Gil pushed through the trees, ignoring the dull jabs of painin his bad hip as he walked, grabbing frustrated fistfuls ofleaves dried by the sun. He hadn’t been up here on the trailsadjacent to the farm in weeks, and the lack of rain had startedfrying the trees already. Nothing wanted to grow this sum-mer; even the pines looked parched.

Sometimes the forest eats you, Gil thought, sometimes youeat the forest.

Pushing his way through the trees, he let the elastic, dust-covered limbs snap back before realizing that the man walkingbehind him might catch one in the face.

Ray, Gil’s sixty-five-year-old neighbor, was already chuffingair, sounding like he’d been running all-out with a pack of ra-bid dogs at his heels instead of just walking on the trail for thepast fifteen minutes. Ray lifted his bullet-shaped head as hefiddled with the translucent cord that ran from his nose backup his shoulder and into the hissing pack of oxygen on hisbroad 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 secondsafter Gil had broken the news about Noah to Melissa, and Gilhad been stung by her response. Twenty steps outside theirfarmhouse, knowing where he had to go to find Noah, he hadsimply detoured around the unexpected appearance of Ray inhis gravel driveway. Gil had avoided the black leash attachedto Ray’s skittish yellow dog and figured that was it—he wasfree of the old man and anyone else foolish enough to want tohelp.

But Ray and Bullitt had decided to follow Gil up here, andGil didn’t have the energy to tell them to back off.

“Forget calling the cops,” Ray said now. He exhaled acrackly 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 some-where, trying to find his way back home—can’t think about

that, can’t think about that—Gil figured he’d take whateverhelp he could get.

“Cops don’t matter, Ray,” he said, all confident voice andno hesitation. Fooling exactly no one. He touched the cellphone in his jeans pocket, wondering if he might have misseda call from Melissa. “Noah can’t be far off, I tell ya. He’sokay, probably just exploring, as usual.”

Melissa’s reaction still baffled him. After he’d realizedNoah had slipped off, and he’d done his best to find him onhis own, Gil had found her orchestrating the day’s activitiesin the kitchen with Julio, Mariana, and Herschel. When heasked her if she’d seen Noah, she rushed toward him with thislook of intense—what? Fear? Hatred?—on her face.

“What happened?” Her voice had a dull clang to it, like adoorframe echoing after the door it holds has been slammed.Not waiting for a response, she pushed past him on her wayoutside. Gil knew she wanted to have their discussion awayfrom the hired help. Melissa hated showing that anything waswrong. Ever.

“You were supposed to be watching him, Gil,” she said overher 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 painin his injured hip. “He was right there…”

His words dried up when she showed him her back, onceagain, and put both hands to her head. He could tell withoutseeing her face that her eyes were clenched shut, that she’d beclaiming another migraine soon. Gil wanted to grab her, turnher around and wrap her in his arms the way he used to. Shewas too quick to turn away from him lately. What he wantedto do was hold her and feel her heart beating as madly as hisown, giving them both the strength to face this together.

But he didn’t dare reach for her. Instead, he started walkingaway from the house, her words stinging like cold sleetthrown by the winter wind. He swallowed his anger andturned his gaze south, to the old trails leading up to the forestat the edge of their property. A heartbeat later, Ray and hisdog had arrived.

Ray and Bullitt and Gil trudged over the uneven groundrising up on the last few acres of Gil’s land. He had no ideawho owned the forest looming ahead of them (it certainlywasn’t Ray), but he needed to move faster, had to get in there

HARLAN

D

WILSON

A

POSTCAPITALIST

SILHOUETTE

INTERVIEW AND REVIEWS

OF AN

IRREAL POSTMODERNIST

Portrait by Brandon Duncan

D. HARLAN WILSON:

A POSTCAPITALIST SILHOUETTETE

Interview by Samuel Montgomery-Blinn

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 tomy detriment, sometimes not. This isn’t to say I haven’tcatered to an audience. When I began writing, I did it for my-self, i.e., I wrote the type of fiction that I wanted to read. Istill do that. But I’m also conscious of an objective readershipthat comes to my writing with different perspectives, ideolo-gies, degrees of life experience andintelligence, etc. Writing 101, right?You must demonstrate an awarenessof audience, however experimental,innovative or batshit your writing is.Maybe this wasn’t always the case. Some experimental mod-ernists got away with a lot of alienating, esoteric, yabbadabba

prose. Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake is a seminal example. But thatwas a different cultural climate, and the literary world haschanged significantly since then.

You asked me specifically about the kind of creative free-dom I express. I write some straight “literary” stories, butmost of my short fiction, and all of my longer works, blenddifferent elements of the speculative genres, namely sciencefiction, fantasy and horror, but also minor genres like irreal-ism, splatterpunk, steampunk, etc. There are strict rules ofnarrative conduct for these genres. I break the rules. Not tobe an asshole, or to show off, or to prove a point. Instead, Ihave found that breaking the rules leads to more interestingnarratives with greater depth and dynamic modes of meaningand perception. Breakage, in other words, educes innovation.You could say that I experience creative freedom in narrativecatastrophe—albeit catastrophe with order and purpose.

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 an-other. Over the years, I’ve found that producing criticismsharpens my fiction writing, and vice versa. But I also writethings that combine them in the form of critifiction. Mylatest short novel, for instance, Peckinpah: An Ultraviolent Ro-

mance, is a full-blooded critifiction in which I tell a storywhile exploring and analyzing the cinema of Sam Peckinpah.I really enjoyed writing this book—it’s the best fiction I’vewritten, and it’s beautifully illustrated by Danny Evarts. Andit’s been long-listed for the Bram Stoker Award. I don’t thinkit will receive an official recommendation. Too experimental,metanarrational, and playful. Anyway, my formal training isin the critical study of literature and I have little training infiction; in graduate school, I always did my creative writingon the side. But, like I said, doing both simultaneously facilit-ated my development in each mode.

Since we’re talking about Technologized Desire: Selfhood

and the Body in Postcapitalist Science Fiction and Peckin-

pah: An Ultraviolent Romance in particular here, can you

give a specific example when writing Peckinpah that your

postcapitalist critique of SF led you to steer toward or,

conversely, clear of some theme or scene or character?

There isn’t a lot of symmetry between Technologized Desire

and Peckinpah, the latter of which is only remotely science fic-

40

I'VE ALWAYS WRITTEN WHAT I WANT, MORE OR LESS,

SOMETIMES TO MY DETRIMENT, SOMETIMES NOT.

41

BULL SPEC—ISSUE #1

tional, exhibiting elements of fantasy, horror, and the tech-niques of filmmaking. I suppose cinema is the common link.In Technologized Desire, I read films, especially SF films, asmarkers for a sociocultural pathology fabricated by the in-creasing science fictionalization of reality. In other words,cinema denotes a certain corporeal, psychological and emo-

tional mechanization, showing us more and more the degreeto which we are becoming electronically technologicalcreatures. In Peckinpah, I try to represent this idea. Again,though, the book is not set in a science fictional diegesis, butrather a kind of alternate, irreal present in a fictional Midwest-ern 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 TheWild Bunch. I had seen The

Wild Bunch years ago but didn’t remember it very well. Oneday I noticed the director’s cut lying on David’s coffee tableand we started talking about the film and Peckinpah’s tech-nique and biography. Around the same time I read an articlein Wired about Alfredo Garcia, and within days somebody ran-domly asked me if I had ever seen Straw Dogs. I was piqued bythe synchronicity and started doing research.

I realized that Peckinpah and I had a lot in common, bothas artists and people, although I like to think that I’m not asmuch of a maniac as he was. He was, for lack of a better word,extreme, according to biographers, to his advantage and disad-vantage. If nothing else, a Type A personality. Above all, Iliked the schizophrenic texture of his films and the themes headdressed, foremost among them violence, sexuality and mas-culinity in America. Some critics accused him of being thishate-monger who glorified sex, drugs and violence, but for mehis work exhibits a poignant, if at times oblique, critique ofthese things. Critique via representation. That’s preciselywhat I try to do, especially in my longer narratives. So a story

started to unfold.The book that resulted is a combination of my own experi-

ence living in small town Ohio, which I hated, and my studiesof Peckinpah, whose oeuvre I explore and to some degree li-onize yet also problematize and put in question. That’s how itworks for me, anyway. Readers will take away different things

from it. Preliminary reviews have beenmixed. Some folks really like it. Some don’tknow what to make of it. The first word in areview of Peckinpah by a writer at Bookgasm,for instance, is: “Huh?”

Alan Moore called your novel a “bludgeon-

ing celluloid rush of language and ideas

served from an action-painter’s bucket of

fluorescent spatter,” and said that “Peckin-

pah is an incendiary gem and very probably the most ex-

traordinary 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 fanof his since the first time I read Watchmen about 15 or soyears ago. A lot of Alan’s graphic novels are metanarrationaland that’s probably one thing about Peckinpah that resonatedwith him: the book is acutely aware of itself as a narrativeproduction. Peckinpah is also extremely visual, imagistic anddescriptive, consumed with fine details of landscape and char-acter, as all of my novels are. I like reading and writing stuffthat favors imagery over exposition and forces readers tothink about things, challenging them intellectually while atthe same time entertaining them. But I shouldn’t speculateabout why Alan liked my book. Needless to say, I’m veryglad and proud that he did.

Describe the path this story took from your brain to

Shroud Publishing. Who over there did you have to con-

vince that this story needed to be told?

The head publisher at Shroud Publishing is Tim Deal. A won-derful guy. Peckinpah was actually brokered in a casual way atContext Convention in Columbus, Ohio, in 2008. I had solda story called “They Had Goat Heads” to ShroudMagazine

and Tim asked me if I wanted to attend a party and authorsigning he was sponsoring at Context. It was a greatspread—among the best I have attended at any convention. Atsome point, Tim asked me if I was interested in doing a bookfor Shroud’s new Signature Novella Series. So far they hadonly released one novella, Cindy Little’s Intruder, with the in-tention of releasing a slue of books in 2009. I said sure, askedhim to give me a rough idea of what he was looking for, andthat was it. I figured something like Peckinpah would work

CINEMA DENOTES A CERTAIN CORPOREAL,

PSYCHOLOGICAL AND EMOTIONAL

MECHANIZATION, SHOWING US MORE AND

MORE THE DEGREE TO WHICH WE ARE BECOMING

ELECTRONICALLY TECHNOLOGICAL CREATURES.

51

BULL SPEC—ISSUE #1

LEE HAMMOCK

LeadGame 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 gota lot of good reviews, you know, we got an 8.5 on IGN, wegot Massively’s MMO of the Year, Best Crafting of the Year,tied for Best Studio and Best Roleplaying Game Environmentin an MMO. Gamereactor TV, which is from Scandinavia, Iwant to say Sweden, they said it was the best MMO of theyear. So we’re getting a lot of good critical praise, the problemis we’re a niche game so we need to just get in front of morepeople, a lot of people don’t know who we are. So we’re work-ing on getting the word out and letting people know we’vegot an awesome game. We’re kind of doing as we expected; wenever planned to launch like Conan and launch with hugenumbers of subscribers and try to blow everything out, wefigured we’re going to go for the slow build and be more likeEve—build up over time as opposed to trying to hypeeverything up and blow it out the door so we’re doing about

where we want to be.

Finally released in September 2009, Fallen Earth represents

thousands and thousands of man hours of development

and art, but it’s also kind of your baby. What’s it like for it

to be out in the world and out of your control now?

It’s interesting at times. Most of the time it’s awesome. Gener-ally we get pretty good feedback and people seem to be reallyengaged. We made a game for a lot of people who didn’t reallyhave an MMO that was made for them before. In that respectit’s really good, I mean, it’s really great to see your baby goout there and do well and stuff like that. But there are othertimes that I see people who are effectively judging my baby

for things that aren’t really fair, or are just things it was nevermeant to do. People say “You should have kept it in develop-ment for six months” or “You should have spent more moneyon it” but there are things that are beyond our control on all

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

You mentioned IGN, which rated the game as an “im-

pressive” 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 mainlineMMO these days. We are more complex than World ofWar-

craft. Right out the door we hit you with“OK, you can go crafting, you can go ex-ploring, you can go do PvP, you can godo all this stuff” right at the beginning ofthe game if you want to. So we’ve createdat times the problem of the paralysis of

choice: If you have too many options, you don’t know whatyou want to do. Also our skills advancement system is a class-less one, so you basically get a bunch of points you can buywhatever skills you want. But if you don’t know whateverything does, it’s again a paralysis of choice. OK, I don’tknow what any of these do, what am I going to do, what if Ispend my points wrong? So that’s really where I think ourfeeling of challenge to some extent lies. The actual combat isnot that difficult. But at the same time, there are other aspectsof the game structure that are challenging. Depending on whoyou talk to it’s either too challenging or not challengingenough. We are basically shooting for in between World of

Warcraft and Eve in our overall difficulty and learning curve.Eve is really hard tolearn how to play, butWoW is really easy, sobasically try to dosomething in between

to say, OK, there’s a lot of depth so you are constantly learn-ing stuff, but at the same time it’s not quite as difficult.

Let’s step back and out of the video game itself—the

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.

WE MADE A GAME FOR A LOT OF PEOPLE WHO DIDN’T

REALLY HAVE AN MMO THAT WAS MADE FOR THEM BEFORE.

SCI-FI GENRE COMICS & GAMES:

JenniferBedell, Owner

ZacharyBoyd, 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?JWhen we opened the website, it was from the beginningmy 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 al-ways in the habit of poking around at real estate ads online“just in case.” And when we found this place he came to meand he said, “Oh my God. This is perfect.” And I said, “Forthat price there’s going to be a thousand things wrong withit.” And there were! But here we are.

They weren’t things that we hadn’t dealt with at a ware-house in the middle of Durham. Durham’sbeen great, because we’re at the center of abunch of universities, and at the time we de-cided to open a store there was already a storein Chapel Hill and Raleigh, but there wasnothing in Durham. And we had a really activegaming group and we knew that there were gamers inDurham. So this just ended up being an ideal location for us.

Any funny stories about finding rats in the belfry, moving

mishaps, that kind of thing?JWell, the people who were here previous to us was a fur-niture store. And they left the place in kind of… wow.

We found water stains everywhere, where they’d had a foun-

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

come in here and completely redo everything, and it was anightmare getting opened because we set a really aggressiveschedule. We got the place at the end of May and we openedat the end of July, and we didn’t have a lot of free time tospend because we had to get the revenue stream going. So try-ing to get carpet, paint, fixture, you know, everything. Whenyou’re running a warehouse, all you really need is racks. Butthe idea was that we were just going to move in here and fig-ure it out. At the time, we were young and crazy, and—reallycrazy. Looking back, we would have made a lot of differentdecisions, but as it happens sometimes you just gotta take thatleap and go with it and figure it out as you go.ZI 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 andmeet some different people, meet Jennifer and see the loca-tion. And there was just boxes of product, and—product.Everywhere.

Where the register is now, it was just a bunch of stuff lay-ing on the ground. And Jennifer, the first memory that I haveof her is her sitting in a chair plinking away at her laptop, try-

ing to figure, with a really haggard and worried look on herface, trying to figure things out and trying to direct people.“No, take that over there.” “Build that. Built that!”JIt was the weekend we opened, all the product went up.

And in the meantime, while everybody else was hangingfixtures and building things, we were trying to hire staff. Iwas writing the back end software to run the register and todeal with inventory in the store and stuff like that. So, youknow, we’ve written all of our own custom software, and soalso the idea of producing that on a limited three monthschedule while also doing everything else was… you know, Itold Mark over and over “We’re not gonna have it done.There’s no way we’re gonna have it done. Returns won’twork. You know, all these things are not gonna work.” Andhe said, “That’s OK, we can do those later.” And I said,“We’re not gonna have time later!” And he said, “It doesn’tmatter!”

It’s obviously been a great decision.JIt’s been an incredible experience, because it’s differentfrom running a store, really. It doesn’t feel like a store,

because people come in and they want to talk to you, and it’snot just, it’s not like going to Wal-Mart. It’s not like, “Hey, do

62

AND I SAID, “FOR THAT PRICE THERE’S GOING

TO BE A THOUSAND THINGS WRONG WITH IT.”

AND THERE WERE! BUT HERE WE ARE. —J

INTERVIEW—SCI-FI GENRE COMICS & GAMES

L2R: Jennifer Bedell andZachary Boyd.

63

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 thatthey don’t get attached to a big box store. When we did the ex-pansion I thought, “That’s great, we’re gonna have so muchmore gaming space and that’s really exciting.” But I didn’t ex-pect how excited the customers were going to be about it.And people literally came up to me and said, “Hey, we really

appreciate you” and “We’re really glad you did this” and “Tellus what we can do to help out.” And to me, that was just theneatest experience ever, to realize that the customers reallyhad grown to have a stake in the store, to where they felt likethey had some ownership and some responsibility for it.ZAnd lots of people have commented on just the general re-

organization of everything, and they love the wall ofboard games, because you can see everything. You don’t haveto go looking around.

Zachary, as the manager of the store, for the local sci-fi

fans who haven’t made it into the store yet, what are they

missing, and for the folks who have come often, what’s

new?ZWell, we’re pretty excited about 2010 for multiple reas-ons. 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 aCCG, it’s been around for years and years and years, it’s prob-ably the longest running one, and it’s by Wizards of theCoast. Every few months they’ll have two events back toback, a pre-release and a launch party for their new product.In this case it’s going to be WorldWake. And what we do ison Friday nights I’m crazy enough that we have a midnighttournament for it. That lasts until about 7 the next morning.JWhich means he’s just leaving as the warehouse staff

comes in.ZActually I’m usually taking a nap, and then waking up,and people are here, and they’re like, “Hey, have you

been here all night?” Yes. So then we get the Saturday tourna-ment rolling. And it’s just a cascade of “there’s another tourna-ment today.” And the next week doesn’t really exist because Inever went home really. That’s coming up.JIt’s fantastic though, because for that we get players from

a little bit farther out. It’s a pre-release so people are ex-cited about the new set, so we get to sort of hob-nob with alot of players we don’t see very often. I can’t tell you how

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’renot going to be able to seat everybody.” And people are suchgood sports. They’re sitting in office chairs and they’re hover-ing on stools. It’s a great time because we get so many peoplein for that.ZThat’s coming up in the spring. Sci-Fi Genre actually

goes to different conventions. Like we’re going to at-tempt, fingers crossed, to be at theCarrboro Collector’s Fair this year, as-suming I can figure out how to registerfor that. There’s an anime conventionthat happens, it was in Durham, butlast year was their first year at the

Raleigh convention center, which is really awesome. If youlike anime, or just seeing lots of crazy people—JA lot of cosplay.

ZYeah. Definitely check it out, that’s in late May, and we’llbe there for that. We’re looking forward to a couple of

new comic book conventions we’re going to this year. I meanit’s just really exciting. And we’ve got the space, and this willbe a full year with the space, which is cool.JWe are really hoping by the end of this year to open a

manga section for the first time. We have people come inevery now and then and ask for it, and they say, “You know, I

just, I hate getting this stuff at Barnes and Noble, becausethey don’t really know what they’re talking about. Why don’tyou guys get some manga in here?” So that’s really one of ourbig goals.ZAs far as products go, D&D has been releasing a new set-

ting every year, so that’s been pretty exciting. In 2010 it isDark Sun, which is a throwback to a 2nd edition setting thatwas really, really popular. People clamored for it a lot in 3rdedition, but they did Forgotten Realms, was the big thing for3rd edition and 3.5, and they also did Eberron which was newfor 3, and which was a cool little steampunk almost type set-

I’M USUALLY TAKING A NAP, AND THEN WAKING

UP, AND PEOPLE ARE HERE, AND THEY’RE LIKE,

“HEY, HAVE YOU BEEN HERE ALL NIGHT?” YES. —Z

L2R: SamuelMontgomery- Blinn and Jennifer Bedell.