Mslexia

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New Writing

Submit for Issue 55

WOMEN's POEtRY COMPETITION

■ Here’s an idea for prose writers: find a long sentence you’ve written, split it into clauses, then experiment with reordering them (Raymond Carver did this with bits of Chekhov)
■ Google the poem ‘Thirteen ways of looking at a blackbird’ by Wallace Stevens and, allowing your mind to free-associate, apply the idea to an object of your choice (a strawberry, a blank DVD, a shoelace…). Notice how Stevens stitches together a series of different ideas and scenarios to make surprising connections
■ Describe a mundane object in detail, without naming it, as though you’ve never seen it before. Could this be a new poem?
Devised by Margaret Wilkinson

◊ Competition Rules | More Information
◊ Closing date: 18 June 2012

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New Writing: In the year 2212

Ann VanderMeer introduces her selection of themed prose and poetry

When I agreed to judge the submissions for this science fiction theme, the manuscripts had to be shipped to me from the UK. Unfortunately, I didn’t get them right away because Homeland Security decided to search them. I guess women writing science fiction is a dangerous thing…

Certainly, there are not enough women publishing in this genre. Why is that? I don’t think it has anything to do with the quality of the work – the submissions I have just read were very good; in several cases I was blown away by these stories. So it can’t be that women aren’t capable. In that case, why did Mslexia receive so few submissions on this theme compared to others?

One possibility is that science fiction (SF) by women doesn’t sell, especially in the UK; or that female approaches to SF are not valued by publishing houses – these two theories have been explored in depth across the blogosphere. But when I talked to other women editors, writers, readers, several other theories emerged too. For example, I was told that perhaps there aren’t enough women studying and working in the hard sciences. OK, maybe… but not all male writers of SF are scientists. How important is it to ‘get the science right’, and how much hard science needs to be in a SF story anyway? If you take a look at some of the best-known SF writers of the past 50 years, many of them are not scientists. Many come from a literary background and then research subject matter that interests them.

regardless of what Margaret Atwood says about her work, she is writing science fiction, and we all know it

In addition, the science part of SF is not nearly as important today as it was in the so-called ‘Golden Age’ of SF, which ended around the middle of the last century. Indeed, the New Wave of SF that emerged in the 1960s (so named by Judith Merril, who edited The Year’s Best SF series, and later popularised by Michael Moorcock in New Worlds) moved the genre closer to the literary mainstream, with its focus more on literary style and less on the nuts-and-bolts of scientific accuracy. That trend, along with other factors, meant we saw more women writing and being published in this genre.

Someone else told me that writing short SF is harder than writing stories in other genres, such as mainstream or fantasy. I thought that idea deserved some further thought. Is it really harder to write SF? When writing in this genre, the author has the added responsibility of creating a believable world, with futuristic technology and sometimes even characters that aren’t human. The writer must put the reader firmly in the story by describing this alien place, but without sacrificing the story. Too much explaining often takes away from plot, characterisation, and all the other elements of a successful story.

But all fiction must take the reader to a new and different place, you might say. Yes, that is true, but in fiction with contemporary settings, you don’t have to explain how the TV or telephone works, because your audience already knows. However they might not understand the purpose and function of the ‘Rambulator 1500’. The fact is that readers do need some additional context for a futuristic setting, which does create the perception that SF can be more difficult to write, which could definitely create a barrier to entry. (Still, plenty of people are out there writing SF.)

by showing us a future we may not like, they encourage us to do something about it now

However, there is also the issue of what we identify as SF in the first place. Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife – most definitely a SF novel – was marketed as a mainstream love story. And regardless of what Margaret Atwood says about her work, she is writing SF and we all know it. Not all SF is filled with ray guns and spaceships. So there are probably women writing in this genre but not defining it as SF, who therefore might not submit their work for a SF writing contest. I know that over the years I’ve received short story submissions from many writers who would normally submit to literary journals and consider themselves mainstream writers, but they have certain stories they just can’t place there.

Regardless of the reasons, I wish more women did write SF, and were drawn to write it for personal creative reasons. This is a genre that produces some of the most intelligent, thought-provoking and creatively challenging works imaginable. As far as I am concerned, the stories printed here represent a lot about what is right with SF short stories. Extrapolating what the future will be requires great imagination and creativity. And yes, perhaps it is a bit dangerous, as the poems and stories I’ve selected show. Many of these writers’ visions are dystopian, not uplifting or ‘gee whiz, isn’t everything great what with all our gadgets?’ But by showing us a future we may not like, they are also encouraging us to do something about it: now. (And is there anything more dangerous – or exciting – than a woman in action?)

In ‘The question’, we are shown war in the future from a different point of view. This subject matter has often (and wrongly) been considered a man’s arena, but Jude Piesse tackles the story using language you don’t often see in war stories, beautiful and emotional, but not at all sentimental. In ‘Thin’ Giselle Leeb takes on the subject of body image. She approaches this from a completely unique angle, using SF to make a powerful point: What is normal, after all, and why do we have such a complicated relationship with food, eating and our bodies?

Joanne Towers’ ‘Regolith’ gives readers a glimpse of a community in the future where it seems that people have not changed all that much – unfortunately. Politics is politics, no matter what planet you live on and there’s always going to be that one person in power who must have everything her way.

Reena Khandpur’s story ‘A is for…’ introduces us to a teacher who remembers what apples are. The desire for what we have lost is a common theme in SF. It makes us look around ourselves today and appreciate what we have, and perhaps even take steps to protect it. The use of language in this story is so fierce, so strong that we can actually taste the forbidden fruit.

In ‘Curriculum Vitae 2212’, Jennifer Foster offers a satirical look at how we treat our elderly – who is valued in our culture and why. To what lengths are we willing to go to still be considered relevant and a contributing member of society?

The poetry is just as strong and ferocious, looking at possible futures with determination and, in some cases, humour. ‘At the Plastic Bag Museum’ by Robin Houghton, describes how something as innocuous as a plastic bag can become an object we might want to memorialise in the future. JS Watts’ ‘Steelyard Sue plants a garden’ continues this theme of visualising how discarded items of our present-day culture could be used to create something beautiful in the future.

But it’s not just the physical we’re concerned with. In ‘The Department of Emotional Projections’, Nancy Hynes depicts a world in which we also recycle and reuse thoughts and feelings – ‘bliss’ is the most sought-after emotion and has a long waiting list. ‘Our Pangaea’ by Isabel Galleymore gives us just a glimpse of an event that changes everything, and of a woman who still longs for her own private space, even when the world population is reduced to two people. And, speaking of massive changes in society, Sue Anderson’s ‘High and dry’ has characters that are struggling to survive a harsh reality and yearning for the splendour of the world they have lost.

These stories and poems may seem didactic, but the true strength of SF is precisely that it can permit writers to explore difficult subjects without always hitting the reader over the head with that weight. SF also provides a necessary distance that allows the reader to look at these themes from a different perspective. In this way, it has the power to change minds in ways that straight literary fiction can’t always accomplish.

Because of the many recent online discussions of the issue of women in SF (see www.sfwa.org/2011/06/guest-post-checking-the-gender-balance/), I feel confident that more and more women will be writing and publishing in this genre soon. Certainly, the writers published here have the writing chops to get it done. And as more women discover gratification and acknowledgement, we’ll have so much more great fiction to read and ponder. Is that dangerous? I don’t think so. I think that’s just the way it should be.

ANN VANDERMEER is a Hugo Award-winning author and editor, living in Tallahassee in Florida. She was Editor-in-Chief of Weird Tales magazine, the oldest fantasy magazine in the world, and is a regular contributor to the popular SF and fantasy website io9. With her partner Jess VanderMeer, she has edited many anthologies, including Best American Fantasy, Volumes 1 and 2 (both Prime Books); Steampunk, Steampunk II and Steampunk Reloaded (all Tachyon Publications); The New Weird (a new anthology published this year by Corvus in the UK); Last Drink Bird Head (a flash fiction anthology, published by Wyrm); Fast Ships, Black Sails (Night Shade); and The Thackery T Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities (Harper Voyager).

All the stories and poems mentioned are published in the current issue of Mslexia. To read New Writing in full subscribe now.