5.09 | 10.11.22
Why does the world of young adult fiction seem to have more wizards, werewolves, and vampires in it than astronauts and engineers?
And why have the writers of the blockbuster YA books of the last 20 years fixated so consistently on white, straight, cisgender protagonists while always somehow forgetting to portray the true diversity of young people, with all their backgrounds, identities, orientations, and experiences?
Well, you could write a whole dissertation about those questions. But instead, my friend and colleague A. R. Capetta and I went out and assembled a counterweight. It’s a YA science fiction collection called Tasting Light: Ten Science Fiction Stories to Rewire Your Perceptions, and after more than two years of work, it comes out today—October 11, 2022.
Tasting Light highlights the plausible futures of science fiction rather than the enticing-but-impossible worlds of fantasy. Don’t get me wrong: I love both kinds of stories. But fantasy doesn’t need any extra help these days—just turn on your favorite streaming TV network and you’ll see show after show featuring dragons, magic, and swordplay. There’s some great science fiction out there too (The Expanse, For All Mankind, the never-ending Star Trek universe), but it isn’t nearly as pervasive.
The two genres do different kinds of work, and I think Hollywood and the mainstream publishing world have been focusing so hard on one that the other has been getting edged out. That’s too bad. Because to me, fantasy is the literature of escape, longing, and lost worlds, while science fiction is the literature of hope and possibility. And hope is something we need more of these days.
As a project, Tasting Light was born at Candlewick Press, a prominent publisher of YA and middle-grade books based here in the Boston area. Candlewick had formed a pair of collaborations with the MIT Press called MITeen Press and MIT Kids Press, and they were looking for someone to put together a YA-oriented science fiction collection under the MITeen Press imprint—a book that would do for the YA market what the MIT Press and MIT Technology Review’s Twelve Tomorrows books (one of which I edited in 2018) was doing for mainstream sci-fi. Namely, prove that it’s stil possible to create technically realistic “hard” science fiction in the style of Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, or Robert Heinlein from the 1950s and 1960s, but do it in a way that speaks to readers now in the 2020s. (For more on the Twelve Tomorrows vision listen to my 2018 episode Science Fiction That Takes Science Seriously.)
At the same time, though, MITeen Press wanted to open up space for stories that reflect a wider range of human experiences and perspectives. So they hired A. R. and me to edit, and we went out and recruited the smartest, most accomplished, most diverse set of authors we could find to write hard sci-fi stories with heroes who would be recognizable and relatable to young adults today.
As you’ll hear in today’s episode, that includes William Alexander, whose story “On the Tip of My Tongue” follows two young people of unspecified gender as they attempt to tame the loopy orbital mechanics of a space station suspended at the L1 LaGrange point. It includes the Chicago-based thriller and sci-fi writer K. Ancrum, who wrote a lovely story called “Walk 153” about a the complex relationship that develops between a lonely, infirm, elderly woman and the college student who helps her experience the outside world through his GoPro-like body camera. And it includes the prolific Elizabeth Bear, who wrote a story called “Twin Strangers” that tackles the issues of body dysmorphic disorder and anorexia through a story about two teenage boys and their misadventures programming their “dops” or metaverse avatars. There’s also a luminous story by A. R. themself called “Extremophiles,” set amidst the ice of distant Europa. And there are five more remarkable stories by Charlotte Nicole Davis, Nasuġraq Rainey Hopson, A.S. King, E.C. Myers, and Junauda Petrus-Nasah, as well as a gorgeous comic / graphic novella by Wendy Xu about a sentient robot and the teen girl who discovers it in the forest.
The reviews of Tasting Light have been wondrous and welcome. Kirkus Reviews gives it a rare starred review and says “Capetta and Roush introduce engaging, thoughtful, beautifully written entries about identity and agency, all unfolding within the bounds of real science.” Publishers Weekly calls it “dazzling” and notes that “the creators seamlessly tackle relevant issues such as colonization, misogyny, transphobia, and white entitlement in this eclectic celebration of infinite possibility and the ever-present human spirit.” Buzzfeed says “Each story is unique, brilliant, and brimming with hope.”
I hope the three excerpts you’ll hear in today’s episode will entice you to get a copy of Tasting Light for yourself; it’s available at Amazon and everywhere you buy books. Or if you decide to become a new supporter of Soonish on Patreon at the $10-per-episode level or above, between now and December 31, 2022, I’ll send you a free signed copy of the book!
Very special thank-yous to my co-editor A. R. Capetta, a brilliant writer, editor, and collaborator and my trusted guide to the world of YA; to William Alexander, Kayla Ancrum, and Elizabeth Bear for writing such wonderful stories and for sharing them at the Cambridge Science Festival; to all of the other contributors to Tasting Light; to the wonderful editors and staff members at Candlewick Press, especially Hilary Van Dusen, Carter Hasegawa, and Stephanie Pando; to all the folks at the Cambridge Science Festival who helped us produce the live event; and to Rebecca Conn at the MIT Press Bookstore.
Resources Related to This Episode
A.R. Capetta and Wade Roush, eds., Tasting Light: Ten Science Fiction Stories to Rewire Your Perceptions (MITeen Press, 2022)
William Alexander, Goblin Secrets (Margaret McElderry Books, 2012)
K. Ancrum, The Weight of the Stars (Square Fish, 2020)
Elizabeth Bear, Ancestral Night (Gallery / Saga Press, 2019)
Wade Roush, ed., Twelve Tomorrows (MIT Press, 2018)
Notes
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The music track “Hearts Aflutter” is licensed from Sound of Picture / Podington Bear.
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Transcript
[Note: For the correct formatting of the story excerpts read out loud by the authors, as transcribed below, please see the print or ebook editions of TASTING LIGHT.]
Wade Roush: You're listening to Soonish. I'm Wade Roush.
Wade Roush: This bonus episode of the show is coming out on October 11th, 2022. And it's a big day for me because it's the official release date for a book I've been working on for the last two years. It's a collection of science fiction stories written by top authors from the science fiction and fantasy worlds, and aimed at young adult readers. It's called Tasting Light: Ten Science Fiction Stories to Rewire Your Perceptions. I co-edited the book together with my collaborator, A.R. Capetta, who's a rising star in the world of science fiction and is known for their books The Heartbreak Bakery, Echo after Echo the Lost Coast and the Once and Future series.
Wade Roush: And I'm really excited about this new book because it's not my first time editing a science fiction collection, but it is my first time working on something for YA readers. Doing the research, an author recruiting and editing for this book really took me back to my own days as a tween and a teenager when I started devouring both science fiction and fantasy books. For me, those kinds of books provided both a refuge and a playground. As a budding science and engineering nerd, I especially loved the way science fiction let me think beyond the limitations of current day science and technology to imagine what humanity could do in the future, but also in a smaller way. What I could be in the future.
Wade Roush: In 2018, I edited a collection of more mainstream science fiction stories called 12 Tomorrows. And by the way, there's a whole episode of Soonish about that if you jump back to season two, Episode eight. But when I got the offer to work with A.R. on this book, I said yes right away for a couple of different reasons. One was that I thought we should do our part to try to bring science fiction back as a major part of the why fiction market. For a quarter of a century now, the publishing world has been shoveling out books about young wizards and vampires and post-apocalyptic death matches. And by comparison, there hasn't been nearly as much good science fiction for young adult readers. I think that's just bad and wrong because science fiction is the literature of hope, and we need more of that right now. The other reason I wanted to do the project was that I thought there was an opening and frankly, a need for a science fiction collection that would feature a true diversity of protagonists and would show them dealing with the full range of challenges that real young adults face. So we went out and found authors we knew could deal with issues of race and class and sexual orientation and gender identity and do it all sensitively but straightforwardly. And I couldn't be more proud of the book that came out of all of that. I think it's the kind of book that would really appeal to all listeners of Soonish, not just young adults.
Wade Roush: So what I want to do in today's episode is give you a preview of three of the incredible stories in the book, in the voices of the authors themselves, together with a short panel discussion with the authors about the differences between writing science fiction and writing fantasy and why why A and science fiction are such a powerful match. What you're about to hear is a recording we made as part of the Cambridge Science Festival right here in my hometown of Cambridge, Massachusetts. It was an outdoor event, so you'll hear kids and other noises in the background. In fact, just off the stage, at one point, a robot dog and a real dog got into a noisy fight, which I guess is one of the hazards if you're doing a book event at a literal science carnival. So here's the event, and I'll be back afterwards to explain how you can get the book and to tell you about a special offer for Soonish listeners.
Wade Roush: Hey, everybody. Hello, carnival goers. Gather around. Find a seat if you can. Thanks for joining us here at the Cambridge Science Festival. My name is Wade Roush. I'm a science writer and a podcaster and a science fiction editor based here in Cambridge. And I am here to kick off the next main stage event here at the carnival. It's a celebration of a new collection of science fiction stories written for young adults.
Wade Roush: It's called Tasting Light, Ten Science Fiction Stories to Rewire Your Perceptions. It goes on sale officially on Tuesday of this week, but we're here to tell you about it and give you a sneak preview and talk a little bit about where this book came from and why we think science fiction is more important than ever as a way of telling stories and a way of thinking about the future and who we are as people. I have with me here on stage three of the ten authors who wrote original stories for Tasting Light. I've got William Alexander, Elizabeth Bear, and Kayla Ancrum, and they've come from all over the country to join us from Vermont, from western Massachusetts, and from as far away as Chicago, Illinois, in Kayla's case. And we're going to hear from them in just a minute. In fact, you're going to get to hear them reading from their stories from the book.
Wade Roush: But first, I just want to take a minute to talk about the book and what we tried to do with it and what impact we hope it'll have. Raise your hand if you're a science fiction fan. Awesome. Okay. So. Me too. When I was young, I grew up watching Star Trek and movies like 2001 A Space Odyssey and reading Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov and Frank Herbert and Douglas Adams. And I was captivated by all of those stories about spaceships and aliens and humanity expanding out into the galaxy.
Wade Roush: But I also grew up reading Ursula Le Guin and Anne McCaffrey and Madeleine L'Engle and Susan Cooper and J.R.R. Tolkien and Piers Anthony. And those authors were writing about magic and dragons and young heroes saving the world from dark sorcerers. And that was equally captivating. In fact, I love both kinds of books because they both lifted you up out of the world you were living in, and they gave space to your imagination to think about how people who were recognizably human, people who are like us, would deal with completely new situations and surroundings. And the great thing is nobody needs to choose between these two kinds of books. It's all out there for the reading, which is kind of awesome. But I did understand pretty early that there was a big difference between these two kinds of books. And the difference was that Tolkien and Le Guin and the others were writing fantasy stories where the only familiar thing was that the characters were usually recognizably human, but everything else was up for grabs, including the laws of physics and the nature of the universe. The thing about science fiction was that it usually tried to tell stories without bending the rules. Science fiction creates novel and interesting situations, not by jumping into alternate universes, but by skipping forward into our future, into the future of actual humans here on this planet. Every good story in science fiction or fantasy revolves around some element that's new or different or challenging.
Wade Roush: But in science fiction, the element is usually a new technology, something that doesn't yet exist but could theoretically exist given what we already know about physics and biology and evolution. So I love those kinds of stories because they made me feel like these writers were writing about a world that was actually possible. I knew I would never get to ride on a dragon. But maybe someday I will get to ride on a crew dragon. That was a space joke. Okay. Yeah. The point is that science fiction helps us think about our world as it could be and as we want it to be. And that's why I still love science fiction today, especially what's called hard science fiction. Meaning science fiction that's careful to abide by the laws of physics and base all of its story elements as novel story elements on extrapolations from present day technology. So in 2018, I was asked to be the editor of a collection of hard science fiction stories from the MIT Press and MIT Technology Review. It was called Twelve Tomorrows, and that was an incredibly fun project. And recently I got the chance to be part of a similar book. But this one is aimed at young adults. So the book we're talking about today, Tasting Light, is the product of more than two years of work and writing by fabulous authors and editing by me and my co-editor, A. R. Capetta, who lives up in Vermont and teaches at the Vermont College of Fine Arts and writes their own fantasy and science fiction books. A. R. couldn't join us today, but we do have three of the authors who all accepted our offers to write stories for the anthology and to be here today.
Wade Roush: The book is published by the MIT Press, which is a new imprint of Candlewick Press in collaboration with the MIT Press. And Candlewick is based here in Boston, and they publish a huge array of middle grade and why books? And so we knew going in that the world of why fiction is filled with fantasy books, including a bunch of really good books published by Candlewick. But for a lot of reasons, there just aren't as many YA science fiction books, especially hard science fiction books. That's what the MITeen Press is all about. Books on science, technology, engineering, art, mathematics, steam topics. And those books are all designed to encourage exploration and creativity. Just like the Cambridge Science Festival. Yeah. So we knew if we were going to create a science fiction collection for the MITeen Press, we would have to meet some very specific goals. Namely, it would have to show that there is a way to tell stories within the conventions of hard science fiction that really speak to why a readers. And that's what I think we've done. So you can hear for yourself in a minute because each of our guest authors is going to read a bit from their stories.
Wade Roush: But A. R. And I were also trying to do one more thing with this book, which was to go out of our way to find writers who could use hard science fiction to explore the big issues that YA readers are grappling with in their own lives, issues like race and gender and identity, and how we can be true to our deepest selves. We wanted to show, as A.R. puts it in our introduction to the book, that there should be no boundaries in science fiction. And there should be way more open space for science fiction authors to explore, especially in terms of who the main characters are, where they're coming from and what they're learning. So without further ado, let's get a bit of a taste from the book and hear how three of our authors did all of the above for Tasting Light.
Wade Roush: So I first want to introduce Will Alexander. I will. So Will won the National Book Award in 2012 for his novel Goblin Secrets. He teaches at Vermont College of Fine Arts in the Writing for Children and Young Adults program. His other novels include Ambassador and a Properly Haunted Place. And we'll wrote a story for our book called "On the Tip of My Tongue." And it's actually the story that provided the inspiration for the title of the book. But I'm not going to say exactly how. Okay. So you'll have to read the story to find out. Okay, Will.
William Alexander: Thank you, Wade. Thank you, everyone, for being here and listening intently and not interrupting because you are my children. Hello. Oh, so I am going to read a little bit of my story and I'm not starting at the beginning. But you are all incredibly smart people, and I have no doubt that you'll be able to keep up. Okay.
William Alexander: Picture a giant octopus floating between Earth and Luna. (This is a metaphor, by the way. This is hard science fiction.) The octopus is amusing itself by playing with dozens of yo yos and simultaneously juggling batons. This is where I live. Every yo yo on its tether is a separate spinning neighborhood or a loan building or an abandoned ship. The Dr.. More than 100 years ago and never left. Every baton is a mobile bridge connecting separate places to make them all. One place, one city. Welcome to Elium.
William Alexander: My family has our own airlock adjacent to Tia Cassie's workshop because inspecting tethers is her actual job. I am just an unpaid apprentice / intern / familial source of free labor. Tia was in the workshop working late as always, so I told her about the bandaid that I just wrapped around Cortado's tether and she looked up and glared at me to remind me that I should not ever spacewalk by myself the festive, sparkly purple pair of eyes that she had picked out for the day made that glare even more unsettling. Tia's original eyes had been damaged by accidental exposure to vacuum, and by damaged, I mean that they exploded.
William Alexander: She'd made new ones out of glass and tiny cameras, which sent signals to a fine mesh that she wore over her tongue. Tongues are sensitive. They're good at making sense of complicated signals. The visual bits of her brain had remapped themselves to interpret patterns of electricity crackling across that tongue mesh. In other words, my aunty taught herself how to taste light. I loved that about her.
William Alexander: The two of us agreed to properly fix the frayed tether and soon. But both of us knew that the list of things to fix was very long.
William Alexander: Hello, doggies. We are having a reading here. I wonder if the dogs could have their arguments somewhere else. That would be wonderful. I understand robots are really unsettling to dogs. It's a whole subplot of Terminator that about dogs and robots, as I recall. All right. That problem seems to be done now. Okay.
William Alexander: Innumerable pieces of the city held together via temporary measures. I tried not to think about it too much. Survival always insists that we trust a whole bunch of inherently untrustworthy things. I made it to the arrival gates in time because I knew all the shortcuts, which meant that I had to run, jump and glide through varying levels of gravity in rapid succession. And that was nausea inducing, especially when I rushed across the Jemison Bridge, where everyone is supposed to buckle up and tether themselves to the walls between stops. Oh, luckily I'd forgotten to eat for most of the day, but that lack of lunch did make me feel lightheaded and a little dizzy.
William Alexander: Bex did not warn me that you are gorgeous, which I also found disorienting.
William Alexander: Hi.
William Alexander: Hi.
William Alexander: Welcome to Eleum.
William Alexander: Thanks.
William Alexander: Hungry?
William Alexander: Starved.
William Alexander: Okay. I know where we should go first. How long is your layover?
William Alexander: 7 hours.
William Alexander: You tried not to yawn and you sort of squeak-yawned instead. And it was unspeakably adorable.
William Alexander: What time is it here?
William Alexander: It depends on the neighborhood, I said. Do you need a place to crash after we eat?
William Alexander: No. You insisted. I need to stay awake. If I don't acclimate to the time they keep it L2 then the lag will be horrible. And right now it is morning over there. So Bex promised to keep me caffeinated.
William Alexander: Hmm. Then you are lucky I am here instead. Bex drinks diet soda all day long.
William Alexander: You made an appropriate skeptical face.
William Alexander: Coffee?
William Alexander: I nodded. Follow me.
William Alexander: We took the long way to Cortado so we could sample the best bridge food and avoid the more drastic gravity shifts between neighborhoods. Quality street vendors always set up shop on low speed bridges, with the single exception of the Nekki bridge. Don't ever eat on the Nekki. Don't even cross the Nekki if you can possibly avoid it, just wait at the bridge. Stop for the next one to come around.
William Alexander: You pause to stare through every window on our way.
William Alexander: This place is bonkers.
William Alexander: True.
William Alexander: How does it even hold together?
William Alexander: Don't ask, or it might fly apart.
William Alexander: Isn't that already flying apart? Those bridges look like trapeze artists. They grab hold of one station.
William Alexander: Neighborhood, I said.
William Alexander: Neighborhood. And then they go and they spin around and they catch another. And it's weird to think that we're on a bridge right now while that is happening.
William Alexander: You took a bite of spicy elote and you got bits of squishy corn stuck in your teeth.
William Alexander: Where did the name of Eleum come from, anyway? Is it Spanish?
William Alexander: Hmm. Portuguese? I said. Sort of. It isn't a word. It's just a letter and a number stuck together. Ele-Um. L-one. Lagrange point one.
William Alexander: Aha, you said. the first of five magic spots where the gravity wells of the moon and the planet call a truce and cancel each other out.
William Alexander: Almost.
William Alexander: Exactly.
William Alexander: I couldn't decide whether or not to tell you about the corn in your teeth.
William Alexander: Wait, What do you mean by almost?
William Alexander: L one points aren't very stable, you said, explaining my own home to me.
William Alexander: They wobble more than L4 or L5. I mean, those would have been better spots to build a great big space city.
William Alexander: I got a little defensive, even though I had just joked about this whole place flying apart. And even though I was one of the very few people who knew how many band aids kept that from happening.
William Alexander: Okay, nobody planned to build this great big space city. Eleum just grew. A Little refueling station, turned into a fuel refinery for all the lunar ice and then a shipyard. And then it needed a town to house everybody who worked long shifts at the yards and the docks. New craft took off. Old craft came to rest and stayed. Everything kludged together like rocks and dust collecting to grow a whole new planet or like old planet side cities that sprang up whenever river met ocean. All of that happened here. It could not have happened anywhere else. I do not care how stable L five thinks it is.
William Alexander: Okay, grumpyface.
William Alexander: You took another bite, which made the tooth situation worse.
William Alexander: I like it when you defend the honor of your city.
William Alexander: Good.
William Alexander: Thank you. Thank you, kiddo.
Wade Roush: Thank you, Will Alexander. That story is called "On the Tip of My Tongue. And that was just a taste of it. All right. All right. Our next story is going to be read to you by Elizabeth Bear. Elizabeth was born on the same day as Frodo and Bilbo, but a different year. Yeah. Elizabeth came all the way from Western Mass. And she is a winner of the Hugo, Sturgeon, Locus and Astounding awards for her more than 30 novels and over 100 short stories, including one that she wrote for Twelve Tomorrows from 2018. So this is actually my second time working with Bear, and it's been really wonderful. So over at the merch table, in addition to Tasting Light, you can pick up a copy of Bear's novel Ancestral Night. And for us, she wrote a story called "Twin Strangers." So Bear, can you give us a taste of your story?
Elizabeth Bear: Hello. When I settled down to write this, I was thinking about the most terrible thing that can happen to a teenager. Those "I did what?" moments and all the embarrassment that I, at age 51, still remember so acutely. So I'm going to jump around a little bit.
Elizabeth Bear: I was sitting on the bed tweaking my digital twin when Jax showed up for class. He was early. He came up the ladder to my loft over the cab, leaned over my shoulder before I knew he was there and said, Nobody really looks like that, Liam.
Elizabeth Bear: I dropped my screen face down so fast I nearly fumbled it onto the floor. I whipped my headphones off. Crap. I yelled. I nearly pissed myself.
Elizabeth Bear: Liam! Language, Mom Stacy yelled from the back of the RV.
Elizabeth Bear: Sorry, Mom.
William Alexander: Noise canceling, Jax said, ignoring the existence of parents and picking up the headphones. Great. Until you don't want to get snuck up on. You might have seen me in that mirror.
William Alexander: He pointed to the one on the bulkhead crammed into the corner.
William Alexander: If you hadn't thrown a shirt over it. What are you doing?
William Alexander: Clothes shopping.
William Alexander: I tried to sound bored.
William Alexander: He flopped down on the bed beside me.
William Alexander: Anyway, you shouldn't mess with your dop's measurements. You can lie to your parents. You can lie to your shrink. You can lie to your priest.
Elizabeth Bear: I haven't got a priest.
Elizabeth Bear: But don't lie to your dop. The results always suck.
Elizabeth Bear: I snorted. My dop's image was derived from footage my device had captured of me over the years.
Elizabeth Bear: I didn't see anything weirder about adjusting its measurements than adjusting its gender.
Elizabeth Bear: I'm not trying to fool anybody.
Elizabeth Bear: That was also a lie.
Elizabeth Bear: Your clothes aren't going to fit, he said idly.
Elizabeth Bear: I'll just have to fit the clothes.
Elizabeth Bear: If you keep corrupting its data, it'll probably enter you in a bodybuilding contest. And then you'll have to do it. Or all the girls you like will know that you're chicken.
Elizabeth Bear: I don't like any girls.
Elizabeth Bear: Another lie. I took my headphones away from him. Go get yours. It's time for class.
Elizabeth Bear: We had ten more minutes, but I didn't want to talk about my dop anymore.
Elizabeth Bear: Farther up and farther in.
Elizabeth Bear: Jax looked at me bleakly. I could die of embarrassment.
Elizabeth Bear: That's not real.
Elizabeth Bear: I was out of Smoothie. I took his empty glass and carried both of them inside to put in the sink.
Elizabeth Bear: It's totally real, he called after me. You get so embarrassed, you just melt. Glub!
Elizabeth Bear: We parked our dops and left them behind. Jax stuck his in the school social space, running and bought mode so he could come back to the conversations later and see if anyone had said anything interesting. If somebody needed his attention right away, they could text or use the override code. My dop was still trying on jeans and I figured he couldn't get into too much trouble, so I left the program running.
Elizabeth Bear: I always felt weird turning him off, anyway. It was like turning off a friend. I started jogging, slowly warming up. Jax raced to catch up and then pressed his hands to his belly theatrically.
Elizabeth Bear: I'm so full of smoothie I can feel it slosh.
Elizabeth Bear: No puking. I said.
Elizabeth Bear: I still felt kind of weird and awkward because he'd seen me reprogramming my dop. Despite what he said, there's nothing wrong with wanting to reflect your true self in an avatar that fits your self-image, is there? Mx. Seamen does.
Elizabeth Bear: Jax and I ran over to the field house for wrestling practice. It's about three miles and we can do it in about 20 minutes. It was hot and humid. It's always hot and humid. We haven't had a real freeze here in Jersey since I was ten, so the run helped us sweat down a couple of pounds since I'm always trying to cut weight that works out. Jack's wiry and he's got a light frame. It doesn't matter for him, but for me, every ounce counts.
Elizabeth Bear: We ran through the park between vans and RVs, then onto the dirt trail under the trees. It runs alongside the highway, but there's a chain link fence and a load of dirt bike jumps made out of plywood. Nobody uses it but kids. We've traveled all up and down the East Coast and as far west as Rapid City that we've been here since I was in fifth grade, because moms care about my, quote, social development, unquote, and don't want to take me away from all my friends.
Elizabeth Bear: There's always places like this anyway. Sometimes you find a grown up back there, a trail biker or a dog walker, but mostly it's like they've forgotten the trails even exist. I guess once you're driving, you don't need them anymore.
Elizabeth Bear: Wouldn't it be cool if dops were real? I wanted to pant, but I made myself talk in a normal ish tone.
Elizabeth Bear: They are real, Jax said. He didn't sound out of breath at all.
Elizabeth Bear: They're not real, real.
Elizabeth Bear: He sped up and I had to push. The heat made me lightheaded.
Elizabeth Bear: They're not people
Elizabeth Bear: What, like an AI?
Elizabeth Bear: Sure.
Elizabeth Bear: Now I was gasping.
Elizabeth Bear: No Good. They'd just destroy humanity, take over, rule the earth like Terminators.
Elizabeth Bear: I don't know why everybody assumes that a superior intelligence is just going to want to wipe out humankind. On the other hand, maybe there's something about our self-image that explains why we assume that that's what a superior intelligence would decide.
Elizabeth Bear: Dinosaur, I told Jax.
Elizabeth Bear: You're a dinosaur, he answered. You're not even a dinosaur because dinosaurs are cool. And even my mom uses a dop. So dops are for dinosaurs.
Elizabeth Bear: I didn't have the breath to argue because we were racing. Now giggling, shoving, bursting out in between trees and onto the grass behind the fieldhouse. We pelted across the lawn, feet thudding and slammed into the corrugated wall. He got there half a second before I did.
Elizabeth Bear: I gave him an extra shove for good measure. We pushed each other through the door and into the locker room. Coach Jode frowned at us over his screen when we came in and we quieted down, just sort of still giggling.
Elizabeth Bear: Strip down, he told us. On the scale.
Elizabeth Bear: The worst. I did it and I was only three pounds over. The match wasn't until the weekend. I had time. I could cut another pound and a half by then and make up the difference in the steam box. And then I told myself I was going to eat the biggest hot fudge sundae the world had ever seen.
Elizabeth Bear: I stared at myself in the mirror while Jax weighed in, looking at my eyes because it was too upsetting to look at my body. I blurred my vision and imagined my dot there. Instead, I could picture him looking tight, six pack and a cut groin. He grinned at me in my imagination and waved jauntily. I waved back.
Elizabeth Bear: Come on, Snickerbach, said Coach, tapping me on the shoulder. Quit admiring your reflection and get your shorts on. All right, everybody hit the mats.
Elizabeth Bear: My reflection turned purple. I whirled away from him. Living proof that you can't die of embarrassment after all. I didn't manage to get my shirts and shoes on without tripping, but at least I just hopped around like an idiot instead of falling over and bashing my teeth out on a bench.
Wade Roush: Thank you, Bear. Okay, so we had a story about the inhabitant of a space station poised at one of the Lagrange points. We had a story about a teenager trying to program his avatar to be more or less like him. And now we have a very different story. And it's my pleasure to turn the mic over to Kayla Ancrum. Kayla is the author of the award winning thriller The Wicker King and a lesbian romance called The Weight of the Stars, which is for sale over here at the merch table, and the upcoming Peter Pan thriller Darling. Just Darling. All right. Awesome. So Kayla is from Chicago. She's visiting us here today from Chicago. She's passionate about diversity and representation in media fiction and for Tasting Light, Kayla wrote a story called Walk 153, and she's going to read part of it for you now. Kayla, welcome.
Kayla Ancrum: Hello, everyone. Unlike my peers, I'm actually pretty new to writing science fiction. Can you all hear me? Very well. All right. Wonderful. This is only my second science fiction story. Usually I write thrillers, so be nice.
Kayla Ancrum: Walk 156.
Kayla Ancrum: Walker ID: Walker 435. Location, Chicago. Time 3 p.m.. Weather, Sunshine with Wind. You've booked a 60 minute walk. Premium members have recording capabilities. Please press the red button on your remote to record the session. All sessions not recorded at the time of walking can be purchased later for an additional fee. Press play to begin.
Kayla Ancrum: The light on my wristband turned green. It was Wednesday and the sun was bright white. That lets you know that there will be another storm soon. Chicago has the strangest weather. Our seasons don't fade into each other. You wake to them abruptly. Fall lasts forever until you wake to soft snow and biting winds. The snow blankets the city until one day it's 40 degrees. The snow melts and the gutters run in rivers. You wear a jean jacket through spring until one day you leave school enough to carry your jacket home, sweating bullets all the way. It was spring now, but summer was coming and I could smell it in the air. I crossed the street, heading to Millennium Park, a large public greenspace in the exact center of downtown. This client, number 547, had been popping up often over the last four months. I'd mostly taken them to dense urban areas with lots of people, but this time they were leading me to more isolated space.
Kayla Ancrum: I trailed close to the decorative bushes that bordered the park walkway and brushed my fingers through their leaves. I leaned in close and rubbed a plant slick with sharp edges, I said quietly. I think five, four, seven likes these small touches. You rarely get long term repeat clients. Premium members tend to just pick whoever's walking in an area they want to see. They don't usually pick a favorite walker. We're functionally the same. The map of my phone demands that I turn right and then left, cutting through the park to emerge on the other side of the street, then continue down a narrow path that led to a tiny family bakery. I stood in front of the bakery and looked down at the map. The instructions stopped. The headset crackled.
Kayla Ancrum: Can you go inside, please?
Kayla Ancrum: The voice was soft. My hands flew to my ears, as if adjusting the headset would change the fact that I was speaking and spoken to it.
Kayla Ancrum: Excuse me?
Kayla Ancrum: Can you go inside?
Kayla Ancrum: They don't let us go in stores.
Kayla Ancrum: I feel like a ghost looking into every window, the voice said.
Kayla Ancrum: How did you get. You can't be on this channel. How did you get access to the speech function? I asked firmly. This feature is supposed to be used by Sentinel staff only.
Kayla Ancrum: I checked my text messages to see if I had gotten any notifications from the company, but there was nothing.
Kayla Ancrum: It took me so long to figure out how. Please. I haven't been to this bakery in years.
Kayla Ancrum: I stood outside silently. The woman behind the counter watched me through the window. It was a Chinese bakery. I had never been to one before. The smell of bread and vegetable oil was very strong, but good. I sighed sharply. Then I opened my app, pressed the button we'd been told to push when there was a technical difficulty and jotted down that my headset needed, replacing the absent an immediate notification that a supervisor would be in contact in 1 to 2 business days. Technically, walkers are supposed to just end the walk if something goes wrong, even if the camera is still on and we're still connected to the client. People rarely want recordings of walks of equipment malfunctions, so tracking tends to end, which left me and five, four, seven together in silence, unsupervised.
Kayla Ancrum: I put my hand on the door handle and paused for a moment, thinking hard. Then I pushed open the bakery door. There was no one else inside. It wasn't a prime location for a shop as it was out of the way of the majority of foot traffic and in the shadow of a large apartment building. Hello. The woman at the counter said 50% off buttons today. My heart was racing. This felt extremely illegal.
Kayla Ancrum: The pork buns are good, 547 said. Or at least they were. 40 years ago, my dad used to take me when I was a little girl. They trailed off longingly.
Kayla Ancrum: I crouched down, said the display case was visible to my camera.
Kayla Ancrum: What else do you like? I asked quietly. If they only had one shot of doing something like this. I was going to make sure it was worth it.
Kayla Ancrum: The egg tarts. I like Mooncakes too, but they're not in season.
Kayla Ancrum: I ordered the pastries, then sat down in the corner, facing the wall. I looked around the restaurant to see if anything inside would provide a visible reflection. There were lots of small rules for walkers, but only a few that resulted in immediate termination. Showing your uncovered face. On camera was one of them. This little jaunt might get me a week suspension, but sitting in front of a window would be much worse. I lifted my mask just enough that my nose and mouth were free, balancing its weight on my forehead. The pork bun had soft, tender bread that pulled apart with a bit of a bounce. I placed the steaming bun directly in front of the camera so 547 could see the detail.
Kayla Ancrum: What does it smell like? They asked. I wish I could smell it too.
Kayla Ancrum: It's...It smells sweet. A bit oniony. There's sesame oil on it, I think.
Kayla Ancrum: Oh, definitely, they said, pleased.
Kayla Ancrum: I took a bite and immediately understood why they had broken the app to come here.
Kayla Ancrum: This is incredible, I said, my mouth full. They laughed. I thought it might be bad to have to listen to someone chew, but honestly, this isn't too terrible.
Kayla Ancrum: Try the egg tart. It's not as sweet as you'd expect, but it goes well with milk tea.
Kayla Ancrum: I gulped down the pork buns, then picked up the egg tart, cracking its golden shell near the camera. It was a gentle flavor, almost like flan, but softer.
Kayla Ancrum: This is really great. Thank you. Are you not able to eat food like this? I asked, forgetting myself. You don't have to tell me any details. Actually, you shouldn't. Don't answer that.
Kayla Ancrum: Client 547 sighed gently. No, I can eat this stuff. It's just that this place doesn't do delivery, and I don't have any close friends to pick things up for me. There are other bakeries, but this one is my favorite. The others just aren't the same.
Kayla Ancrum: Oh, I'm sorry, I said my joy at the egg custard deflating a bit. I wished irrationally that I could deliver to them, but I caught myself at the last second before I reflexively offered.
Kayla Ancrum: I'm sure there are many people who use Sentinel who have the same problem, they said with a sigh.
Kayla Ancrum: Actually, most people who use the platform don't live where they've requested walkers.
Kayla Ancrum: It's more unusual to do a walk in your own city, I said, finishing up the tart and glancing back at the display pace.
Kayla Ancrum: I can see you checking that out. You know, if you want more, you should get them. Why hold back?
Kayla Ancrum: I'm in college. I don't have the budget for it. I admit it.
Kayla Ancrum: I heard some rustling and then a ding.
Kayla Ancrum: There you go. Extra tip. Have fun.
Kayla Ancrum: Walker 547 said, We should probably disconnect now. I'm sure if we stand any longer, management will get suspicious about why you haven't hung up yet.
Kayla Ancrum: The line went dead and the light on my wristband turned red. I took up my phone and swiped to the app, but the resolution was still the same. I swiped to my earnings. Client 547 had paid for her session and added a $20 tip to my account. I ordered a dozen pork buns to go.
Kayla Ancrum: Walk 157.
Kayla Ancrum: Have they tried to fix your headset yet?
Kayla Ancrum: Nice to hear your voice again. I grinned. Why the sudden interest in parks? I thought you were a city girl.
Kayla Ancrum: Client 547 let out a peal of laughter. I haven't been a young girl in decades, but feel free to keep calling me that. Flattery will get you everywhere.
Kayla Ancrum: The noise from the streets faded into the background as I approached the bird sanctuary. It was a vast field of wildflowers and native grasses at the very edge of downtown. The blooms hadn't started growing yet, so the ground was still brown and green, starting to get lush after the snow melt.
Kayla Ancrum: All the nature walkers in Illinois keep going to the beach in the woods, 547 explained. I don't want to feel like one of those crunchy granola campers with all their gear. I want to feel like I'm still living in a high rise and don't own a pair of hiking boots.
Kayla Ancrum: I see. And to answer your question, no, they haven't come by to replace my headset. They have me on premium request only with a discount rate for not having audio capabilities. But since they shut it down remotely, my headset should technically be completely silent. I said, hopping over a puddle of mud.
Kayla Ancrum: Well, with your other clients it will be, 547 said wryly. Can you walk gently ten feet to the northwest? I think I see a nest.
Kayla Ancrum: I couldn't see it yet, but premium viewers had their own zoom capabilities, so that wasn't a surprise. I stepped gently, slightly to the left.
Kayla Ancrum: Stop. You'll step on it. Just. Just crouch very slowly.
Kayla Ancrum: The wild grass is parted to reveal a small clutch of green speckled eggs. I leaned down close, putting my chest as close as possible to the nest so the client had a better view.
Kayla Ancrum: I've never seen something like this in real life before, I said.
Kayla Ancrum: Lots of animals live in the city, 547 said, We're just one. I used to come here during my lunch break. We weren't supposed to leave the main path and go into the sanctuary, but it's such a perfect shortcut to Lake Michigan.
Kayla Ancrum: I stood back up, looked out at the gray sky, and took a breath of fresh water-wind. The waves were crashing against the shore loud enough that 547 could probably hear them.
Kayla Ancrum: Do you want to get closer to the beach? I asked.
Kayla Ancrum: Client 547 made a small pained sound. Then there was some rustling and a sharp gasp.
Kayla Ancrum: Are you okay?
Kayla Ancrum: There is a moment of 10 seconds before 547 answered.
Kayla Ancrum: I'm as good as I'll ever be. I would like it if we stayed away from the beach. I don't want to see the water. I'll miss it too much.
Kayla Ancrum: I turned around so that my camera pointed away from the lake and back towards the city.
Kayla Ancrum: Could you stay there so I could listen? 547 asked.
Kayla Ancrum: I threaded my fingers through some wild grass nearby that had grown up to my waist.
Kayla Ancrum: To the birds? I asked. There were more before I got here and trampled around the waves.
Kayla Ancrum: I don't want to look at them, but they sound...
Kayla Ancrum: She trailed off. It was a minute before I realized she wasn't going to continue. So I stood there in the grass for her. I closed my eyes and listened to the wildlife and the water and the traffic and the voices off in the distance, shouting and laughing and the soft sound of 547 breathing and the beep of a machine in her room. Then I waited, staring at my wristband until green turned to red.
Wade Roush: That was awesome. Thank you. Okay. We're going to use the rest of our time to have a little discussion. So my first question is, I know you've all written both fantasy and science fiction, and I wanted to just ask you which one is harder and which one is easier.
Elizabeth Bear: On the spot!
William Alexander: There was a whole great Twitter thread on this very topic of how to tell the difference between [fantasy] and science fiction. And there were a lot of amusing pictures of like Elrond and Spock and right next to each other and says, See, they're completely different in terms of which wise, pointy eared person you're listening to.
William Alexander: Science fiction and fantasy have a lot in common. They're both unrealisms. They're both imagining what isn't. And they both have a strange making effect on our sense of what is. But my favorite definition of science fiction is mostly what Ted Chiang talks about. It's the it's it's the story, the mini stories of change. They're the kind of stories that we've started telling pretty much since the Industrial Revolution, since things started to change really rapidly, since the world of every generation is not the same as the generation that came before, and that's only accelerating. Like generation now means basically school year. Like, oh, it's not the same for you in eighth grade as it was for me in eighth grade last year. The rate of change is accelerating so much that we need new kinds of stories to even figure out how to move through a world that is always changing and that science fiction. The story is about those changes and the stories of how to navigate them. And most of that I stole from Ted Chiang, who you should all read.
Elizabeth Bear: I like to think of science fiction, actually, as sort of a subset of fantasy. All all fiction is fantasy. And the fantasy may be that the world is exactly the world we live in. But there's a family that live, dysfunctional family that lives in a house, and we're going to talk about them, you know? That's fantasy. The your protagonist is somebody made up. Science fiction tends to abide by the rules of physics that we know. Charlie Stross says you get to do one impossible thing per science fiction novel. And I'm like, only one. But you get one free and then the rest of it should be fairly rigorous. For me, it's it's a spectrum. You have some science fiction stories that feel very much like fantasy, like and McCaffrey, for example, and the dragonriders books, which are set in a medieval society, but it's a post-apocalyptic medieval society, and the dragons are genetically engineered. I wouldn't say either one is harder than the other, but they're. They're differently hard science fiction because you are not inventing all of the rules is more more like writing a sonnet, and fantasy is more like writing free verse. You still you have to build the structure yourself from the base up as opposed to relying on a structure that's already there.
Wade Roush: Awesome.
Kayla Ancrum: I'm still learning. So I'm approaching this from a technical standpoint. I feel like fantasy is about what in science fiction is about. Why I think that when readers approach fantasy, they want to know what's going on, what is happening, what happened. And I think for science fiction, people are approaching the same kind of fantastical exploration with why is it happening? How does it work? My first book was a fantasy. It was about hallucinations and everyone who read it. Their perspective was, How does this world work? What is happening here? What happened in the past to make this happen? And I've only written one science fiction book and everyone was like, Why is this happening? You didn't explain why, and nobody really cared about the humanity of what I was teaching as a lesson. As a young adult writer, I teach, I consider myself a teacher of sorts. They very much cared about why things were happening. And I think that in a genre that was born to illuminate the technicalities of what it means to be human, why is the most important question? So I feel like the difference between them is in what way are we going to be exploring this world? And in my experience, fantasy has been a what? And science fiction has been a why.
Wade Roush: I love all of those answers. Thanks so different and so resonant with each other. My second question is about the specific assignment we asked each of you to tackle for this book. These are not just science fiction stories. They're young adult science fiction stories. They all have young adult protagonists trying to think through young adult kinds of identity and life problems and issues and just growing up and dealing with the world and figuring out who they are. So how when we asked when we called you up and asked you to write for this book, how did you figure out what you're going to write about and what issues did you say? Oh, yes. There's this one thing I've been thinking about writing about, and the science fiction framework would be like the the perfect framework for writing about this particular YA issue or this this thing that will matter to young adults?
Elizabeth Bear: I panicked. No, it really was the thing I said earlier, like, because when when I'm creating a protagonist, I try to think about like, what the worst thing that could happen to them is. And it doesn't not necessarily in like in a a life-destroying sort of way, but in a "this will force them to a personal crisis" sort of way. And the thing that I remember most about being a teenager is how you walk through the world with every nerve ending exposed and you're convinced that everybody is looking at you and judging you constantly. And I wanted to write about somebody dealing with that and dealing with his image of himself and also navigating a relationship with somebody who has doesn't have some of the privileges he has economically speaking, even though he's not terribly economically privileged, but more secure than than his friend. And that whole situation of trying to be a good person and not really knowing how and not liking who you are and wanting to be someone else seemed like a really interesting place to start.
Wade Roush: Will.
William Alexander: Okay, I'm going to link this to my last answer to. So much of adolescence, in my sense of it, both individually and broadly, is change, which is terrifying. I mean, you're changing your transforming and linking things to fantasy. I mean, my theory on the biggest reason why we still have so many vampires and werewolves in YA is that those are the monsters you might become. They're the monsters that might attack you, but they're also the monsters you might turn into. And so much of adolescence feels transformatively monstrous. I mean, you know, depending, you might have hair suddenly growing everywhere like a werewolf. Maybe it's just that it's October that I'm thinking of all these things in a very Halloween movie context. But adolescence is change and it's terrifying. And your sense of yourself in the world changes and your relationship to the world changes. And you're not a child and you're not an adult. And both of those things are very frustrating. And so that like in a hard science fiction context, my favorite metaphor for that that popped into my brain pretty early on was this floating space city. That's not it's not in orbit around the Earth. It's not in orbit around the moon. It's not a lunar city. It's just in this in-between place that is of both and also neither. And it is solid and fixed because weird physics three body problems and also not at all stable. Another thing I remember about adolescence is the sense that nothing is stable. I mean, whether it's your sense of your parents as being infallible and then really not or or any of the institutions of the world that seem to make sense until you learn more about them. There's this stability, instability, transformative moment that, depending on who you are, can make you really scared or really angry, or just you might find it hilarious. But that's the way my setting is perched between things struck me as so evocative of adolescence that I had to talk about adolescents who lived their awesome.
Wade Roush: Kayla.
Kayla Ancrum: I find that throughout my experience as an author that many children and teenagers who spend a lot of their time reading deal with loneliness and isolation and also very badly feel like they need to be heard. So a great deal of my work, regardless of genre, is about loneliness and isolation. And this project was requested of me over the first quarantine, and a thing that I liked doing a lot was watching those like GoPro walks or people would walk around a city and I was like, I can't go anywhere, but I feel like I've been so many places. And I thought that that idea was both incredibly romantic, but more than that, spoke to something that could really be changed with the aid of technology. And I just thought that it was a very, very good opportunity for a project, this request. And yeah.
Wade Roush: Okay, great. So thank you for those answers. So we have we have space stations at L1, we have avatars for our for our future selves. We've got people going on remotely directed walks with future GoPros. And we've got seven more interesting, fascinating, provocative, thoughtful settings and stories in the book.
Wade Roush: I want to close by doing some thank yous. These are really important. I want to say first thank you to Will Alexander, Kayla Ancrum and Elizabeth Bear for contributing stories to Tasting Light and for talking today for being such great people to work with, for traveling all the way to join us today and for sharing their wonderful worlds and words and ideas with us.
Elizabeth Bear: A very special thank you to my co editor, A.R. Capetta, who was a brilliant writer and editor and collaborator, and it was a privilege to get to know them and work with them over the course of this project. And I just wish they could have been here today.
Wade Roush: I also want to thank our editors at Candlewick, especially Hilary Van Dusen and Carter Hasegawa. Thank you as well to all the folks at the Cambridge Science Festival who helped us to produce today's event. And thank you to Rebecca Conn at the MIT Press Bookstore, who helped us man the merch station and heroically opened the bookstore today just for us. So you can go over there and buy copies of Tasting Light and the other books by our authors. I hope you will do that. That is it. Thank you so much for joining us. This is Tasting Light!
Wade Roush: So that was the official book launch event for Tasting Life. In addition to pieces by Will and Kayla and Bear, there are six more amazing short stories in the book, including stories from A.R. Capetta, Charlotte Nicole Davis, Nasugraq Rainey Hopson, A.S. King, E.C. Myers, and Junauda Petrus-Nasah, as well as a graphic novella by Wendy Xu. You can get a hardcover or an e-book copy of the book at Amazon or wherever you buy your books. If your local bookstore doesn't have it already, just ask them to order it.
Wade Roush: But I also have a special offer for Soonish listeners. If you become a new supporter of Soonish on Patreon at the $10 per episode level or above between now and December 31, 2022, I'll send you a free copy of Tasting Light, signed by me. Patreon supporters help keep the show going and if you join now, you can support the podcast and get a taste of what's happening in YA science fiction at the same time. To sign up, just go to Patreon.com/soonish.
Wade Roush: Before I wrap up the show, I want to cover one more important piece of business and that's Hub & Spoke. As you know, Hub & Spoke is a non-profit collective of audio makers that I helped to start back in 2017. In the collective, we celebrate high quality storytelling by independent voices, and I wanted to let you know that over the summer we brought three, count 'em, three new podcasts into the collective. The first is Nocturne. It's a show about who we are and what we do by night. Created and hosted by Los Angeles based producer Vanessa Lowe.
Vanessa Lowe: You're listening to Nocturne. I'm Vanessa Lowe. There's nothing like a small rural town. Unlike living in a city, there's no hiding under a cloak of anonymity. And that can be both a good and bad thing. People who choose to live in such places are often possessed of a fierce independence and also some colorful eccentricity, which is often graciously accepted or even embraced by neighbors. People in these towns tend to look out for each other in a singular way. But one of the biggest things about small rural towns is that waiting for someone else to take care of business might mean that business doesn't get done.
Radio Voice: I'm sure sooner or later we were able to catch up to the perpetrator, but the way they worked it got it done a lot quicker with a lot less damage to the community.
Wade Roush: The second show we added is called Mementos, and it's a show about the objects we keep and what they say about us. It's hosted and produced here in the Boston area by Lori Mortimer.
Lori Mortimer: Mementos. Sometimes what you really keep is on the inside.
Liz: All the time. I'm thinking about living in Italy. I pictured this gorgeous little medieval town, Cortona. And I imagined, okay, so we'll buy an old rundown villa and will rebuild it. I got this belief in my head. Because we didn't have Italian heritage that we would never belong. That it was pointless. To try to think about moving to Italy.
Wade Roush: And finally, we've welcomed a new show called out there from a team in Wyoming led by producer Willow Belden.
Willow Belden: Hi, I'm Willow Belden, and you are listening to out There. The podcast that explores big questions through intimate stories outdoors. As the world re-opens, many of us are returning to the things we used to love. We're traveling. We're seeing loved ones or going on adventures. And every adventure is better with a great soundtrack. This summer, our season theme is nature's nostalgia. Each episode, we're fueling your adventures with award winning narratives and beloved fan favorites from the early days of out there. Today's story is about a mountain bike race and about what happens when meeting your goals isn't all you'd hoped. But before we get to that.
Wade Roush: All three of these shows are amazing and we couldn't be more excited about welcoming Vanessa and Lori and Willow into our merry band. I hope you'll check out all of their shows at hubspokeaudio.org.
Wade Roush: Soonish is written and produced by me, Wade Roush. Our opening theme is by Graham Gordon Ramsay. You can find me on Twitter at woosh and you can follow the show at soonish podcast. That's all for now. Thanks for listening. And I'll be back with a new episode...Soonish.
