Escape Pod 314: Movement (HUGO REPOST)

First appeared in Asimov’s, March 2011

Rated 10 and up

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 31:30 — 21.7MB)

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Show Notes

If you listened to this back when it aired, then you’ve heard it, but I’m reposting it here for the benefit of people who want to experience all the Hugo nominees in a row!

Movement

By Nancy Fulda

It is sunset. The sky is splendid through the panes of my bedroom window; billowing layers of cumulous blazing with refracted oranges and reds. I think if only it weren’t for the glass, I could reach out and touch the cloudscape, perhaps leave my own trail of turbulence in the swirling patterns that will soon deepen to indigo.

But the window is there, and I feel trapped.

Behind me my parents and a specialist from the neurological research institute are sitting on folding chairs they’ve brought in from the kitchen, quietly discussing my future. They do not know I am listening. They think that, because I do not choose to respond, I do not notice they are there.

“Would there be side effects?” My father asks. In the oppressive heat of the evening, I hear the quiet Zzzapof his shoulder laser as it targets mosquitoes. The device is not as effective as it was two years ago: the mosquitoes are getting faster. (Continue Reading…)

Escape Pod 344: The Homecoming

Originally appeared in Asimov’s

Rated 10 and up

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 47:06 — 32.4MB)

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The Homecoming

By Mike Resnick

I don’t know which bothers me more, my lumbago or my arthritis. One day it’s one, one day it’s the other. They can cure cancer and transplant every damned organ in your body; you’d think they could find some way to get rid of aches and pains. Let me tell you, growing old isn’t for sissies.

I remember that I was having a typical dream. Well, typical for me, anyway. I was climbing the four steps to my front porch, only when I got to the third step there were six more, so I climbed them and then there were ten more, and it went on and on. I’d probably still be climbing them if the creature hadn’t woke me up.

It stood next to my bed, staring down at me. I blinked a couple of times, trying to focus my eyes, and stared back, sure this was just an extension of my dream.

It was maybe six feet tall, its skin a glistening, almost metallic silver, with multi-faceted bright red eyes like an insect. Its ears were pointed and batlike, and moved independently of its head and each other. Its mouth jutted out a couple of inches like some kind of tube, and looked like it was only good for sucking fluids. Its arms were slender, with no hint of the muscles required to move them, and its fingers were thin and incredibly elongated. It was as weird a nightmare figure as I’d dreamed up in years.

Finally it spoke, in a voice that sounded more like a set of chimes than anything else.

“Hello, Dad,” it said.

That’s when I knew I was awake.
(Continue Reading…)

How Bad Technobabble Hurt A Good Episode: “Our Man Bashir”

For the past few months, I’ve been doing a re-watch of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. I missed a lot of episodes (maybe 40 percent) while it was in first-run, and I’ve never seen it in syndication, so I figured… why not? It’s on Netflix; might as well make good use of my $7.99 monthly fee.

Last night, I watched “Our Man Bashir”, and I was reminded just how flimsy the “malfunctioning transporter/holodeck” plot can be.

(Continue Reading…)

Escape Pod 343: The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees

Originally appeared in Clarkesworld

Rated 10 and up

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:15 — 20.2MB)

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The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees

By E. Lily Yu

For longer than anyone could remember, the village of Yiwei had worn, in its orchards and under its eaves, clay-colored globes of paper that hissed and fizzed with wasps. The villagers maintained an uneasy peace with their neighbors for many years, exercising inimitable tact and circumspection. But it all ended the day a boy, digging in the riverbed, found a stone whose balance and weight pleased him. With this, he thought, he could hit a sparrow in flight. There were no sparrows to be seen, but a paper ball hung low and inviting nearby. He considered it for a moment, head cocked, then aimed and threw.

Much later, after he had been plastered and soothed, his mother scalded the fallen nest until the wasps seething in the paper were dead. In this way it was discovered that the wasp nests of Yiwei, dipped in hot water, unfurled into beautifully accurate maps of provinces near and far, inked in vegetable pigments and labeled in careful Mandarin that could be distinguished beneath a microscope.

The villagers’ subsequent incursions with bee veils and kettles of boiling water soon diminished the prosperous population to a handful. Commanded by a single stubborn foundress, the survivors folded a new nest in the shape of a paper boat, provisioned it with fallen apricots and squash blossoms, and launched themselves onto the river. Browsing cows and children fled the riverbanks as they drifted downstream, piping sea chanteys.

 

The remainder of the story text has been removed at the author’s request.

It’s Hugo Month!

For years now, we have done our best here at Escape Pod to bring you audio renditions of the Hugo-nominated short stories. Our original reason was to allow the Worldcon voters to have access to all the nominated stories, as some stories wouldn’t be easy to find (eg, it was in the January issue of a magazine you don’t read…). But now, Worldcon is putting out the Hugo pack for its members to receive the stories in ebook form.

Even though the voters now have the stories emailed to them, we still embrace the tradition of dedicating May to the best stories voted on by fandom. So get ready for Hugo month!

Note- even though we have dedicated ourselves to SF-only stories since branching off Pseudopod and Podcastle, we will run non-SF stories during the Hugo month, if they are nominated. (And this year we have three!)

Also, this year we had a new thing happen- An Escape Pod reprint AND a Podcastle reprint were nominated! We are so thrilled to have already offered these stories, but to remind you, and keep all the Hugo posts together, we will be bringing you Podcastle’s recording of “The Paper Menagerie,” and rerunning “Movement” as a mid-week special.

The nominees and the schedule:

“The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees” by E. Lily Yu (Clarkesworld April 2011) – Running 5/3/12
“The Homecoming” by Mike Resnick (Asimov’s April/May 2011) – Running 5/10/12
“Movement” by Nancy Fulda (Asimov’s March 2011) – Running 5/14/12
“The Paper Menagerie” by Ken Liu (The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction March/April 2011) – Running 5/17/12

The very funny “Shadow War of the Night Dragons: Book One: The Dead City: Prologue” by John Scalzi (Tor.com) will not be appearing on Escape Pod, but you can (and should) read it in its entirety at Tor.com. And here’s a taste:

Night had come to the city of Skalandarharia, the sort of night with such a quality of black to it that it was as if black coal had been wrapped in blackest velvet, bathed in the purple-black ink of the demon squid Drindel and flung down a black well that descended toward the deepest, blackest crevasses of Drindelthengen, the netherworld ruled by Drindel, in which the sinful were punished, the black of which was so legendarily black that when the dreaded Drindelthengenflagen, the ravenous blind black badger trolls of Drindelthengen, would feast upon the uselessly dilated eyes of damned, the abandoned would cry out in joy as the Drindelthengenflagenmorden, the feared Black Spoons of the Drindelthengenflagen, pressed against their optic nerves, giving them one last sensation of light before the most absolute blackness fell upon them, made yet even blacker by the injury sustained from a falling lump of ink-bathed, velvet-wrapped coal.

Read more at Tor.com.

This year’s stories are pretty amazing, (two of them may drive you to tears- long time EP fans will easily guess one of the culprits) and it will be tough voting. But we hope you enjoy Hugo month as much as we enjoy bringing it to you.

You can also get ALL of our Hugo-nominated stories on one feed! Subscribe here!

Film Review: “Highlander: Endgame”

The following review contains spoilers for the first three Highlander films and the television series.

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What do you do after your 1986 movie achieves cult status? Well, if you’re lucky, you get to make a sequel. When that sequel bombs, you get to make another sequel. If the third film bombs, maybe you’ll be lucky enough to get your intellectual property turned into a TV series that gets passable ratings and hangs around for six years — long enough to justify a fourth film in the series.

In other words… someone made Highlander: Endgame, the fourth movie in the series. And I watched it. More than once.

Although set in 2002*, four years after the end of Highlander: The Series, the film actually begins in 1992, when Connor MacLeod arrives at his New York shop/apartment just in time to see it blown up, taking the life of Rachel Ellenstein, the young girl he adopted during (I believe) World War II. Devastated that he’s lost everyone he loves, Connor joins up with the Watchers, a group dedicated to chronicling the lives of the immortals, and agrees to go into the Sanctuary. There, the Watchers keep several immortals out of The Game (the worldwide headhunting competition with a nebulous “prize” to go to the last survivor) so that no one can be the last.

Now, in 2002, Duncan MacLeod (Connor’s cousin and friend) is still secluded, meditating, trying to find himself after (in the series) killing his protege Richie and getting the It’s a Wonderful Life treatment from Roger Daltrey**. He has a prophetic dream and visits his friend Methos, the oldest Immortal on the planet, before heading to New York to see if he can figure out what happened to Connor ten years ago. Way to wait around, my friend.

Meanwhile, the villain of the piece, Jacob Kell, goes to the Sanctuary and kills all the immortals there with the exception of Connor — I’m still not sure how he escaped, or who let him free. Kell is powerful and ruthless, and he hates Connor for killing his mentor, while Connor hates him for killing his mother. Kell and his guys go to New York and face off against Duncan, but the only death is from Kell, who kills one of his henchmen. Shortly after, Duncan is sent to the Sanctuary, only to be rescued by Methos and his (Duncan’s) Watcher, Joe Dawson. They explain that Kell has killed 661 Immortals, more than Duncan and Connor combined.

Eventually it’s revealed that Connor is still alive. We see several adventures of Connor and Duncan in the past, including when Connor taught Duncan the “unbeatable move” — one would think he’d have used that at some point in the last three films. But anyway. Things come to a head between the MacLeods and Kell, and as we know, there can be only one.

In addition to a spectacularly-ancient-looking Christopher Lambert as the supposedly-immortal Connor MacLeod, Shelia Gish and Beatie Edney reprise their roles (however brief) as Rachel and Heather (the latter being Connor’s first wife, from the 1500s). However, top billing goes to Adrian Paul, star of the Highlander television series, now sporting short hair. Paul is as good in the film as he is in the series — a sort of cardboard boy-scout good-guy character with very little darkness in him despite everything he’s done. Kell is portrayed by Bruce Payne (great name there) and unlike the villains of the previous two films he’s not a cutout. He actually has a good reason for hating Connor. He’s also kind of nuts.

There’s quite a supporting cast in this film, which is topped by Lisa Barbuscia, a model and musician. She plays Kate, who, in the 1700s, was Duncan’s wife. However, she was also a pre-Immortal. Now, in 2000, she is fashion designer Faith and she is wicked pissed at Duncan for making her Immortal and depriving her of children. Good motivation. Donnie Yen is the most honorable of Kell’s henchmen, Jin Ke. Peter Wingfield and Jim Byrnes reprise their roles from the series as Methos and Joe Dawson, and there’s a special appearance by Adam Copeland, better known as the WWE’s “Edge”. Interestingly, “Edge” got a “special guest star” mention in the credits, because as we all know that sort of thing will bring in all the wrestling fans.

For what it’s worth, he didn’t suck in his brief role, although one wonders why a Canadian-speaking rogue was hanging out in Kildare, Ireland.

Oh, and one other weird piece of casting — June Watson, who played Connor’s mother, looked an awful lot like Stanley Tucci’s weird cohost in The Hunger Games. It was distracting.

If you take Highlander: Endgame as a straightforward action film and don’t care about the plot, I think you’ll be satisfied. Unlike Lambert, Paul is actually capable of moving in the way martial artists have to (he’s a dancer), and he also spent six years doing martial arts and swordplay on the TV show. Plus, Donnie Yen choreographed the martial arts for the film. The fights in this movie are faster and crisper, and the cinematography is better; in this alone the film is elevated above the previous three. However, Connor still gets his moment as awesome swordsman dude by teaching Duncan the unblockable attack I mentioned earlier. Now, I’m not a swordsman by any stretch of the imagination, but I can think of at least three ways to get out of the move, not the least of which is to duck, you idiots!

But I digress.

One thing I did like about the fighting was the contrast between Connor’s and Duncan’s styles — Connor, while a good swordsman, is definitely a dirtier fighter; Duncan prefers to keep it clean. We do get the fight between the two of them that people have been waiting for since the pilot of the TV show, though.

The writing was about as good as an episode of the television show — Connor got the good quips; Duncan didn’t. Duncan never really struck me as a quippy kind of guy anyway. In what was supposed to make the viewer go “ah-ha-HA, indeed!”, Kell had 661 kills at the start of the film. Which meant he almost had 666. Given that he was trained as a seminarian, it’s supposed to be ironic. But it wasn’t.

Because this was a Highlander movie, we had to have at least one sex scene with nudity. This time, it was awarded to Paul and Barbuscia. I’m not quite sure of Faith’s motivation to sleep with him after she lays into him with a wicked tongue-lashing***.

Set design and music were again about average, although I really got tired of the Scotland Enya-style music — it always makes me think of this song from the Toys soundtrack. The original ending had a really bad composite shot of one of the heroes standing at a grave before walking off into what was supposed to be the moors of Scotland, and I wasn’t thrilled to be leaving the movie with that shot — which is why I’m glad there was a director’s cut released with a slightly better ending.

Highlander: Endgame was in development hell for a while, and it shows. It went through several cuts and rewrites, leading to a subpar finished product in pretty much everything except the fight scenes that featured Duncan, and the conclusion of the Connor/Duncan battle. Christopher Lambert was getting too old for the role, and anyway he’d passed the torch in the TV series. This was not a good movie, and if you’re not a Highlander fan, you probably won’t like it. Even if you are, make sure you see the director’s cut so you can get the better ending and a few more scenes that make the plot work better.

I remember being pretty disappointed in the movie when I finally saw it (on DVD). It felt more like a two-parter from the series, and really, that’s what it should have been. It completely ignores the second and third films**** in favor of the TV show’s mythos — which is good, but not if you’ve never seen the show. It’s written without explanation of the Watchers or how Joe and Methos are Duncan’s friends, and there’s no time in the film to give anyone a really decent character arc except Kate/Faith. At least we could all take heart that this would be the last of the…

Oh, wait? It… it wasn’t?

Looks like it’s time to dig up my digital copy of Highlander: The Source, then.

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Note to Parents: As with the other Highlander films, this movie contains violence (including decapitations), nudity, adult language, and adult situations. At least in this one the sex scenes actually flow with what little plot there is, whereas in the last one it was just indulgence on the part of the director and star. I think this could be handled by most older teens, as long as they don’t get all tittery***** about nude women on film. Of course, you should use your own best judgment when it comes to your children.

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* The first present-day scene in the film actually happens “ten years ago”. If Connor and Duncan last saw each other in the pilot of the series, which was 1992, then the earliest the film could possibly occur was 2002. Since the technology was pretty much present-day for the film’s release, I’m saying it’s in 2002. You can dispute me if you like.

** It actually makes sense on the show. Don’t try to figure it out right now.

*** No pun intended. This was the 00s; heroes in film didn’t regularly engage in oral sex at the time. That didn’t come — oh, shut up — until a few years later.

**** With the exception of some good bits from Sean Connery, everyone should ignore the second film.

***** See what I did there?

Genres:

Escape Pod 342: Certus Per Bellum

Originally appeared in The Fifth Dimension

Rated 15 and up for language and violent imagery

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:19 — 20.2MB)

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Certus per Bellum (Decided by War)

By S. Hutson Blount

“It’s quiet outside,” Nohaile said, trying to find a comfortable way to sit in his armor suit. “Are you sure it’s started?””It’ll get plenty loud,” said the girl. She was armored only in a ratty sweatshirt and a patched bib coverall. She’d entered the bunker with a vest and some sensible-looking boots, but promptly removed them. Her bare feet made her look about twelve years old. “For right now,” she continued after some rapid two-thumb typing on her hand console, “we got time to kill.”

“Miz Bamboo, do you think we can win?” Nohaile had a matching helmet to go with his armor. He felt foolish either leaving it off or putting it on, so it worried in his hands.

The girl laughed a little. It didn’t reach her eyes. “There’s no ‘miz.’ Bamboo is my handle, not my name.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No worries. And yeah, we can win. The other guy hired cheap.”

Bamboo kept looking at the display on her console, checking through her seemingly-infinite pockets and producing unidentifiable items to inspect and disappear again. Everything she carried seemed dirty but functional.

Nohaile looked down at his shiny armor suit and was ashamed.

“So, when do I get the story?” Bamboo asked.
(Continue Reading…)

Film Review: “Highlander III: The Sorcerer”

This review contains major spoilers for Highlander and mild-to-moderate spoilers for Highlander III.

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One of the things I love about my job is that, as long as we get our work done, we can occupy the free bandwidth in our brains however we like. Some of us listen to music, some of us watch Netflix, and some of us just work. Usually I listen to music, but recently I was walking into work and whistling the theme from Snoopy, Come Home* and decided I wanted to watch it on YouTube (which I’ve done before) while I worked.

Then I decided to branch out. First I found Armageddon**. Then I found Highlander II***. That led me to Highlander III: The Sorcerer, which originally hit theaters as Highlander III: The Final Dimension.

I think we all remember the tragedy that was the second Highlander film. I certainly do. I mean, I’d just seen it two days prior. When the third film came out, I decided I liked the story enough to see H3 in theaters. Yeah, that’s right, I spent my hard-earned $6 on a ticket to the movie.

And I enjoyed it****.

For those of you living under a rock, Highlander is the story of Connor MacLeod, an immortal Scotsman who, like others of his kind, fights with a blade and can only be killed by decapitation. Otherwise, he doesn’t age and can’t be hurt. In the first film, he thought he won “The Prize” by defeating Kurgan, the man who killed his best friend Ramirez and then raped his wife, back in the 1500s. Now, eight years later, MacLeod is living in Morocco with his friend Jack and his adopted son John. He feels a disturbance in the Force and realizes that, although he won The Prize, he hasn’t killed all the immortals on the planet.

In the 1600s, after his wife’s natural death due to old age, MacLeod wandered the world, eventually ending up in Japan, the home of the legendary sorcerer and swordmaker Nakano. MacLeod trained with Nakano and earned the power of illusion (which for some reason he didn’t use in the first two films — go figure, right?), but when the evil immortal Kane and his two henchmen arrived, Nakano sacrificed himself to save MacLeod’s immortal life. Nakano used his power to trap Kane and his henchmen for 300 years, until an archaeological expedition unearthed Nakano’s cavern. Kane escaped and came after MacLeod.

As with the first (and fourth) Highlander film, MacLeod’s story is told twice — first in the present, and also in the past. This time, it’s the French Revolution, when MacLeod is introduced to Sara, a free-spirited young woman who he is sent to “tame”. Sara bears more than a passing resemblance to Dr. Alex Johnson, the archaeologist who found Nakano’s tomb. MacLeod deeply loved Sara, and in the present, he falls in love with Alex. However, Kane’s thirst for vengeance leads to death and destruction in New York City, and both Sara and John (MacLeod’s son) are placed in great peril.

I think you can figure out how the movie ends.

Christopher Lambert returns to portray MacLeod. Of French descent, Lambert’s accents are meandering at best — he’s an okay Scotsman, but otherwise he speaks in what I assume is his normal voice. He does a good job with the swordfighting and action sequences, and he delivers the requisite quips as any good 90s actor should. Plus, at the time he was still young enough to convincingly portray someone who hadn’t aged a day in eight years. Makeup probably helped. His foil, Kane, was played by Mario Van Peebles. Highlander villains tended to overact, and I get the feeling the director told Van Peebles to emulate Clancy Brown (the villain in the first film) as much as he could. Gravelly voice, leering expression, strange tongue movements, the whole bit. If that was the direction, then he pulled it off admirably. As a teenager, I bought him as a villain, but watching the film 20-ish years later, I need more from my Big Bads. For starters, they need to have better motivation than “I’ve hated you for 400 years”. Deborah Unger, who’s in Combat Hospital but otherwise I didn’t really recognize, is both Alex and Sara, and she, like Bonnie Bedelia [NB: Roxanne Hart, not Bonnie Bedelia. Sorry about that.] in the first film, does a fine job as The Girl.

I think the best adjective for this film, overall, is “passable”. The music was passable; the plot was passable, the acting was passable, the obligatory montage***** was passable, the special effects were passable (for the time)… the sets and production design were cool, and the swordfighting was as good as to be expected in the Highlander films, but nothing else really jumped out at me as being exceptional. I wasn’t terribly invested in the love story (either of them), the villain, the historical sequences (it was the bloody French Revolution; I expect they could’ve done a lot more with that part), or MacLeod’s adopted son. And, I mean, as a 16-year-old, the nudity was awesome, but these days I don’t really need it, and as a 30-something, I’ve seen it already.

But, y’know what? I think that’s all okay. Because if you go into this film expecting a great movie, you’ll be sorely disappointed. There’s a lot of overacting, some silliness with magic and illusions (humans turning into birds, anyone?), and the requisite “asshat policeman” villain. But if you liked the first Highlander film and you can put aside the fact that it was set up to be a single film with no sequels, you’ll enjoy this movie too. I got what I came for when I went to the theater, and watching it in the background while I worked gave me what I came for as well — a film I’ve seen enough times that I didn’t have to actively watch it, and something going on in the background to fill my mental bandwidth.

I know some people say there should have been only one, but if there had to be a sequel… I think this was pretty decent.

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Note to Parents: This film contains violence — including decapitations — as well as adult language and sexual situations. Compared to today’s films, it’s not that graphic, and if it wasn’t for the nudity, this film would probably get a PG-13, not an R. I kind of think Lambert has it in his contract that all Highlander films have to have at least one over-long sex scene, and this film definitely has that too. The sex scene is what pushes this past the limit of “allowable content” for teens, in my opinion. Of course, you should use your own best judgment when it comes to your children.

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* You can watch the whole thing on YouTube here.

** Don’t laugh. If you go into it with low expectations for plot and high expectations for one-lines and explosions, you get exactly what you are looking for.

*** Oh, shut up.

**** Hey, I was 16, and it had nudity. Don’t judge.

***** In this case, sword-making, set to Loreena McKennitt, because that just screams Scotland, doesn’t it?

Escape Pod 341: Aphrodisia

Originally appeared in Strange Horizons

Rated 17 and up for language and sexual imagery

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 22:09 — 15.3MB)

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Aphrodisia

By Lavie Tidhar

It began, in a way, with the midget hunchback tuk-tuk driver.

It was a night in the cool season…

The stars shone like cold hard semi-precious stones overhead. Shadows moved across the face of the moon. The beer place was emptying –

Ban Watnak where fat mosquitoes buzzed, lazily, across neon-lit faces. Thai pop playing too loudly, cigarette smoke rising the remnants of ghosts, straining to escape Earth’s atmosphere.

In the sky flying lanterns looked like tracer bullets, like fireflies. The midget hunchback tuk-tuk driver said, ‘Where are you going -?’ mainlining street speed and ancient wisdom.

Tone: ‘Where are you going?’

The driver sat on the elevated throne of his vehicle and contemplated the question as if his life depended on it. ‘Over there,’ he said, gesturing. Then, grudgingly – ‘Not far.’

But it was far enough for us.

Tone and Bejesus and me made three: Tone with the hafmek body, all spray-painted metal chest and arms, Victorian-style goggles hiding his eyes, a scarf in the colours of a vanished football team around his neck – it was cold. It was Earth cold, not real – there was no dial you could turn to make it go away. Bejesus not speaking, a fragile low-gravity body writhing with nervous energy despite the unaccustomed weight – Bejesus in love with this planet Earth, a long way away from his rock home in space.
(Continue Reading…)

Genres:

Escape Pod 340: Golubash (Wine-Blood-War-Story)

Originally appeared in Federations

Rated 13 and up simply because kids likely won’t be into a story about wine

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 43:35 — 30.0MB)

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Golubash (Wine-Blood-War-Story)

By Catherynne M. Valente

The difficulties of transporting wine over interstellar distances are manifold. Wine is, after all, like a child. It can _bruise_. It can suffer trauma—sometimes the poor creature can recover, sometimes it must be locked up in a cellar until it learns to behave itself. Sometimes it is irredeemable. I ask that you greet the seven glasses before you tonight not as simple fermented grapes, but as the living creatures they are, well-brought up, indulged but not coddled, punished when necessary, shyly seeking your approval with clasped hands and slicked hair. After all, they have come so very far for the chance to be loved.

Welcome to the first public tasting of Domaine Zhaba. My name is Phylloxera Nanut, and it is the fruit of my family’s vines that sits before you. Please forgive our humble venue—surely we could have wished for something grander than a scorched pre-war orbital platform, but circumstances, and the constant surveillance of Chatêau Marubouzu-Debrouillard and their soldiers have driven us to extremity. Mind the loose electrical panels and pull up a reactor husk—they are inert, I assure you. Spit onto the floor—a few new stains will never be noticed. As every drop about to pass your lips is wholly, thoroughly, enthusiastically illegal, we shall not stand on ceremony. Shall we begin?

2583 Sud-Cotê-du-Golubash (New Danube)

The colonial ship _Quintessence of Dust_ first blazed across the skies of Avalokitesvara two hundred years before I was born, under the red stare of Barnard’s Star, our second solar benefactor. Her plasma sails streamed kilometers long, like sheltering wings. Simone Nanut was on that ship. She, alongside a thousand others, looked down on their new home from  that great height, the single long, unfathomably wide river that circumscribed the globe, the golden mountains prickled with cobalt alders, the deserts streaked with pink salt.

How I remember the southern coast of Golubash, I played there, and dreamed there was a girl on the invisible opposite shore, and that her family, too, made wine and cowered like us in the shadow of the Asociación.

My friends, in your university days did you not study the rolls of the first colonials, did you not memorize their weight-limited cargo, verse after verse of spinning wheels, bamboo seeds, lathes, vials of tailored bacteria, as holy writ? Then perhaps you will recall Simone Nanut and her folly, that her pitiful allotment of cargo was taken up by the clothes on her back and a tangle of ancient Maribor grapevine, its roots tenderly wrapped and watered. Mad Slovak witch they all thought her, patting those tortured, battered vines into the gritty yellow soil of the Golubash basin. Even the Hyphens were sure the poor things would fail. There were only four of them on all of Avalokitesvara, immensely tall, their watery triune faces catching the old red light of Barnard’s flares, their innumerable arms fanned out around their terribly thin torsos like peacock’s tails. Not for nothing was the planet named for a Hindu god with eleven faces and a thousand arms. The colonists called them Hyphens for their way of talking, and for the thinness of their bodies. They did not understand then what you must all know now, rolling your eyes behind your sleeves as your hostess relates ancient history, that each of the four Hyphens was a quarter of the world in a single body, that they were a mere outcropping of the vast intelligences which made up the ecology of Avalokitesvara, like one of our thumbs or a pair of lips.
(Continue Reading…)