Of Sand Ships & Silent Silicate Seas

Acknowledgements

In early versions of my work, including some stories here, much of the editing, computer work and formatting fell to the fine and capable hands of Pippin Sardo and Nancy Lou Polk. It was a lot of work but the results were well worth it and deeply appreciated.

Thank you to my partner Roberta Gregory, fine artist and writer, for going through these manuscripts and doing a superb job not only in catching goofs but fine line editing as well. Very fine work indeed and greatly appreciated. Thank you!

And of course, thanks to the past and present members of my wonderful critique group who have seen these stories over many a year and whose feedback have always made them better: Joel Davis, Brian Herbert, Phyllis Hiefield, Faith Szafranski (and in memoriam, Marie Landis Edwards, Cal Clawson) and to the present members, Linda Shepherd, Sarah Blum, Art Gomez, Jim Bartlett and Roberta Gregory.

The artwork that graces this book, Dream Ship, is by Carl Sloan and his (now late) wife, Lida. For their support of my writing, I am deeply grateful and to have their artwork (much of what they do sure looks suspiciously like magic realism) for the cover of this book, wonderful!

Thanks to former agent and now fine friend, Ben Bova, for his representation and his unwavering support of my writing. I can’t even begin to tell you what that means to me! I am deeply honored and I thank you!

And to the memory of the gentlemen who gave us the term, Sand Ships, Mr. Bradbury and who, with the company of Brian Herbert, I had the opportunity to meet in 2001. Although you are no longer with us, it is still a pleasure and honor to reference your work and imagination in my own work. And then some years later to meet your most amazing and also very talented friend, William F. Nolan who read my work (The Final Trick of Funnyman) and said that some of the stories were as good as Bradbury at his finest—I just cannot even begin to tell you how much that meant to me! You bet this book is dedicated to you! I simply cannot thank you enough.

Many, many thanks to my editor/publisher Andrew Burt of ReAnimus Press who, with infinite patience at my chronic tribulations and angst with computers, must be the Buddha in disguise!

Author’s Preface

This collection of short fiction continues the task of sorting through and editing work that was written much earlier in my writing career: the early 1980s through the early ‘90s. They represent a wide variety of style and content, but most I consider explorations of self-expression that fit the definition of surrealism, then later, magic realism and then a blending of magic realist writing techniques and perspective with the three main branches of Imaginative Literature (IL), science fiction, horror and fantasy. That being said, not all these stories in this collection are of magic realist persuasion; some are just hard-edged science fiction (Dust, Red Rats) or stories with weird perspectives on the craft of writing, (Blocked)—these were placed in this collection to show that not only was I writing in a magic realist style but I was experimenting with a lot of other styles as well. For example, the story A Little Access to Time and Space is one of the first stories in which the character Juan appears in a surrealist setting; in later stories, Juan is generally younger and definitely in a world that feels much like Latin-American magic realism. I found it intriguing to see the change, and after not reading the story for some 30 years, I had forgotten it, then realized after rereading, the influence was that of Mandrake the Magician, by Lee Falk: a comic strip carried by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and which I was reading around 1956 when, as a lad, I had recently discovered science fiction. Indeed, as I go through this earlier work, I can see how my style changed and developed through the years. Often it is a delight to read my earlier writings, not only for that reason but also because there were so many good stories. I had forgotten many of them, tending to focus on the ones that needed the least work and were best for possible publication. But after all these years, and with much more experience, I could go back and see what the stories now needed to make them publishable because I did not have the skills (or time) back then to make them the best they could be. And of course, that said, there were the stories that simply did not work but had to be written to get to the ones that would. (Happily, these days, I am able to write work without having to go through all that—to that end, I have included several recent works as examples: Cynthia: 2.1, a straight science fiction story written in 2017, as well as Borealis, an eco-political surreal horror tale from 2018.)

Much of my work with the magic realist orientation did not see itself in print in large circulation magazines simply because the work simply defied conventional genres, though the stories that made it into print were accepted by smaller magazines that were specifically oriented to experimental work, surrealism and magic realism. For example, a fine little magazine, edited by C. Darren Butler, Magic Realism, published in the ‘90s, was presenting the work of Jeff VanderMeer, myself and others, and was more open to taking risks. So many of these stories were, again, primarily exploration—not having to make a living by writing was a double-edged sword. I was absolutely free to go where my imagination led me, sometimes writing up to five stories a day using concepts and ideas coming from working on a locked inpatient psychiatric unit in Seattle. This gave me a wealth of concepts and information that was just profound; it felt at times like I was being paid to observe first-hand information on the human condition that would in some form end up in my writing—from issues of abuse, to the nature of sociopathy and schizophrenia to psychosis. After doing this for 25 years and taking an early retirement at age 55, I had incredible information, stuff to write about forever regarding the proverbial human condition and I could do with it as I pleased. The result being stories based solidly on psychological theory made real in life, and that information suffused into stories which—while respected by many an editor, were not exactly (as one of them delicately put it) entertaining.

And that was probably true. I was writing what I was writing because I had something to say. And naively, perhaps, thought that science fiction/fantasy, given the nature of the genre, would be open to the idea of imagination unlimited. True—up to a point. That point being that, to make it, material had to be seen as marketable, as in making money. Stories about characters being psychotic? A little nuts? Psychopathic characters?

Hard sells.

So I had to make the decision to write work that I loved to read and that I loved to write.

Perhaps it was because of this that magic realism caught my attention in the early ‘80s, especially after reading Eye of the Heart edited by Barbara Howes. This South American literary movement, new to me, gave me an entirely new perspective on the works of Bradbury, Serling and Kafka. I then realized just how many works of these authors seemed to have that magical realist perspective. And once I saw that, I understood that’s exactly what I was doing: in short, writing magic realism is as if writing about one’s dreams where the context may feel as if reality based but is suffused by the weird, the strange but, as in a dream, it’s not seen that way. Rather, it’s seen as normal consensual reality. And just as magic realism may be code for the literature of the dream state, then the dream state would be code for the true nature of consensual reality. Just because the sky is blue, and plants pop up out of the ground, and we have these creatures in our lives, cats, dogs, parakeets, doesn’t mean it isn’t strange—it is, in fact, truly bizarre. But—we don’t see it that way because we’ve all come to agree that the bizarre is normal reality. Of course it isn’t. What reality is—is incomprehensible and the dream state, I believe, is an absolutely necessary function of coping with this weirdness of existence which has no absolute answers except that somehow life just enjoys replicating itself in all these forms whose sole purpose is to have a good time in whatever form life finds itself. Maybe magic realism is a great artistic form with which to remind us all how wonderfully bizarre everything truly is.

And maybe that’s where all those stories came from, and come from now: life may be incomprehensible but let’s not let that get in the way of loving it, loving our fellow creatures who inhabit this world with us, loving the planet from whence we come and love being the mortal mammals that we are on this third planet—around a star.

Red Rats

It was the atmosphere—the lack of it, that was the problem. That’s why Julia hated Mars. Hated Mars. I, of course, loved it. You could say we had a difference of opinion. When we came here, she said, I didn’t think you wanted to be here forever—you said you wouldn’t—

Mars is beautiful, I replied. A terraformer’s dream.

She stood there in her suit; couldn’t see her expression but I could sure hear the exasperation in her voice. But I knew she’d get used to it. How could you not learn to love the salmon-colored sky, the reddish sands, the boulder fields. Use your imagination, I would try. It’s like Arizona or New Mexico sans vegetation.

Sans atmosphere, she’d snarl. What’s the fun of going outside when you can’t feel the wind or feel the sun or feel the soil, the grasses beneath your feet?

Mars is a dream, I’d reply. A dream. I’d point out Olympus Mons and try to impress her with the vast dome above that 10,000 foot cliff. Someday, someday snow up there and immense waterfalls thundering down that cliff.

She’d snort. I’m sorry, she’d say, maybe in the future it’d be another Sun Valley but right now, I want Vail, Colorado.

Where else could you find a 10,000 foot ski jump?

She’d sigh. Oh, geeze. You jerk.

I’d try to interest her in the vastness of Valles Marineris, some 2500 miles long and God knows how wide and in places 23,000 feet deep—a vastness on such a scale—imagine the Grand Canyon four-and-a-half times as deep—

But, she’d wail, with the Grand Canyon, it’s still big and I don’t have to wear a fucking suit—

She was so hard to please.

I want to hear the birds, she said, "I want to feel the wind. I want to smell something aside from this rebreathed air—this place is awful—"

We frequently saw Dr. Shane. He was our counselor and believe me, there was desperate need for counselors after people began to come and to try to live on Mars. People either really, really really loved it or they really, really, really out-and-out hated it.

Dr. Shane was sympathetic to our plight. But, he said, this does happen if people come up here as a couple. He was forty-ish with bushy dark hair getting grey, and very blue and gentle eyes set in a face that was lined, like he had been a cowboy before he became a confirmed Red Rat or Mars Lover as opposed to a Shrieker who left Mars shrieking with disgust, despair or loathing. It’s real tough when one person turns into a Red Rat and the other a Shrieker. More often than not, those involved in relationships on Earth don’t do real well on Mars. Red Rats belong to Red Rats, Shriekers belong with Shriekers. Shriekers want their Red Rats to go back with them. Red Rats want Shriekers to change to Red Rats. He’d shake his head. No way. Doesn’t work that way. If there’s no acceptance on where each of the partner is at, there can be only departure of one from the other. It’s too bad—but, if it helps any to understand this—Shriekers more often than not, come from families that were loving, generous and for lack of a better word, full. So Earth and all that it has to offer is a kind of mirror for the love and fullness of their family—Red Rats more often than not come from families of impoverishment—and Mars, while rich in many ways, is very much impoverished in some very profound and fundamental ways—and this can lead some Red Rats to a place that mirrors their families—but also leads them to challenge their impoverishment and find fascination with it by— he spread his hands, coming to Mars.

We’d sit there in Dr. Shane’s office with that wonderful view of Mars that Julia hated.

So how— began Dr. Shane.

How’d we get together in the first place? said Julia.

I know I loved Julia, her green eyes, dark hair, lean and muscular body that was incredibly sensual—I didn’t want to leave Mars, however, something, here, the draw.

What more wonderful loving, said Dr. Shane. The wanting to give someone impoverished the richness of love, what greater gratitude than someone being offered such beauty and having the guts to accept it? ‘Here, you’re lovable. You deserve beauty.’ ‘Thank you. I am grateful. I love you.’

She’d nod. It worked fine on Earth— she’d say.

But, said Dr. Shane, when coming to Mars became a reality—all of a sudden, Bill had a reality that was as validating to him as—

And Julia would complete the sentence, —Earth was to me.

Yikes, Irreconcilable. Utterly. Absolutely. Totally. Yikes! Yikes! Yikes!

And, Dr. Shane would say, the idea of terraforming it—to make it rich, to give your stamp of making it a rich world— to me, what a wonderful change. It’s absolutely irresistible to you—to create beauty from something so impoverished. For you to become beautiful to yourself in spite of your impoverished background. Get it?

I got