Entropy Central

The power position in the 2020 Visions anthology is held by a story called Nervewrecking written by Alex Wilson.  Yes, I’m aware there is one piece following this story, but David Gerrold’s work is more of an epilogue than a story, and that’s a discussion for tomorrow’s blog post.

Of all the stories submitted, this is the one that resonated most deeply with me.  It’s not that it takes on any kind of personal meaning for me, but I think it does with the author in some ways.

Alex is recovering from a mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) caused by an auto accident in December of 2007, and his recovery has been a slog.  The injury hampered his productivity as an artist, and affected his life by slowing down what he can do in any given day.  Fortunately for all of us, it hasn’t degraded his ability to tell a story a bit.

In Nervewrecking, a man’s brain loses communication with his nervous system through misuse of technology.  That has the effect of leaving him numb and insensitive to pain and other sensation.  While he uses the condition to his financial advantage, the more human aspects of being isolated from his environment while standing in the middle of it takes a huge toll.

This is a gripping story, and Alex does a remarkable job of pulling the reader through.  You will not want to put this one down.

I have known Alex through the Codex online writers group for about five years, but had not read any of his fiction before I started Nervewrecking.  I’m so glad I invited him to submit to the anthology, because he gained a fan. When the collection comes out, I think he will gain more.

Alex’s fiction has appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction and Chiaroscuro.  He has a forthcoming appearance in Weird Tales.  He is a member of the Clarion class of 2006.  Locus Magazine called him a “promising new writer.”

In addition to prose fiction, Alex writes comics and runs the audiobook podcast Telltale Weekly.  He is also an actor.  You can view some of that work here.

Alethea Kontis is one of those people who knows everyone, goes out and gets fun, and always seems happy–even when she’s not.  Although we’ve never met in person, I’ve known Alethea virtually though Codex Writers Group for over five years.

She has worked as a buyer for a major book wholesaler.  She still does some copywriting, book reviews and interviews.  She holds a degree in chemistry that she doesn’t use professionally, but it gives her writing the foundation of rigor needed to pass the inspection of hard-core SF fans.

Alethea is the author of two well-received childrens books, Alpha-Oops: The Day Z Went First (2006, Candlewick), and Alpha-Oops: H is for Halloween (2010, Candlewick).  She co-edited Elemental: The Tsunami Relief Anthology (2006, Tor), a volume containing a story by 2020 Visions TOC-mate David Gerrold.  Her short fiction has appeared in venues such as Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show and Realms of Fantasy.

Alethea’s contribution to 2020 Visions is called Pocket Full of Posey.   Any significant discussion of this story will of necessity contain spoilers. Of all the stories in this volume, this is probably the story best read without any previous hints, so I won’t give any away.  I’ll just say that many people will enjoy living vicariously through this protagonist, and I know for certain Alethea had a blast writing this one.

Although we are both members of the Codex writers group, I know Gareth L. Powell mainly by reputation.   In addition to being a fiction writer, he is a freelance copywriter and PR consultant, and is a former software marketer.  His fiction has appeared in Interzone and in the Shine anthology from Solaris (2010).  His story Ack-Ack Macaque won the 2007 Interzone Reader’s poll for best short story.  Gareth also has a regular interview and review gig with a music magazine out of the UK called Acoustic.

While I can say this about everything in the 2020 Visions anthology, Gareth’s story is a bit different from the other titles in the collection.  His submission came in during my open call for optimistic fiction, and it is optimistic, but that isn’t what sets it apart.

His story is different in the sense that at first I had a bit of trouble suspending disbelief.   After reading it once, I set the story aside and came back to it later.  Upon reading it a second time, I decided that the story doesn’t necessarily need to be taken at face value, and that the ending was meant to be more symbolic than an account of actual events.  With that perspective, the whole story became something greater than perhaps even Gareth intended.

Gareth is from the United Kingdom.  His story takes place in the United Kingdom, and it uses British English conventions like spelling and phrasing.  When I asked him how he would feel about changing the story to Americanize it, he was open to the idea.  However, after giving it some thought, I decided to leave the story as submitted.  The story is written by a Brit and takes place in Britain,  so why change an author’s natural language?  Besides, I rather like British English.

Another reason I decided to leave the story in that style is that I originally wanted something of an international and inter-cultural flavor to the anthology.  I managed to get a little bit of that, but not as much as I had hoped.  (As a side note, I did have the opportunity for a story by Charles Tan of the Philippines, but the only story he had available would have been a reprint and I wanted all original material.)

So Gareth’s story, The Bigger the Star, the Faster it Burns, is the only story written British style, but that only helps to expand the diversity of the fiction between these covers.  The story itself has to do with the discovery of alien artifacts, but like almost all the stories in the collection, it is really a story about people.  It’s a fun story and a welcome respite from some of the darker fiction that appears in the anthology.  Read it with an open mind and soak up the deeper meanings of this story.

I met Spencer Ellsworth in 2005 when we were classmates at Orson Scott Card’s Literary Boot Camp.  His fiction is gripping and compelling.

Spencer is the winner of the 2009 PARSEC contest.  He worked for a literary agent long enough to know he did not want to become one.  He pens a monthly column called “Miracle Pictographs” that appears in Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show.

Spencer’s story for 2020 Visions is the longest in the collection.   This novelette called The Black Plague of our Generation takes up the topic of medicating as a solution to problems–something that is already happening in some public schools today.  Spencer mixes this idea with the very human aspect of a broken family to produce a story that is both heart-warming and disturbing.

With a story that can easily be taken as symbolic of some events in today’s world, David Boop represents the #11 spot in the table of contents of 2020 Visions with a story called Organ Cloning While You Wait.

I have known David for a number of years, mainly just impromptu chats in the hallway at conventions.  In addition to short fiction published in several anthologies, he has also seen one of his stage plays produced and a short screenplay filmed.  His novel, She Murdered Me With Science was released in 2008 by Flying Pen Press.

David grew up in the home of non-denominational ministers, and considers himself a man of great faith, yet he shies away from organized religion.  David Boop is his real name, and he uses his experiences of being the target of jokes in his youth to help teach his son how to let the little things go.

I interviewed David while I was still producing the Novy MIRror video podcast.  We chatted during the 2009 Westercon in Tempe, Arizona.  You can watch that interview here.

Jack Mangan is mainly known for his Deadpan podcast, a regular show composed of humor, fiction, and music. Give the show a try, it’s a lot of fun.

I’ve known Jack for a number of years and he lives local to me.  Of the writers appearing in 2020 Visions, he is probably the one I know the best.  We met shortly after he and I both had a story appear in the penultimate issue of Neometropolis online magazine.  We have been friends ever since.

His story, Dead Rookies, is one of the darkest stories in the collection.  It posits that the economic conditions of 2010 continue to deteriorate, while corporate power continues to escalate.  He carries this to the extreme, where people are willing to kill for the few available  job openings and the wealthy need money only as a way of keeping score amongst themselves.

Starting the second half of the 2020 Visions collection is a short story by an author with one of the most unique names in speculative fiction: Cat Rambo.   Many people believe she writes using Cat Rambo as her pen name.  It is, in fact, her real name.

I’ve known Cat for several years through the online writers group Codex.  She is currently managing editor of Fantasy Magazine, one of the publications to qualify as a professional market with SFWA.  Her own fiction has appeared in Asimov’s, Weird Tales, and Clarkesworld.

Her story, Therapy Buddha, involves a gag gift given by the protagonist’s office-mates.  It’s literally a therapy Buddha that acts something like a psychologist-in-a-box.  I won’t reveal any further details of the story for fear of spoilers.

Cat’s style is distinct, with an ability to toss in little details that make the story seem more realistic.  (For another Koan, say Koan–you’ll understand after reading the story.)  She is equally comfortable writing fantasy and science fiction.

I interviewed Cat while I was still producing my Novy MIRror video podcast.  You can see that interview here.

Emily Devenport is another one of the local authors I know from hanging around writerly events here in the valley of the sun– sitting on panels at local cons, chatting at the bookstore she worked in, that sort of thing.

In addition to the name Emily Devenport, she has written as Maggy Thomas and Lee Hogan.  Her novel Broken Time (as Maggy Thomas) was a finalist for the Philip K dick Award for best novel.  I have a copy that is grossly overdue to be read.

Her contribution to 2020 Visions is a novelette called If the Sun’s at Five O’Clock, It Must be Yellow Daisies.  It’s the story of obsessive excesses mixed with a creative technological advancement in weight loss techniques.  Once again, trying to avoid spoilers makes discussing the story difficult.

Emily’s story rounds out the first half of the table of contents.   The second half is every bit as good.

Jeff Spock make his living writing video game scripts, as well as writing prose fiction.  He lives in the town of Le Bar sur Loup in the south of France.  His story for the 2020 Visions anthology is called “Teh Afterl1fe.”  Those are not typos.  This is typical spelling in gamer slang, and it comes from something called leetspeak, or simply leet.

As you might expect with somebody so deeply embedded into video games, Jeff’s story involves computers and games.  It isn’t the gaming aspect that caught my attention. In fact, I nearly rejected the story, but I don’t make any rejection decisions rashly.  I kept almost everything for at least 24 hours before rejecting so I garner some objectivity.   Good thing, too, because rejecting this story would have been a huge mistake on my part.

One sign of a good story  is the ability to stay in the mind long after the reader has finished reading it.  That turned out to be the case with Jeff’s story, and the more I thought about it, the better I liked the story. I couldn’t get it out of my mind.  Now, I think it is among the more memorable stories in the collection and that’s a testament to Jeff’s writing ability.

While the story is memorable, it’s another one of those cases where if I start describing the story, I will release too many spoilers.  This is one story where the experience is made by not knowing what will happen next.  I don’t want to deprive anyone of that experience.

A cool side-effect of keeping Jeff’s story is that the collection has a screenwriter from the original Star Trek series (David Gerrold) appearing in the same table of contents as a guy named Spock.  Serendipity can be fun.

David Lee Summers fills the number 6 spot in the anthology with his hopeful story The Revelation of Thought.  Any comments I could make about the story would be in the form of spoiler, so I’m not going to discuss it.

David is a professional astronomer at Kitt Peak Observatory.  He edits Tales of the Talisman magazine and writes, too.  I’ve known David from Coppercon, having sat on panels with him, and just hanging out with him between events.  He’s a sharp guy, and his story is one of the few in this collection that could really be considered hard SF.

I interviewed David last year at Westercon, while I was still producing the Novy MIRror video podcast.  You can see that interview here.