TOTU #20
edited by Eric Heideman

Page 10 from TOTU #20
The Anti-SF Novel
by Maureen F. McHugh

I'd like to talk, in a perverse sort of way, about the anti-science fiction novel. There are a lot of conventions to the SF genre, you know, warp drive and faster than light drive and time travel and blasters and phasers, vast galactic empires. There are a lot of unspoken conventions, too.

Michael Swanwick once talked about how, when he was writing The Iron Dragon's Daughter, he found that one difference between fantasy and science fiction was that fantasy was often normative, and science fiction was often transcendent. (Forgive me, Michael, if I've mangled that.) Another way to say this is to say that the purpose of the quest, besides collecting enough plot coupons to get to the end of the book, is to right a tremendous wrong and bring order back into the world or kingdom. Sometimes, as it is in Tolkien, the order is a less glorious order—maybe you've got men in charge instead of elves with all the reduction in aesthetics that implies—you know, instead of palaces among the trees we've got Elvis paintings on black velvet.

In science fiction the point is often to shatter the existing order, to transcend it. People evolve and become something better, cooler, Slan. Or the AI is released into the system at large to evolve and change, thereby changing the world as we know it, as in Neuromancer. Dune does that, in a Christ-figure sort of way, with Paul Maud'Dib clearing the way for his son, the giant worm, who transcends human.

This is kind of dangerous ground, getting deep into the parlor game of what is the difference between SF and fantasy, but I thought it was really cool so I felt compelled to talk about it. You can start getting into sticky stuff. I think, under this rubric, Star Wars is space fantasy because it is overthrowing the emperor to re-establish the republic and the old order of the Jedi Knights.

But something required for the genre or genres, whether to reestablish order or transcend it, is the hero who changes everything. Luke Skywalker is the perfect example of the hero who changes everything. He overthrows the bloody empire, for god's sake. This is the central story of SF, as read by all us adolescents and arrested adolescents, it's the real and for me, serious indulgence of SF. If there's an injustice, the hero will stop it. It doesn't matter if the story is on the scale of a city or a planet or the galaxy, SF is the story of the outsider who is smarter, mutated, or endowed with special powers and therefore is the person, the only person who can make the difference.

Page 37 from TOTU #20
The Turtle God
by Mary Soon Lee

On the eve of the day of the turtle god, Aurora was at her wit's end. She stood in the turtle god's cave, her hands planted on her hips, trying to look commanding. It didn't help that she was ankle-deep in green water. There was water everywhere. Water dripped from the roof of the cave, plinking into deep puddles. Water overflowed from the basin of the turtle god's fountain, droplets sparking in the light from the candles on the wall. Water ran through hidden pipes, rolled out over the stone tongue of the turtle god's head, and splashed down again in an endless wet cycle.

Aurora glared at Tenectus the turtle god. "How could you do this? The queen will be here tomorrow morning. Do you think she will wade through a flood just to pay homage to you?"

The pattern of water rolling over Tenectus's tongue shifted like quicksilver as Tenectus answered, the sound of the water shaped into words. "The queen will come, because it is her duty," said Tenectus, sounding as pompous as ever. "It is her duty, because a monarch's reign is but an eyeblink beside the lives of the gods. All men must bow to the glory of the gods."

"If that's so," said Aurora, "then how do you explain the fact that I'm your only priestess? And that no one else ever comes to pray to you? Except, of course, on the one day a year that the queen visits."

"There must have been some error," said Tenectus. "Possibly an oversight by one of the court clerks. Once I have spoken to the queen, I am certain she will send stonewrights and goldsmiths to restore my temple, soldiers to guard its approach, maidens of noble descent whose sole task will be to scatter the essence of flowers to perfume the air by my fountain."

A year ago Aurora would never have imagined that a stone turtle could sound so pompous. She had not believed it when she first recognized words of ancient Amarthese in the burbling noise of the turtle fountain. Aside from scholars, few people knew the ancient tongue. But Aurora's grandfather had been one of the few, and she had learned it from him as she cleaned his house, her thoughts filling with legends and myths, a world far-removed from the dusty village she grew up in.

Doubtless that was why she had applied for a position as Tenectus's priestess. Where others saw only an old god fallen in to decay, she saw the glory of the past. Even so, Aurora had thought her mind was playing tricks when she heard the ancient words in the rush of the fountain. Perhaps she merely imagined her grandfather's voice because she missed him. But when she realized that Tenectus was truly talking to her, visions of glory danced before her again: she had uncovered the speech of a god! And so she had spent months teaching Tenectus modern-day Amarthese as he corrected her usage of the ancient tongue. At first she could barely make out his words, the syllables twisted toward liquid vowels and sibilant consonants. But the more Tenectus spoke, the clearer his voice had grown.

If only Aurora were more confident that Tenectus wouldn't use his new-found command of the language to insult the queen. Trying to ignore the water trickling down her back, Aurora stepped up to the fountain and glared eye-to-eye at Tenectus. "I was only away for an hour. Since you made all this mess in that time, I expect you to clear it up equally quickly."