Marti and Me by Eric Heideman

Food Chain Fandango
Inside a Bear
The Neuter's Tale
Fog
Learning the Language
The Story on the Fire, Untold
Dust to Dust to
An Unfinished House
They, We, You, I, It
Catalogue of Nightmares
Siv's New Life
The Imperialist's Clothes
Fun Flesh
Old Nick and Rodolpho
The Notification
The Princess and the Supermarket
Those Things in the Garage, or a Zombi's Apology
The Young Warrior, by Julio
A Domestic Arrangement
Heaven
Jupiter Radios Earth

Strange Damn Place—Dark, Too

Marti and Me by Eric Heideman

For 13 years, I've edited Tales of the Unanticipated, an infrequent but steady war-horse of a magazine specializing in offbeat speculative fiction (SF). Instead of reading submissions year-round (a task I would only undertake for a salary and full medical benefits), I designate reading periods when I'm open for submissions to a specific issue. I have a stalwart and insightful editorial staff, but in reverse of the usual procedure, I (the chief) read the slushpile, garner those stories that seem promising (usually 30-50% of 150-300 stories received), and share them with one or more staffers to get the benefit of another opinion. The top 40 or 50 stories each collect a fascinating range of reactions from my several staffers.

In the spring of 1989, I opened an envelope from a Martha A. Hood in California and found Those Things in The Garage, or A Zombi's Apology. A reading made me brighten up and think, "This might be a keeper." My editorial squib for the story in #6 (published October 1989) reads, "Martha A. Hood is a promising new writer, with a strong and original personal vision. Witness this story, which takes traditional material and tilts it sideways, to make something memorable and new."

I've just reread that story. Damn, it's good. Two very distinct characters; one whole life-story; a fresh perspective on folklore that tells us something new about life in an unforced, unpedantic way. All that in 2,800 words, including that remarkable last paragraph (reading it again, for the I-don't-know-how-manyeth time, I got chills)…

—Eric Heideman

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Strange Damn PlaceóDark, Too

I have lived in Irvine, California since 1978. It has proved to be an oddly inspirational place in which to write—sort of like living inside a bear, side by side with some unusual characters and some entertaining ideas.

Besides being the home of the University of California, Irvine, and the professional home of Gregory Benford, Irvine has gained fame as a "planned community." This means there are lots of parks, convenient shopping, and peaceful bike trails. Living in a planned community also means you might get a nasty letter from your homeowners' association if you put a basketball hoop over your garage, or if you plant a vegetable garden in your front yard (instead of the usual mums and impatiens), or if you paint your house without getting the color approved.

In return, your association will maintain green belts, swimming pools, and tennis courts, and will protect you from junker cars and second-story house additions that infringe on either your view or your privacy. A fair deal, perhaps, but all this regulation also serves to protect us from anything truly artistic, innovative, or just plain different. Therein lies the strangeness, and the darkness, of Irvine, California. Living here is like being swallowed by a bear.

Driving this "planning" is an intense desire to achieve excellence. Not any old sort of excellence, but a decent excellence. An inoffensive excellence. Color-coordinated excellence with nice, even edges. You can see it in the way they landscape the common areas. The bushes are all trimmed square. The trees have crew cuts. Nothing's allowed to get too wild, too messy, or too blemished. Not only do they tame the landscape, they feel the need to explain it. One sign in a torn-up flower bed reads, "Landscape Renovation Underway." Nearby, another reads, "Plant Damage Due to Frost."

It could drive me nuts, except that people themselves are wild animals and can never be tamed. Wherever people are, there are never any really straight edges, any truly square corners, or any exactly-matching colors. People are willing to fight for their basketball hoops, their new paint colors, and other deviant desires, and their neighbors often support them. Sometimes, they go underground—so to speak. One neighbor hides his Swiss chard underneath his roses. He plants other edibles in other secret places. Being rather unhip in the world of edible plants, the association board members can't tell for sure where his ornamentals end and his vegetables begin. On a larger scale, as more people from all over the world move here, we are treated to unfamiliar customs, foods, languages, and religions. I am presented daily with a wonderful tableau of competing realities, with the world as seen from different perspectives. Various relative truths squirm, spar, and grapple with one another, all inside the figurative bear of this town.

Irvine has changed since 1985, when the earliest story in this collection was finished. It is now less conservative, and far more cosmopolitan than it was fourteen years ago. Yet I am still intimidated by the unrelenting earnestness and niceness of the place; I hide much of what I really think and feel, just as my neighbor hides his Swiss chard. But if I didn't feel the need to hide my odder observations from most people, I doubt I'd feel the need to write. Writing gets me "outside the bear," which in turn creates new challenges. After all, as I begin writing for my next collection of stories, I must ask myself: What giant forest will I be excreted into this time?

Martha A. Hood
March, 1999
Irvine, CA

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"Some critics believe that every fiction writer has one obsessive theme that she returns to in every story. If so, I don't know what Marti's is. She's a writer of substantial and steadily widening range—I've mentioned other writers who come to mind a little when I read individual stories, but the overall effect is Hood, Hood, Hood. In her own way she is as original and distinctive a writer of short off-center speculative fiction as is Howard Waldrop in his."

—from the introduction

Martha A. Hood was born in Santa Monica, CA, and grew up in LA. She began writing in 1978, sold ten true confession stories, then tried writing novels and plays. In the mid-1980s, she turned to writing speculative fiction stories and hasn't quit because she likes it. It also happens she has had some success: her stories have been published in Pulphouse, Interzone, and Tales of the Unanticipated, among other places. She lives in Irvine, CA, with her husband, ten-year-old daughter, some rabbits, and some cockatiels. She will eat almost anything except liver and beets, and she recently heard an appetizing recipe for beets. Inside a Bear is her first collection of short stories.