Page 48 of Grimdark Magazine Issue 48

[CMY] Hope, for me, used to be more passive. A thing you had or didn't have, depending on the specifics of the circumstances. What Ken said earlier about agency and devoting energy towards changing the aspects of a system we don't like feels relevant here as well—as I get older, hope feels like more of an active process, a thing we can work to build.

I don't think my stories are more (or less) hopeful than they used to be, but one aspect of writing I've really had to work on over time is giving my characters more agency; by default, they tend to be passive observers, watching the world from the outside. So to some degree that mirrors the shift in how I think about hope.

[GdM] Every writer eventually encounters an idea that refuses to become a story. What's the one you've never quite managed to solve?

[KYL] I’ve wanted to write a story about splitting consciousnesses (that is, both copies believe and feel they’re the continuations of the “original”) forever. There’s something interesting here, but I’ve not found the right emotional core for it, and so it remains in the brainstorming stage. I’m patient; I know my process can take a while. I had an idea for a story involving a world where the dead don’t leave us for more than a decade before it finally crystallized for me and turned into a novelette and a novella, and maybe more stories set in the same world.

[CMY] I have dozens (maybe hundreds) of story ideas I've set aside for one reason or another, in various states of disarray: two-sentence snippets that hint at ideas, pages and pages of notes, stories half written with ending unknown, sometimes full drafts that clearly aren't working but I'm not sure quite how to fix them. I circle back to them from time to time and every now and then inspiration strikes and I finish one. I don't know that I have one particular unwritten story that haunts me, though.

[GdM] As you've gotten older, what's something you were certain was true that now feels far more complicated?

[KYL] What determines who we are? Is it what we inherit (genes, culture, systems)? Is it what we decide? Is it what we make and what we do? If it’s a combination of these, what is the contribution of each? I used to think this was a relatively easy question and gave much of the credit to individual agency. I now think it’s far more complicated and uncertain, and wonder how many of our choices are determined by history in ways that we’re blind to. And I also wonder how many of the faults we attribute to our stars really lie within ourselves.

[CMY] Something that has become more complicated for me with age is legacy, both for individuals and for larger groups. What will outlast us and be remembered in the future, and in what form? Many of the factors Ken talked about above that shape us as people also come into play in determining the legacy we leave behind.

[GdM] If you could preserve one thing about humanity for readers a thousand years from now, what would you hope survives?

[KYL] I would love to preserve the subjective experience of the life of an ordinary person (or many ordinary persons) in the early twentieth century. So often have I wondered what the mental life of an ordinary person is like in the time of the Warring Kingdoms, the reign of Constantine, the Hundred Years War, or Boston in 1639. We don’t have the technology for this, not yet, but imagine if we could? I think understanding how the experience of being human has remained the same (or perhaps changed) over time will transform our relationship to our past and our future.

[CMY] I'd love that technology even just to better understand the subjective experience of other contemporary humans, and experience first-hand the differences in mental life between individuals. As for what I would want to preserve–I sometimes think about how future historians might look back on our time period, and I have a tendency to focus on our failings and our flaws. What I would want to preserve is not the other extreme (focusing too much on strengths and victories) but something balanced.

I don't think any single perspective can accomplish it, which brings me back to Ken's answer of the life experiences of many people (though I would drop the ordinary and instead try to get a wide range, with as many individuals represented as possible). If we can't invent new technologies for the hypothetical scenario of this question, the time capsule I would create to send a thousand years into the future is a library of all the published texts currently in existence.

[GdM] What's a sentence you've read recently that reminded you why language matters?

[KYL] It’s from James Merrill’s poem, “A Renewal”: “We sit, watching. When I next speak / Love buries itself in me, up to the hilt.”

[CMY] That's beautiful (and reminds me that I should really read more poetry). I've been thinking recently about opening lines, and one thing that draws me into a story is unusual juxtapositions, sentences that stretch or upend the assumptions that readers hold, based on the usual meanings and connotations of the words: "I sing the city." from N.K. Jemisin's The City We Became, for instance.

[GdM] If the two of you were forced to co-write a novella in a month, who would insist on the outline, who would immediately try to break it, and what would you end up arguing about first?

[KYL] We’ve done this a few times already, and luckily, neither of us is a strict outliner. We tend to write our collaborations as dialogues, alternating sections—kind of like this interview! It works remarkably well.

[CMY] Yes! Ken and I have writing processes that come together fairly well, so working on collaborations has been a lot of fun! For anyone curious about the results, there are a couple available to read online: “Collaboration?” and “If a Digitized Tree Falls.”

[GdM] Twenty years from now, what conversation do you hope speculative fiction is having that it isn't having today?

[CMY] Honestly, my hope is that 20 years from now there are conversations in speculative fiction I can't predict. If the conversations that far out are all things that I can guess now, the field and/or the world is stagnating (be it in technological and scientific innovations, social and humanitarian developments, or literary techniques).

[KYL] Agreed. I want to be (and expect to be) surprised by the conversations twenty years from now. I also expect that even though the specific conversations will be surprising, the mythological shapes that drive them will be recognizable. The world changes, but our deepest dreams don’t.

The Rule of the Isotope

By Ken Liu

1.

Let me show you how to strip the flesh from a juicy forearm. Tear along the bone. Don’t fight the sinews. You must be careful not to crack your teeth against the big bones. They don’t grow back.

Chew. Slow down. Chew. For you, colors are faded and sounds muted. The undead flesh is insensitive to touch. Only smell and taste are left, senses honed by the ever-present hunger. That coldness in your belly, that devouring pang—hot blood and warm flesh will dull it, make it more tolerable. But it will never go away. You won’t ever be satiated. Some forms of pleasure can never be yours again. Learn to live with it. Chew.

Let me show you how to consume a lower leg, which you’ll have to do when there’s nothing better left. Take small bites. Calf muscles are stringy and tough. If it’s too much, pound the flesh against the concrete with a brick to tenderize it.

You’re lucky I’d already eaten when I bit you. I didn’t need to consume you. I suppose I’m lonely, roaming these streets where everyone wants to kill me. I’m sorry I was so rough when I bit you on the wrist. It still hurts, doesn’t it? That will fade. You’ll never suffer pain again.

Now eat. Eat.

Let me show you how to heal yourself. If you are shot in the shoulder, eat a shoulder. If they shatter your ribs, scavenge for ribs. If they mangle your fingers, then suck the meat off the phalanges of your next meal, just like chicken feet. An eye for an eye, a heart for a heart. The movies and comics are wrong. You’re not invincible. You are what you eat. Your survival depends on the rule of the isotope, “the same place”—consume part of your prey’s body to repair that same part on your own body.