Uncanny Magazine Issue 56, page 1
UNCANNY MAGAZINE
“Uncanny Magazine Editorial Staff” by Uncanny Magazine
About Our Cover Artist: Galen Dara by Galen Dara
“The Uncanny Valley” by Lynne M. Thomas & Michael Damian Thomas
“Marginalia” by Mary Robinette Kowal
“A Recipe for Hope and Honeycake” by Jordan Taylor
“Do Houses Dream of Scraping the Sky?” by Jana Bianchi
“An Elegy of Soil” by Natalia Theodoridou
“La mandíbula del río” by Ana Hurtado
“The Feast of Baku & the Yume no Seirei” by Cheri Kamei
“A Contract of Ink and Skin” by Angela Liu
“Scalzi on Film: When Fun Becomes Homework” by John Scalzi
“Lest We Become Possessed” by Alex Jennings
“A Novel Is an Empathy Engine” by Cecilia Tan
“Dance Dance Matrix Revolutions” by Amanda Wakaruk and Olav Rokne
“Six of Swords Becomes The Emperor” by Ali Trotta
“We Drink Lava” by Ai Jiang
“fowlskin” by C. S. E. Cooney
“genesis” by Sodïq Oyèkànmí
“Interview: Jordan Taylor” by Caroline M. Yoachim
“Interview: Natalia Theodoridou” by Caroline M. Yoachim
“Thank You, Patreon Supporters!” by Lynne M. Thomas & Michael Damian Thomas
Edited by Lynne M. Thomas, Michael Damian Thomas, and Michi Trota
Ebook generated by Clockpunk Studios.
Copyright © 2023 by Uncanny Magazine.
www.uncannymagazine.com
Uncanny Magazine Editorial Staff
Publishers/Editors–in–Chief: Lynne M. Thomas & Michael Damian Thomas
Managing Editor: Monte Lin
Nonfiction Editor: Meg Elison
Podcast Producers: Erika Ensign & Steven Schapansky
Podcast Readers: Erika Ensign & Matt Peters
Assistant Editor: Tania Chen
Interviewers: Caroline M. Yoachim & Lynne M. Thomas
Submissions Editors: Dolores Peters, Heather Clitheroe, Heather Leigh, Jay Wolf, Liam Meilleur, Matt Peters, Piper Hale, Tazmania Hayward, Rowan MacBean, Genevra Hsu, Danai Christopoulou, Sylvia Santiago, Jessica E. Moyer, Leon Perniciaro, Isabel Hinchliff, Michelle Enehiwealu Iruobe, Emily Simroth, Mwenya S. Chikwa, Sab Yañez, Anna Brock, Makeda K. Braithwaite, Dianne M. Williams, Jenelle DeCosta, A Humphrey Lanham
Logo & Wordmark design: Katy Shuttleworth
About Our Cover Artist: Galen Dara
Galen Dara has created art for TOR, DAW Books, HarperCollins Publishing, Simon and Schuster, Subterranean Press, Scientific American magazine, Uncanny Magazine, Lightspeed Magazine, Strange Horizons Magazine, Wizards Of The Coast, and Fantasy Flight Games. She’s won the Hugo Award, the World Fantasy award, the Spectrum Award, and the Chesley Award (and has been nominated several times for the Locus Award). She’s on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @galendara. www.galendara.com
The Uncanny Valley
by Lynne M. Thomas & Michael Damian Thomas
It’s a new year, Space Unicorns!
We very much hope your 2024 is amazing and wonderful in every way.
Sadly, though, we’re once again writing this from Lurie Children’s Hospital. Our daughter, Caitlin, is here with an aspiration pneumonia. Her palliative care has ups and downs, and today is definitely down. For the Thomases, 2024 will probably not be a better year than 2023.
Thank you, Space Unicorns, for your continued love and support for the three of us.
This year will also be a massively important year in the history of SF/F magazines. In a few months, the magazines will have a better idea about how much income they lost from the Major Online Retailer’s decision to cancel our subscriptions for a forced move onto their streaming model.
As a complete tangent *cough*, Uncanny Magazine is available on Kindle Unlimited. If you wish to subscribe to us there, please make sure that you read each issue for at least 10 seconds and flip at least two pages. Otherwise, we do not get paid for you subscribing there! WHEE!!!
There are, however, many other ways to Support Uncanny Magazine!
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By buying a subscription or becoming a Patron, you’re helping Uncanny Magazine to continue. Your support is how we pay our writers, artists, and staff for Year Ten and beyond!
If you already support Uncanny one of these ways or through our yearly Kickstarters, THANK YOU, SPACE UNICORNS!!!
It’s the time of year when people post their year-in-reviews to remind voters for the different SF/F awards what’s out there that they might have missed, and (especially for the Hugo Awards and Nebula Awards) in which categories those stories are eligible. Last year was the ninth full year of Uncanny Magazine (the double-sized Issue 50 through Issue 55). We are extremely proud of the year we had.
This year, Uncanny Magazine is still eligible for the Best Semiprozine Hugo Award. Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas are also still eligible for the Best Editor (Short Form) Hugo Award for editing issues 50–55. (Note: If you are nominating the Thomases in this category, please continue to nominate them together. They are a co-editing team.)
The stories listed below are eligible in either the short story, novelette, or novella categories of the SF/F awards. If you are a SFWA member nominating for the Nebula Awards, you can find eBook copies of these stories in the SFWA Forums.
Please also note that essays are eligible for the Best Related Work Hugo Award, and poetry is eligible for the Rhysling Award. As Uncanny is a semiprozine, all of the essays and original art also contribute towards the creators’ Best Fan Writer and Best Fan Artist Hugo Award eligibility.
You can see the entire list here!
And now the contents of Uncanny Magazine Issue 56! The wonderful cover is Resurrecting Venus by Galen Dara. Our fabulous new fiction includes “Marginalia” by Mary Robinette Kowal, “A Recipe for Hope and Honeycake” by Jordan Taylor, “Do Houses Dream of Scraping the Sky?” by Jana Bianchi, “An Elegy of Soil” by Natalia Theodoridou, “La mandíbula del río” by Ana Hurtado, “The Feast of Baku & the Yume no Seirei” by Cheri Kamei, and “A Contract of Ink and Skin” by Angela Liu.
Our provocative and compelling essays this month include “Scalzi on Film: When Fun Becomes Homework” by John Scalzi, “Lest We Become Possessed” by Alex Jennings, “A Novel Is an Empathy Engine” by Cecilia Tan, and “Dance Dance Matrix Revolutions” by Amanda Wakaruk and Olav Rokne. Our gorgeous and evocative poetry includes “Six of Swords Becomes The Emperor” by Ali Trotta, “We Drink Lava” by Ai Jiang, “fowlskin” by C. S. E. Cooney, and “genesis” by Sodïq Oyèkànmí. Finally, Caroline M. Yoachim interviews Jordan Taylor and Natalia Theodoridou about their stories.
The Uncanny Magazine Podcast 56A features “Marginalia” by Mary Robinette Kowal, as read by Erika Ensign, “We Drink Lava” by Ai Jiang, as read by Matt Peters, and Lynne M. Thomas interviewing Mary Robinette Kowal. The Uncanny Magazine Podcast 56B features “La mandíbula del río” by Ana Hurtado, as read by Matt Peters, “fowlskin” by C. S. E. Cooney, as read by Erika Ensign, and Lynne M. Thomas interviewing Ana Hurtado.
As always, we are deeply grateful for your support of Uncanny Magazine. Shine on, Space Unicorns!
© 2024 Lynne M. Thomas & Michael Damian Thomas
Lynne and Michael are the Publishers/Editors-in-Chief of Uncanny Magazine.
Ten-time Hugo, British Fantasy, and 2-time Parsec Award-winner Lynne M. Thomas was the Editor-in-Chief of Apex Magazine (2011-2013). She co-edited the Hugo Award-winning Chicks Dig Time Lords (with Tara O’Shea) and Hugo Award-finalist Chicks Dig Comics (with Sigrid Ellis).
Seven-time Hugo, British Fantasy, and Parsec Award-winner Michael Damian Thomas was the former Managing Editor of Apex Magazine (2012-2013), co-edited the Hugo-finalist Queers Dig Time Lords (with Sigrid Ellis), and co-edited Glitter & Mayhem (with John Klima and Lynne M. Thomas).
Together, they solve mysteries.
Marginalia
by Mary Robinette Kowal
Margery crouched in front of the fireplace, skirts tucked back to avoid the flames, and raked coals out onto the hearth. She’d pushed the shutters open this morning to let a breeze but even at this hour sweat beaded on her brow and stuck her chemise to her skin.
Their gray tabby cat jumped up onto the windowsill and mewed plaintively.
“Not today, Sir Humphrey.” Margery grabbed the iron tongs and carefully set her grate on top of the coals. “I’ll have a bit of scrap for you tonight.”
Her tabby meowed with a kittenish squeak that belied the short work he made of barn rats, and lifted his mittened white foot to clean.
“Nay. Say it’s not so.” She slid back and stood, shaking the dust off her skirts. Glancing at the bed by the hearth, she saw that Mother was awake. “You hear that, Mother? Sir Humphrey is telling us about his adventures.”
Her mother’s lips moved, but only grunts came out.
“Aye. That was what I told him.” The coals would do well enough for the pottage she needed to cook. While it bubbled, she’d have time to get the rusks mixed up. She ruffled the cat’s fur as she went to the table by the window. “Next you’ll be saying that you met King Edward himself.”
Sir Humphrey squeaked and lifted his head, scenting the air. His ears turned back, and he looked around, pupils darkening. A moment later, the sound reached Margery’s less acute hearing.
Messy, frantic footsteps ran toward the cottage. “Margery!” Her brother’s voice cracked in the middle of her name. “Margery! Margery!”
She dropped the handle of the pot she’d been about to lift and ran to the door. “Hugh?”
As she opened the door, the ten-year-old ran around the pig pen and darted into the farmyard directly in front of the house. The goose hissed at him, wings flapping in agitation. Hugh paid it no heed, skidding to a halt in front of Margery.
He held his cap clenched in one fist. “There’s a snail coming through the forest.”
Margery’s blood went cold as if a shadow had passed over the cottage. “How big?”
“Bigger than John Farmer’s prize bull.” His kerchief hung askew about his neck and he wiped his forehead with the back of his arm leaving a stain on the madder red fabric. “Goodman Hopkin’s gone to tell the manor house.”
“Tell me you didn’t see it.” A snail had taken out the church in the town one over from theirs. That one had been a monster taller than a man and had left an iridescent acrid path that burned the plants it passed over down to the ground.
“From behind. I’m not stupid. And no, I didn’t step on its trail.” Hugh waved his cap in the direction of the manor. “C’mon. If we hurry, we can see Lord Strange ride out.”
“Nay, we’ll not be doing that.” Margery wiped the sweat from her palms on her apron. Her brother wanted to be a squire for their lord more than anything and that wasn’t for the likes of them. Maybe if her mother hadn’t been forced to retire as she had begun dropping things, Hugh might have been a page. But a squire? Those cossetted posts were for the sons of the nobility who thought that being tasked with polishing armor was a hardship. “Then you’ll be wanting to follow him to watch him fight the snail and then you’ll want to stay for driving it into the pit and then—”
“Just watching him ride out.” His blue eyes were huge in his head. “Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeease? He has a new horse. It’s a dapple grey.”
She looked at the sky, considering the hour. “There’s chores to be done.”
“I got the eggs already.” He backed away from her and grabbed the egg basket he’d set in the shadows of the hen house. “Here. I was going to bring them in but—Can I go, please? He’ll ride out soon and I’ll miss it!”
She took the basket and sighed at him because he’d be dragging around the house and sighing lavishly all day if she didn’t give in. “Fine. But to the manor and back, do you hear me? If he can’t turn the snail, there’s no telling where that beast will go next.”
Hugh scoffed with all the scorn of the very young. “Of course, he’ll slay it.”
“Be that as it may, you come straight back here.”
He scrambled off, vaulting over their fence instead of going around it. “Thank yoooooooooou!”
Snorting, Margery went back inside. She’d talk to the stable master up at the manor house to see if there was a spot for Hugh there. He’d never be a squire, but going into service might scratch some of that itch.
The house was a three bay, but she knew it so well that there was no need to wait for her eyes to adjust as she crossed the wooden threshold. But she did so that she could see her mother. Five years ago, her mother had been the housekeeper at the manor. The little tremor in her hand kept getting worse until Lord Strange—in a show of kindness—had settled her mother on this farm as thanks for service.
Or rather, it had been meant as a kindness. As security. Thirty years, she’d been the housekeeper at the big manor and now she had a house with a dirt floor.
Last year, she’d started falling.
Margery had come home. They’d lost her wages as a maid but what else was she to do?
She paused by her mother and adjusted her on the bed. Her tremoring had worked her over to the edge of the mattress. “Could you hear that, Mother? There’s a snail, apparently. Hugh has gone to watch Lord Strange ride out, but I told him to come home straight after.”
Her mother’s voice was a whisper-thin shadow of the one that used to shout across the fields at supper time. Margery caught only one pieces of her speech. “That boy…horses.”
“He loves them, for certain.” She tugged on the covers. “Do you want to be covered up?”
Her mother shook her head.
“All right, then.” Margery folded them back. “It’s a warm enough day already.”
Patting her mother’s shoulder, she straightened and crossed the room to the table. Sir Humphrey was still sitting on the windowsill and had switched to washing his side. “And you, sir, will you watch Mother whilst I do the cooking?”
The cat stopped washing for a moment and meeped at her.
“Thank you, sir.” At the table, she grabbed the handle of the iron pot and hefted it. “I’m glad I have someone to help with the work.”
Margery’s shoulders ached as she stirred the beer she was brewing. Her mother’s recipe remained in demand, which brought in some extra income. The sun was hot on the back of her neck, and the sweat started an itch under her cap.
Hoofbeats drew her attention out of the yard and across the fields. A lone horse galloped near the tree line. She rose to her feet, basket of damp laundry on the ground beside her.
The horse was riderless. It was dapple gray. It wore an armored chest piece enameled with Lord Strange’s colors.
Margery’s heart turned itself inside out. Hugh had gone to see his lordship ride out. The riderless horse meant something had gone very wrong with the snail. She started to run toward the horse as if she could somehow catch up and grab its reins. Then stopped. What was she doing? She’d never been on a horse in her life. She turned toward the manor and stopped again.
And what would she do when she got there?
She held herself still, hands pressed out and flat like she could hold the world in place as she thought. “Hugh. He’ll be with the lord and that snail and God bless him, he will try to help.”
Grimacing, she turned back to the house. There would be injuries and going empty-handed would be as useless as not going at all. Bursting through the kitchen door, her eyes were still sunblind and cast the interior into grey blue shadows. Meowing, Sir Humphrey darted toward her and nearly tripped Margery. She danced around him, turning to the right where the cupboards were. “Mother! I’m going after Hugh. Sommat’s happened with that snail.”
The cat stood on his hind legs and batted at her skirt.
“Not now, Sir Humphrey. I’ll give you victuals later.” Her heart was slamming against her ribs and her breath burned in her throat. The smooth wood of the cupboard slid under her fingers as she found the knob and yanked it open. “Mother, I’m taking bandages, honey and butter for burns—What else do I need?”
Over her shoulder, her mother croaked a reply but any words in it vanished beneath Margery’s own panicked breath. “Aye. Whiskey. That’s a good thought.”
As she grabbed a rough spun satchel and shoved things in it, her eyes adjusted and the brass of her sewing shears glinted in her mending basket. She grabbed the shears, just in case she needed to cut clothing away from an acid burn. Turning, she lifted the strap of the satchel over her head to rest across her chest.
Her mother was on the floor.
“Lord!” Margery’s heart nearly stopped. Her mother had fallen out of bed…when?
