Last month, I read a review of the new anthology Stories edited by Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio on the blog Grasping for the Wind, which is devoted to reviewing science fiction and fantasy. The blog is run by John Ottinger III, an excellent reviewer and interviewer, and it’s become one of my many go-to sources when it comes to finding out about new books in the field. (Apex Blog, of course, remains my primary source, he said with a smiling emoticon.) Read the rest of this entry »

If given the opportunity, I would have sex with a dolphin.

 

How does that change your opinion about my writing?

I really don’t want to have sex with a dolphin.  Bleh.  But I needed a good lead and it seems to get to the heart of the matter, which has been debated, discussed, and dissected in the Apex blog Reading Writers You Hate by Michael A. Burstein.  I also feel T.J. McIntyre touched on this, if somewhat loosely, in the Apex blog On Faith and F(r)iction.

George Steiner wrote, “…do not listen to a great sculptor or painter on politics… (just) watch his or her hands.” 

I find beauty in this quote. 

However, if that sculptor is throwing clay while shouting racial slurs, how can you not be affected?  How can you not look at his art and see hatred? Read the rest of this entry »

 

I never met James P. Hogan, and I’m glad I didn’t.

Hogan died two weeks ago, on July 12, and when I heard of his death I had a mixed reaction. As a teenager, I had been a fan of Hogan’s work. I enjoy reading hard science fiction about time travel, alternate history, and parallel universes, and as it so happened, Hogan enjoyed writing about them. I can still recall reading The Proteus Operation when it came out in 1985, with its premise that our own history was caused by multiple changes in an original timeline. Hogan’s earlier novel, Thrice Upon a Time, published in 1980, concerned the consequences of being able to send messages from the future into the past (something Gregory Benford also explored in his novel Timescape). Both of Hogan’s books blew my mind (in a good way). He was one of those writers who hit the sweet spot for me. For many years, I kept Hogan on my list of favorite writers whose works I wanted to track down and keep reading. And I did so, throughout the 1980s and the 1990s.

And then around the year 2000 I found out something about Hogan that gave me pause. Apparently, Hogan held the personal belief that the Holocaust was a hoax. Read the rest of this entry »

In the April-May issue of Asimov’s, Norman Spinrad published a controversial On Books column titled “Third World Worlds.”  Spinrad’s comments generated a lot of debate and discussion on the blogosphere, particularly when he displayed what appeared to many as a willful ignorance of science fiction written outside the so-called First World.  In particular, when discussing fiction about Africa, Spinrad failed to mention the many Africans in Africa and writers of African ancestry who are writing science fiction.  This quite understandably irked many people in the field and led to a lot of good discussion responding to Spinrad’s column.

Unfortunately, in the midst of all the replies, an excellent writer named Mike Resnick got caught in the controversy.  Spinrad hailed Resnick as the closest thing science fiction has to an African writer, and a lot of critics, knowing that Resnick is a white American, picked on this statement in particular and were rather dismissive toward him.  It didn’t help that Spinrad compared Resnick to Octavia Butler in what Rose Fox, writing in the Publishers Weekly Genreville blog, rightly called “an entirely gratuitous dig.”

The problem, though, is that people responding to Spinrad’s ignorance also displayed an ignorance when it came to Mike Resnick.  Rather than doing even a modicum of research to understand where Spinrad’s comments on Mike Resnick came from, they simply chose to point out the absurdity of calling him an African writer.  Rose Fox, for example, did Mike a slight disservice when she pointed out how Octavia Butler had a significant connection to her African ancestors, but all she says about Mike Resnick is that “Resnick…went on safari” (ellipses hers).  I understand the point she is legitimately making, which is that Spinrad is being unfair to writers such as Octavia Butler in his blanket statements of who gets it and who doesn’t.  But I think that Rose Fox’s dismissal of Mike’s studies of Africa, and how that has informed his fiction, needs to be addressed.

To his credit, Resnick has chosen not to step into this discussion, and frankly I don’t blame him.  Resnick had no say in what Spinrad said in his column, and the impression I get is that he’s choosing to let his work speak for itself.  However, that doesn’t preclude me from stepping in and defending his record (not that it needs defending).

Before I continue, let me make two things clear.  First of all, I am in no way saying that Mike Resnick is African or African-American when it comes to his race.  I would never make the claim that Resnick is a more “African” writer than a writer who was born and raised in Africa, or a writer who is African-American.  The point I am hoping to make throughout is that Resnick is a writer who understands Africa and African culture better than many of his peers. Read the rest of this entry »

Last month, I discussed the concept of “genre-adjacent” and proposed a few parameters for considering a TV show appealing to science fiction fans even if the show isn’t science fiction or fantasy. I listed a bunch of genre-adjacent shows that my wife Nomi and I have enjoyed, and among them I listed Lost but with the parenthetical note that I only meant the first season. I made that note because although weird things did happen on Lost in the first season, almost all of the oddities could have been explained without resorting to genre elements. But once the second season got underway, the show more explicitly moved into science fiction territory.

And yet there are many fans of the show who stayed with it but who wouldn’t consider themselves genre fans, nor would they consider the show part of the genre. After all, the show also incorporated elements of the Mystery genre and the Romance genre, but it defied being categorized into either of those.

With Lost having come to an end this past Sunday night, I thought I’d devote my monthly blog post to an analysis of where Lost might fall in the genre spectrum. It should be obvious that there are spoilers ahead, so proceed at your own risk.

And for those of you who don’t know anything about Lost, in one sentence, here’s what the show was about: After a plane crashes on a Pacific island, the survivors must figure out what the heck is going on, and why they have flashbacks that show that they all interacted with each other in the past, and why the island seems to have powers and mysteries, and oh forget it; one sentence can’t explain this show.

So, with respect to genre, what was Lost?

Lost was completely disconnected from the genre.

I think we can pretty much eliminate this right off the bat. Even in the first episode, a mysterious monster (which later turns out to be the smoke monster) kills a character in a way that implies a genre element. Then, as the first season progressed, we found out that the island had the power to heal paralysis, and that a child could maybe summon creatures from his imagination, and that a set of numbers could bring both good luck and bad luck…

Yeah, claiming that Lost has no connection to the genre is like claiming that the film The Prestige is merely a movie about magicians in the 19th century.

Lost was absolutely part of Science Fiction.

This is the strongest statement one can make about the show, and it certainly has a lot going for it. In the second season, we learned that the island sits upon a significant source of electromagnetic energy, and we found out about the Dharma Initiative group that wanted to tap into it. This plot element led to the time travel of the fifth season, and if time travel’s not considered science fiction, then what is? Finally, the sixth season showed us an alternate universe coexisting in parallel with the main universe, and the show implied that the alternate universe was caused by a hydrogen bomb explosion. And even if the bomb didn’t create the new universe, at the very least it did throw a bunch of people thirty years into the future (after most of them spent three years in the past). That’s all science fiction, isn’t it? Unless…

Lost was Fantasy

I don’t want to open up the whole can of worms that differentiates fantasy from science fiction here, but let’s just say that science fiction looks to science to explain the impossible, whereas fantasy looks to magic. Lost certainly seemed to walk a fine line between those two possibilities until the series reached the end. The ante-penultimate episode revealed that there was a mystical glowing source in a cave that might be connected to the souls of humanity. The final episode (SPOILERS! SPOILERS! SPOILERS!) presented the alternate universe as a sort of Gateway to Heaven created by all the characters after they had died, a waiting area before they literally headed toward the light. Or maybe it was Purgatory. The blogosphere is still debating. Whatever it was, it definitely drew upon mythical and fantastic traditions, and not science. Which leads me to a final designation…

Lost was Spiritual Fiction

What is Spiritual Fiction? I don’t know; I got the term from a writer friend of mine, Zareh Artinian. However, when I did a search on it, it appears that the term does exist elsewhere, and is considered different from Religious Fiction. In the case of Lost, I think this ends up being the most logical genre because the final point of the show was not to solve the scientific or fantastic mysteries of the island, but to illustrate how the characters’ experiences on the island and throughout their lives led to their final redemption.

Kind of heady for an American TeeVee show, if you think about it.

I suspect that in the end, Lost, like many other books, TV shows, and movies, will defy our attempts to pigenhole it into a genre. And that’s just fine with me.

---

Michael A. Burstein won the 1997 Campbell Award. His short fiction, mostly in Analog, has been nominated for ten Hugos and four Nebulas. He and wife Nomi live in Brookline, Massachusetts, where he is a Library Trustee and Town Meeting Member. He has two physics degrees, and attended Clarion. See www.mabfan.com.

Michael is the author of the collection I Remember the Future: The Award-Nominated Stories of Michael A. Burstein from Apex Publications. The title story earned a 2009 Nebula Award-nomination for Best Short Story.

Michael A. Burstein has been gracious enough to allow Apex the opportunity to make his 2009 Nebula-nominated short story “I Remember the Future” available for free to our readers. The story is from his Apex title I Remember the Future: The Award-Nominated Stories of Michael A. Burstein and was one of two original pieces in the collection.

Follow this link to “I Remember the Future” and enjoy!

I remember the future.

The future was glorious once. It was filled with sleek silver spaceships, lunar colonies, and galactic empires. The horizon seemed within reach; we could almost grasp the stars if we would but try.

I helped to create that future once. We created it out of our blood, sweat, and tears for a penny a word. We churned that future out onto reams of wood pulp paper, only to see the bitter acids of the decades eat it away. I can still smell the freshness of that world, amidst the stale odors left in the libraries, real ink on real paper.

But I despair that no one else does.

***

Smith turned to Angela, whose face was obscured by the glass plate of her helmet. Despite the higher gravity and the bulkiness of his environmental suit, he felt like jumping a hundred feet into the vacuum.

“Angela, look!”

“What is it?” she asked. She reached over with her gloved hands to take the object from him.

“Gently,” he said as he handed over the sheet. “It’s paper. Real paper.”

Angela took it and handled it almost reverently. Once again, she looked around the large cavern at the many inscribed marble columns, flashing her light into every dark corner.

“Paper? That dead wood stuff you told me about? Made from trees?”

Smith nodded. “It’s true. We’ve found the ancient lost library of New Earth. And maybe, just maybe, in these volumes we’ll find the final clue that will lead us to the location of the original human home world.”
– Abraham Beard,
The Searchers (1950)

***

The day after my diagnosis, Emma comes to visit me at home. When she rings the bell, I get up from my seat in the living room, where I’ve been watching Forbidden Planet on DVD for the past hour, and I shuffle over to the front door at the end of the hall.

A cold wind blasts me as I creak open the door. I shiver momentarily as Emma strides past me.

As I shut the door, she opens the hall closet and lets her hands dance upon the hangers. She ignores the empty wooden ones and selects a blue plastic one.

“It’s the middle of the day and you’re still in your bathrobe?” she asks me as she slips off her overcoat.

“I’m retired and it’s the weekend,” I say. “Why should I get dressed up?”

“Because your only daughter is coming to visit? Oh, never mind.” She hangs up her coat.

“Where’s Frank and the kids?” I ask her.

She sniffs. “They decided to stay at home.”

The kids decided to stay at home. My grandchildren, Zachary and Kenneth. Or Zach and Ken, as Emma told me they prefer to be called. I haven’t seen them in months. “They didn’t feel like schlepping out to Queens?”

“It’s too cold.”

“So why the visit?”

Emma purses her lips and glances at the floor. “I thought it would be nice to see you.”

I know there must be more to it than that, but I don’t press it. Emma will tell me in her own sweet time. “Are you hungry?” I ask as we walk to the living room. “Do you want something to eat?”

She smiles. “What are you going to offer this time? A red pepper? A clementine?”

As it so happens, the refrigerator crisper holds many peppers and clementines, but I refuse to give Emma the satisfaction. “I thought you might want some ice cream.”

“Ice cream?” she asks with bemusement. “Sure, I’d love some ice cream. Where is it?”

“It’s in the freezer,” I tell her, although it should be obvious. Where else does one keep ice cream?

***

The first thing Larry noticed was the cold. It filled the core of his being, then slowly began to recede as tendrils of warmth entered his body.

Then he noticed a faint white light, blinking in the distance. Either the light became larger or it moved closer, and it continued to pulsate in a regular rhythm.

And finally he heard a hiss, the sound of air leaking quickly across a barrier. He tried to breathe and felt as if his lungs were filled with liquid. He tried again—

When suddenly a door swung open, and Larry realized that he was floating vertically in a round glass chamber. The gelatinous liquid surrounding him quickly drained, and Larry fell into the arms of two men in silver jumpsuits.

“Easy now,” the taller one said. “Your muscles need time to adjust.”

Larry shook off their support. “I’m fine,” he croaked. He coughed up some fluid and spoke again. “I don’t need any help.”

“If you say so,” the taller man said.

“I do, indeed,” Larry answered. He stretched out of his stoop, and although his legs felt like they would give way, he refused to give these strangers the satisfaction of seeing him fall.

“Where am I? What’s going on?” he asked.

“All in due time,” the shorter man said in a thin, reedy voice.

Larry turned to stare at him. “I am Larry Garner, the richest man on Earth, and I demand you tell me what’s going on, now!”

The two men looked at each other, and the shorter one shrugged. “Usually, we give people more time to adjust, but if you insist–”

“I do!”

“You’re in the future,” the man said. “It’s been two thousand years since you died.”

Larry fainted.
– Abraham Beard,
The Unfrozen (1955)

***

“Earth to Dad? Hello? Are you there?”

Emma is waving a hand in front of my face.

“Sorry,” I say. “I was just thinking. My mind–”

“Was elsewhen. Yeah, I’ve heard that before.”

I realize that we are sitting in the dining room and that Emma has scooped two bowls of ice cream, one for each of us. I pick up my spoon and take a bite. It’s butter pecan.

I hate butter pecan, but I bought some for when Zach and Ken were last here.

The ice cream is very badly freezer-burned. It’s so cold against my tongue that it hurts. I put the spoon down into the bowl and watch Emma eat her ice cream.

“You can take the rest of it when you leave,” I say. “The kids might enjoy it.”

Emma gives me a half-smile. “Even with the cold outside, it’ll probably still melt before I get it home.”

“Oh,” I say.

We sit in silence for a few moments, the only sound the tick of the analog clock in the other room, the clock my wife Sheila bought when we got married, the clock that hangs above the flatscreen television set that Emma and Frank gave me for my last birthday.

“So, how are things?”

“Things are good.”

“The kids doing well at school?”

“Yeah.” Emma smiles. “Zach did a PowerPoint presentation on blogging for one of his teachers.”

I nod and try to keep my face neutral, but Emma sees right through me. “You disapprove?”

“It’s not that,” I say. “It’s just–”

“I know what it is. Rant number twenty-three.”

“I’m not that predictable.”

She crosses her arms. “Fine. Then what were you thinking?”

I pause for a moment, but she doesn’t sound sarcastic, so I say, “When I was growing up, the future seemed so full of possibilities.”

“We have possibilities, Dad.”

I shake my head. “We’ve turned inward. All of us have. We used to dream of a world as big as the sky. Now we’re all hunched over our tiny screens.”

Emma rolls her eyes. “Like I said, rant number twenty-three. Within three sentences, you’re going from the Internet to the lack of a manned space program again.”

“You don’t think it’s a problem?”

“It’s just that I’ve heard it before.”

“The more true something is, the more it bears repeating.”

“Nothing bears repeating if you can’t do anything about it.” She sighs. “I mean, seriously, what did you ever expect me to do at the age of twelve when you first warned me about the eventual heat death of the universe?”

***

The starship HaTikvah had finally made it to the edge of the universe. A hopeful mood filled the souls of the fifty thousand humans and aliens who occupied the ship, each the last of their kind.

On the bridge, Captain Sandra McAllister spoke into her intercom. “Fellow sentients,” she said, “this is the proverbial it. The universe is ending, the embers of the stars are fading into nothing, and in a moment, we’ll tap into the power of Black Hole Omega. If all goes according to plan, we’ll break out of our dying universe and into a new one, one that’s young and vibrant. Our own personal lives will continue, but more importantly we will continue to exist in order to be able to remember all of those who came before us.”

McAllister turned to her first officer and said, “Anytime you’re ready, Jacob. Push the button.”

Jacob nodded and reached out with his spindly fingers to the Doorway Device. But just as he was about to depress the red button, a blast rocked the ship.

“What was that?” he cried out.

Virilion, the ship’s robotic helmsman, replied in a croak, “It’s the Nichashim! They’ve come to stop us!”

McAllister narrowed her eyes. “Like hell they will,” she said. “Virilion, fire at will! Blast them out of our sky!”
– Abraham Beard,
Fire and Ice (1980)

***

“Dad? Dad?”

“You don’t need to shout.”

“You were gone again,” she says.

“Perhaps,” I say, “I’m turning inward because I’m getting old.”

For the first time since she came into the house today, Emma looks worried. “You’re not that old, Dad.”

I smile at Emma to keep her from noticing the wetness I feel in my eyes. “That’s nice of you to say, but it’s not true. I am old.”

“You’re only as old as you feel. You told me that once.”

I shake my head. “It’s hard to feel young when so many of my colleagues are gone.” First Robert, then Isaac, now Arthur, I think, although I don’t say it aloud. I know Emma too well; she might laugh at me for placing myself among such giants.

Instead, she doesn’t seem to know what to say in response. She fidgets for a few seconds, eats some more ice cream, and then changes the subject.

“Listen, Dad, I’m here because I have news.”

“Funny, so do I. You go first.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure. What is it?” I ask.

She takes a deep breath and looks me in the eye. “We’re moving to California.”

***

Jackie looked at the gleaming silver spaceship with portholes running all up and down its sides. She felt more excited than she ever had before in her six years of life. Soon, her family would leave behind this polluted, depressing planet for a new world filled with cool green fields and rich with possibilities.

Jackie’s mother and father held tightly onto her hands as the three of them walked in the line out onto the launching pad. The hoverlift floated next to them carrying their luggage, while Jackie’s robot dog kept running ahead and back toward Jackie, matching her excitement.

Finally, after what seemed like hours but Jackie knew was only minutes according to her chronometer, Jackie and her parents made it to the open hatch of the spaceship. A stewardess, her hair dyed platinum blonde, stood at the doorway greeting the immigrants with a big smile. She took their tickets and welcomed them aboard.

“Is this really it, Dad?” Jackie asked.

Her father removed the pipe from his mouth and smiled. “It is indeed,” he said. “Goodbye, Earth! Next stop, Mars!”
– Abraham Beard,
The Burns Family on Mars (1960)

***

“Dad? You’re gone again.”

“No, I’m not,” I say.

“So.” Emma says. “We’re moving to California.”

“Why?”

She takes a deep breath. “Frank’s got a new job. UCLA is offering him a tenured position. Full professor.”

“UCLA. Hm. California.” I try to sound as noncommittal as possible, although Emma must know how much this news hurts me.

“Yes, California.”

“From what I hear, California is a nice place.”

She frowns and looks puzzled. “Aren’t you going to object?”

“Are you asking me to?”

“Don’t you even want to know why we’re moving?”

“You told me–Frank’s got a job offer.” I pause. “What about you?”

“What about me?”

“I don’t think you’ll be able to keep working at the New York Historical Society if you’re living in L.A. Have you found a job at a museum there?”

Now she pauses before speaking. “I’m not planning to get another job, at least not right away.”

“Oh?”

“I want to be there full-time for the kids.”

I stare into her eyes, seeing the six-year-old girl who wanted nothing more than to be the first astronaut to walk on Jupiter. “Is that really what you want?”

She glares at me. “I think at least one parent should be devoted full-time to raising the kids.”

I feel the sting of her words. I consider once again telling her what I’ve told her before: that times were tough, that money was tight, and that Sheila and I both had to work to support Emma properly. But then I recall the many times I shut the door of my home office on Emma to meet a deadline, and I realize that the time for apologies and explanations has passed far into the mists of time.

***

Samuel walked around the floating cube of mist, careful not to let any of the tendrils touch him. There was nothing else on this plant, for miles around.

The Keeper, still covered entirely in her white garment, walked three paces behind him until he finally came to a stop.

He turned to face her. “Impressive,” he said. “An atmospheric phenomenon?”

She laughed and her hazel eyes twinkled. “You are pretending to be the fool,” she said. “You know better than that.

Samuel nodded; she was right. He did know better, but he had previously allowed his hopes to be raised during his quixotic quest only to have them dashed time and time again.

“Then I’ve really found it?” he asked.

She nodded. “You have indeed.”

Samuel looked back into the white mist. “It’s the gateway of Time,” he said. “I can go anywhen into the time stream I want.”

“It’s the gateway of Time,” the Keeper echoed. “You can go to any time period and any location in the universe you want. But there is one problem.”

Samuel waited. The Keeper remained silent as his watch ticked off the seconds, and so finally he asked, “What’s the problem?”

The Keeper grinned evilly. “The only problem is, once you’ve made your choice and entered the past, you can never return. The trip is one-way and final.”

“So–“

“So choose wisely.”
– Abraham Beard,
Amidst the Mists (1991)

***

“I hope it works out for you,” I say. “You know that I only want what’s best for you and the kids.”

If she notices that I didn’t mention Frank, she doesn’t say anything about it. Instead, she nods and says, “You said before that you had news as well.”

I open my mouth to tell her about my diagnosis, as I had planned to do when she first called to tell me that she and the family wanted to see me, but then I hold back. I’m not dying yet, but I am old, and my doctors say that my mind is not as sharp as it once was and my years are drawing to a close. If I tell her, maybe she and Frank will postpone the move, or at least stay closer to New York City, so I can keep seeing them in my dwindling, final days.

***

The last man on Earth said farewell to the spaceship carrying the rest of humanity to the stars. As the ship became a tiny dot in the sky, he took a deep breath of the fresh air and smiled. Someone had to watch over the planet as it was dying, and it was only right, he felt, that it should be he, and only he.
– Abraham Beard,
The Final Days of Planet Earth (1970)

***

I decide not to tell Emma about the diagnosis. It wouldn’t be fair to her or the kids to add that factor into the equation. But she’s waiting for me to tell her my news, and I only have one other piece of news to share. It’s extremely private, and possibly just the first symptom of my oncoming dementia, but I’ve felt the need to tell someone. And Emma is here, and Sheila is no longer here.

“Emma, may I confide in you?”

She tilts her head. “You never have before.”

I open my mouth to object, and then realize that she has a point.

“Well, I want to confide in you now. You know all those stories, all those novels that I wrote?”

“Yes,” she says flatly. “What about them?”

“My entire life, I never felt like I was coming up with anything on my own.” I stare over her shoulder. “Sometimes, when I was lying awake at two or three in the morning, I would get the feeling that the images in my mind weren’t just things I was making up myself. I felt as if I was a conduit, as if I had lifted an antenna into some sort of cosmic fog and that I was receiving messages, real messages, from the future in my dreams.”

Emma sits stoically as I tell her this. I don’t know what reaction I am hoping for, but Emma rolling her eyes is definitely not it. Still, it’s what she gives me.

“So what’s the news?”

“I’m not really sure,” I say. “You know how I haven’t written anything new for five years now? That’s because the messages stopped. Except…”

“Except what?”

“The dreams have started up again. I’ve been waking up again in the middle of most nights, feeling as if the future is trying to reach me one more time. But as soon as I wake up, the images the future is trying to send me recede into the distance.”

She sighs and stands up; I can’t tell if she’s angry or just frustrated. “You’re bouncing story ideas off of me again, aren’t you?”

“No,” I say, shaking my head. “No, I’m not. This is really happening to me.”

Emma’s expression is pitiful. “So that’s your excuse,” she says softly. “The future was really trying to contact you, and that’s why you always had your head lost in the clouds.”

I try to protest, but, ironically, I have no words. Emma picks up the bowls and used spoons and takes them into the kitchen. I hear her wash them quickly and leave them on the drainer while I sit at the table, unsure of what to say to her to make it all better.

She emerges from the kitchen and dashes through to the hall closet. I hear her put on her coat, and then she is back in the dining room, standing over me.

“Dad, you were always so busy living in the future that you never enjoyed your present. And now you don’t even live in the future anymore. You’re living in the past.”

With that, she walks out of the room and out of the house.

***

Over the next few days, Emma uses my spare set of keys to let herself into the house. She barely nods hello to me as she climbs to the attic and sifts through the boxes, packing away those few remnants that she wants from her childhood.

I want Emma to leave the photographs, but I’ve come to realize that she’s going to have to take them with her anyway if I want my grandsons to continue to remember what their grandfather and grandmother looked like. Emma tells me that she will scan the photos into her computer and send me back the originals, and I just nod.

The days pass far too quickly. Finally, the last morning arrives in which Emma will be coming over to take the last few boxes of possessions. What she doesn’t know as she is driving over is that this morning is also the morning of my final moments on this Earth. And in my final moments on this Earth, I am redeemed.

***

I am lying in my bed, wearing my favorite blue pajamas and peering through my glasses at the small print of a digest magazine. A half-eaten orange on a plate sits on my end table; I can still taste the juice on my tongue and feel a strand of pulp between two right molars.

And then it begins.

A slight breeze wafts toward me from the foot of my bed. I move my magazine aside and look, but I see nothing there but the wall and the closed bathroom door.

As I begin to read again, another breeze flutters my pages. Then the breeze builds, until a gust of wind flows past.

A tiny crack appears in midair, hovering about six and a half feet above the red-carpeted floor. The crack expands into a circular hole. White light emanates from the hole, which gets wider and wider, until it becomes a sphere about six feet in diameter, crackling softly with electricity. A human figure in a silver spacesuit, its face obscured by a helmet, emerges from the sphere with a loud popping sound.

I know this is no illusion, that whatever is happening in front of me is real. I manage to keep my composure and ask, “Who are you?”

The figure grabs hold of its helmet, breaks the seals, and pulls it off.

The astronaut is a woman. She shakes her long blonde hair out of her face and smiles. “You know who I am, Abe. Take a good look.”

I do, and I feel a chill. “It can’t be.”

She nods. “It is.”

“You’re Sandra McAllister. But you’re fictional. You don’t exist. I made you up.”

“Yes, you did make me up. But I do exist.”

“I don’t understand.”

“We figured you might not, but we don’t have a lot of time, so listen carefully. As far as our scientists have been able to determine, every time you wrote a story, you created a parallel universe, a place where the people you thought of really existed. Apparently, your brain has some connection on a quantum level with the zero-point energy field that exists in the multiverse. You’ve managed to bend reality, our reality, so that we ended up existing for real.”

“That’s not possible,” I said.

“You’re a rational man, Abe, I understand that. So explain my presence some other way.”

I know in my heart and soul that I am not hallucinating. And with the impossible eliminated, I am left with the improbable.

“So you’re real?”

“Not just me,” Sandra says.

I start thinking of all the characters I created throughout my career. “Jackson Smith and Angela Jones? Larry Garner? Jackie Burns? Samuel Judson? They’re all real?”

Sandra nods after I recite each name. “They’re all real. We’re all real.”

“Even if so, then how did you break through the barrier between universes? It’s not possible.”

“It is if you harness the energy of a black hole using the Doorway Device.”

I am puzzled for just a moment, and then light dawns. I recall the details of the story cycle from which Sandra comes. “The HaTikva,” I say.

“And the Nichashim,” she adds.

I goggle. “You’re mortal enemies,” I say. “I wrote you that way. How can you be working together?”

“The Nichashim understand that you created them too. We’ve got the two ships tethered together in orbit around New Black Hole Omega.”

I can’t help it; I flip the sheet off of my frail body and swing my legs around so I can stand up and face Sandra. “That’s far too dangerous, Sandra. You could lose both ships in a blink.”

“Which is why you must hurry.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Why do you think I came here?”

“Um, to say hello? To let me know that I didn’t live my life in vain?”

She rolls her eyes. “To rescue you. To cure you of your oncoming sickness, and to impart you with the same immortality you generously granted to all of us.”

“Rescue me? You’re using all that energy, just to rescue me?”

She shrugged. “You’re our father. Why wouldn’t we?”

I feel tears starting in my eyes, and I move forward and hug Sandra as tightly as I can. She holds me as I cry.

“It’s all right, Father,” she says. “We’ve come for you. Welcome home.”

***

The last bit I can only guess at, as I was already gone by then. But the way I see it, as Emma was turning her keys in the lock, the house rumbled, and she heard a loud pop and whoosh coming from upstairs.

“Dad? Dad?” she called out, but I wasn’t there to answer her.

She dashed up the stairs and turned right, toward her father’s bedroom. She pushed the door open, to discover her father already gone, amidst a trace of ozone.

I remembered the future.

And in turn, the future remembered me.

###

Copyright 2008, Michael A. Burstein
“I Remember the Future” was a 2009 Nebula Award nominee for Best Short Story and can be found in Michael’s collection I Remember the Future: The Award-Nominated Stories of Michael A. Burstein

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Michael A. Burstein won the 1997 Campbell Award. His short fiction, mostly in Analog, has been nominated for ten Hugos and four Nebulas. He and wife Nomi live in Brookline, Massachusetts, where he is a Library Trustee and Town Meeting Member. He has two physics degrees, and attended Clarion. His first collection (I Remember the Future: The Award-Nominated Stories of Michael A. Burstein) was released in late 2008 by Apex Publications.

For more information visit www.mabfan.com.

A few months ago, I discussed in this very space the question of genre, and why we pigeonhole works into genres. The main reason, of course, is that those works have elements in common. As consumers of entertainment, we know that if we liked a novel or movie that featured (for example) spaceships, we may very well like another novel or movie that also features spaceships.

But sometimes science fiction fans (such as I) may find themselves interested in reading stories or watching television shows that don’t fall into the science fiction genre but feel like they should.

A few years ago, my wife Nomi and I were on a panel at Arisia with my fellow Apex author Jennifer Pelland. The panel was about television shows that we were watching, and we noted how there were a lot of shows that science fiction fans liked to watch but that weren’t really science fiction. Still, these shows seemed to share elements with science fiction shows that led us to enjoy them. Jennifer used the term “genre-adjacent” to describe these shows, and since I hadn’t heard it before, I tend to credit her with coining it.

But what does “genre-adjacent” mean?

Here’s a list of TV shows that Nomi and I enjoy watching and that I consider genre-adjacent, but which you’re unlikely to see show up in a book on science fiction television:

The West Wing
24
Castle
Chuck
In Plain Sight
Leverage
Burn Notice
Bones
Human Target
White Collar
NUMB3RS
Psych
Lost (first season)

I’ve noticed that a lot of other science fiction fans also like these shows – in fact, there was a panel devoted to The West Wing at a Worldcon a few years back. Thinking about these shows, I’ve come up with a few independent conditions for a show to be considered genre-adjacent.

1. The show has an actual science fiction element to it.

Chuck falls into that category, as the main character is a nebbish who has had a computer program, the Intersect, inserted into his brain. The first Intersect allowed him to access a top secret database, triggering associations whenever he saw a villain whose name and picture was in the database. A newer version of the computer program allows Chuck to access all sorts of skills, mostly hand-to-hand combat, that turns him into a superspy.

And yet, most people wouldn’t call the show part of the genre. It has an SF element, sure, but it’s set in our own world and – this is key – the Intersect is the only SF element in the show. Like many thrillers that rely on technology that is just minutes into the future, Chuck defies being labeled as science fiction. But it is clearly genre-adjacent.

2. The show has “genre sensibilities.”

This is going to get me in trouble, because my main definition for a “genre sensibility” is that I know it when I see it. (Or, as Damon Knight once said, “Science fiction is what we point to when we say science fiction.”) But I think I mean that such a show either makes science an integral part of its story lines or follows a plotting structure designed to appeal to science fiction fans.

A show like Bones, for example, features forensic anthropologists helping to solve crimes. Forensics is the science of solving crimes, and the science is a necessary part of the show. Remove the science, and the show would fall apart.

This also might explain why science fiction fans are interested in shows like Mission: Impossible, Burn Notice, or Leverage. In these shows, characters have to put together a scheme to help out others, and the plotting is similar in style to the kind of thinking a lot of SF readers enjoy. In short, these are puzzle shows, and many SF fans tend to enjoy the intellectual exercise of solving problems.

3. The show has an actor or writer who has worked in the genre before.

This one is a bit of a stretch, but think about it. Why does a show like Castle have such a strong following among science fiction fans? Because of Nathan Fillion, who played Captain Mal Reynolds in Firefly. Bones, which I mentioned before, probably brought along a lot of fans of the TV show Angel, due to the casting of David Boreanaz.

4. We just like it, okay?

Yeah, that last one is a cop-out. But then again, I’ve only touched the surface of what might make a show (or story, or novel, or movie) genre-adjacent. Anyone else want to take a stab at it?

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Michael A. Burstein won the 1997 Campbell Award. His short fiction, mostly in Analog, has been nominated for ten Hugos and four Nebulas. He and wife Nomi live in Brookline, Massachusetts, where he is a Library Trustee and Town Meeting Member. He has two physics degrees, and attended Clarion. See www.mabfan.com.

As a science-fiction writer, I’m used to the idea of time and space warps, but mostly as hypothetical conceits that we can use in our stories to overcome the vast distances inherent in our universe. But recently I’ve discovered that time warps and space warps truly exist. How did I make this discovery? Easily.

Eight months ago, my wife and I became parents to twin baby girls. And first time, and then space, started to warp and weave in the strangest of ways.

In the early days, the time warp became evident. We would methodically feed the first baby and then change her diaper. Then we would feed the second baby and change her diaper. And then, instead of getting a break, we’d suddenly have to go back to the first baby again! The time warp became even more pronounced when this back-and-forth feeding and diapering led to the disappearance of sleep. I made the incredible discovery that a lack of sleep leads to even more warping of time.

As for the space warp, it took a little longer for that to become evident. It used to be that I would put one of my babies down on a play mat on the floor somewhere, and she would stay there. Now, when I turn my head for but an instant, she materializes all the way across the room, merrily pushing buttons on the VCR and DVD player. Surely she can’t be getting there on her own. Obviously, it’s a space warp.

So how is it possible that my babies can manipulate time and space like this? I am forced to come to one simple conclusion: my babies are aliens.

Here’s how I know that my babies are aliens.

1. They communicate in strange ways. Instead of speaking normal English, or any other identifiable Earth language, they make weird “ba-ba” and “da-da” noises. And yet, they seem to understand each other perfectly! Surely they are laughing under our noses as they talk about us in their alien tongues.

2. They put everything in their mouths. I’ve been told that this is because the mouth is the most sensitive part of the body, but this is nonsense. It must simply be the custom in their alien culture to explore things with their mouths rather than with something logical, like the left elbow.

3. They wear NASA jumpsuits. Only babies who have been in space would wear astronaut outfits.

Finally, how do I know that my babies are aliens? Easy. Before my twins were born, writer Tobias Buckell had twins, and shortly after, writer Ken Scholes also had twins. And now I hear that my fellow Nebula nominee, Saladin Ahmed, also has twins on the way. It’s obvious to me what is happening. The aliens are coming to Earth, and to pave the way, they’re appearing in the guise of twin babies born to science-fiction and fantasy writers, since we’re the best equipped to deal with the concept.

So who’s the next writer who’ll be having twins, I wonder?

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Michael A. Burstein won the 1997 Campbell Award. His short fiction, mostly in Analog, has been nominated for ten Hugos and four Nebulas. He and wife Nomi live in Brookline, Massachusetts, where he is a Library Trustee and Town Meeting Member. He has two physics degrees, and attended Clarion. See www.mabfan.com.

Michael is running for re-election as a Library Trustee in Brookline, MA. For more information visit www.bursteinforbrookline.com.

We tend to define a genre by what we call the “elements” of that genre. A lot of these elements are plot points or “furniture” that such stories have in common. Defining a genre is a way of helping readers find new fiction similar to stories they’ve read before and enjoyed. For example, and to be rather simplistic about it, if you have liked previous stories that you have read that have spaceships in them, you’re likely to enjoy reading new stories with spaceships in them.

At the conclusion of my last essay, I said that I’d discuss how I see Romance as a genre fitting into my “flow of acceptance” diagram. As a reminder, the point I made last time is that there is a hierarchy of acceptance when it comes to genre. If a story has elements of both science fiction and mystery, readers will tend to think of it as a Science Fiction story more than as a Mystery story. So those who identify themselves as science fiction readers are more likely to read and enjoy a science fiction mystery than those who identify themselves as mystery readers.

Where does this hierarchy come from? I think reader acceptance of genre elements has to do with one simple concept: realism.

When readers pick up a so-called Mainstream story, one that perhaps we can pigeonhole as “non-genre” if there is such a thing, those readers have certain expectations when approaching that story. In essence, they expect a story set in the real world, in which only real-world things happen. These events may be improbable, or even outlandish, but they wouldn’t violate the natural order of the world as we believe it to exist.

By definition, a science-fiction, fantasy or (supernatural) horror story is not set in that same sort of world. To properly enjoy the story, the reader has to practice what is called “willing suspension of disbelief.” I know that zombies don’t really exist, the reader thinks, but I’ll suspend my disbelief long enough to enjoy, say, The Changed by B.J. Burrow.

And not every reader is equipped to suspend their disbelief this way. Tastes differ, and some readers just don’t enjoy reading tales of the fantastic. For them, any story with elements of science fiction, fantasy, or supernatural horror would be right out. A story with mystery elements would be more acceptable, because crimes do happen and mysteries do get solved in the real world.

But as for romance…ah, as the poet might say, romance is what brings us all together.

Even more so than mystery, people expect that romance will be a part of everyday life. Therefore, if you write a story without any fantastic element in it, but with romance in it, it’ll be more palatable to the non-genre reader.

Let’s look at my “flow of acceptance” again:

Mainstream > Mystery > Science Fiction > Fantasy > Horror

If I were inclined to include the Romance genre, I would revise the flow of acceptance to look like this.

Mainstream > Romance > Mystery > Science Fiction > Fantasy > Horror

I’ve already explained why a science-fiction story with romantic elements in it would not be considered part of the Romance genre. But what makes a Romance story different from a Mainstream story? Why isn’t every Mainstream story with a romance in it considered part of the Romance genre?

To answer that question, believe it or not, I turn to the writer’s guidelines for Analog magazine. You may not think there’s a connection between hard science fiction stories and romance stories, but in my opinion, there is.

For many years, the Analog guidelines have tried to define the type of science-fiction story they’re looking for with the following piece of advice:

“Basically, we publish science fiction stories. That is, stories in which some aspect of future science or technology is so integral to the plot that, if that aspect were removed, the story would collapse. Try to picture Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein without the science and you’ll see what I mean. No story!”

To me, that can also describe the difference between a Romance story and a Mainstream story. From my point of view a story would only fall into the Romance category if the romance is so integral to the plot that to remove it would cause the story to collapse.

Which, in conclusion, explains why I haven’t applied to join the Romance Writers of America, despite my having joined SFWA, HWA, and MWA. Although many of my stories have romances in them, I don’t think of those romances as being as integral to the plot as they might be. Until I get around to writing that Romance novel, I’ll just have to satisfy myself with the other three genres.

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Michael A. Burstein won the 1997 Campbell Award. His short fiction, mostly in Analog, has been nominated for ten Hugos and four Nebulas. He and wife Nomi live in Brookline, Massachusetts, where he is a Library Trustee and Town Meeting Member. He has two physics degrees, and attended Clarion. See www.mabfan.com.

In November, 2008, Apex Publications released Michael’s first collection of stories titled I Rememeber the Future: The Award-Nominated Stories of Michael A. Burstein.