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I wanted to look at the harmful messages that women pass to each other, especially within families’ internalised misogyny that teaches daughters to be ashamed, be quiet, not be like those other women. These are messages that exist despite parents wanting what’s best for their children. I wanted to examine this without pointing the finger at a “bad guy” because family relationships are much more nuanced than that.
In this issue’s short fiction, Eliza Chan explores gender and power across generations in “The Tails That Make You,” and P H Lee’s “A True and Certain Proof of the Messianic Age, with two lemmas” brings us folklore through an algorithmic lens; for flash fiction, Mary Soon Lee explores classic fairy tales through a different lens in “Introduction to Couture 101,” and M. H. Ayinde grows something new in “Girlfriend Material”; for poetry, we have “The God’s Wife” by Nana Afadua Ofori-Atta and “The Himba Destroyer” by Yvette Lisa Ndlovu. Plus! A collective interview (part one of two) with several of the Top Ten Finalists for this year’s Locus Awards, from the Best Fantasy Novel category! Enjoy!
Music is a huge staple of my personal identity, so I think it always reflects one way or another in my work. However, for this in particular, I wanted to show every memory of the past associated with a song, the reigning anthem at that point in the protagonist’s life, as the memories themselves are often painful, and music for me has always been a useful suppressant, redirecting my mind from bitter introspection.
RF Kuang is a Marshall Scholar, Chinese-English translator, and the Astounding Award-winning and the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and World Fantasy Award nominated author of the Poppy War trilogy and the forthcoming Babel. Her work has won the Crawford Award and the Compton Crook Award for Best First Novel. She has an MPhil in Chinese Studies […]
It’s always intrigued me that insects—creatures we rarely think about except when we are hellbent on exterminating them—are the repository of so much folk belief. They’re divine messengers, symbols of soul or scourge, portends of death and new beginnings. It’s no coincidence that, in our day and age, immigrants are represented by the monarch butterfly, which flies as far as 3,000 miles across the continental Americas to reach home.
In the July issue of Fantasy Magazine . . . Short fiction by Boloere Seibidor (“Odd Peas in a Pod) and Sabrina Vourvoulias (“The Memory of Chemistry”); flash fiction by Lindsey Godfrey Eccles (“A Star is Born”) and Michelle Muenzler (“The Life and Death of Atomic Tangerine”); poetry by Shilpa Kamat (“Goldilocks”) and AJ Wentz (“Self-Inflicted Haunt”); and an interview with author RF Kuang.
As writers, we’re commonly asked which authors have influenced our work. As a follow-up question, we may be prompted to discuss movies, TV series, media properties, etc. that have been impactful in shaping our writing. These are valid questions that shed light on our creative impetus, style, and tastes. That said, such questions often give me pause. In responding, I must make the decision to provide what I perceive as the expected answer, or challenge the assumption that the major influence on my writing has been my consumption of narratives in a physical or visually recorded form.
First, the emotional core of the story was inspired by a conversation I had with my younger brother. He asked me, “If we were in an anime showdown, and we had to fight each other to the death, who would win?” and I knew my answer immediately. I said, “You would win. I wouldn’t fight—I’d let you best me. I wouldn’t want to go on after besting you.” That conversation stuck with me, and I had that scenario in mind as the story’s climax since the very beginning.
When I use storytelling, I don’t want to shy away from the harshness. To some extent, it is an unfortunate inheritance I have to deal with. The person I am, I will have to bring to life stories containing pain. At the same time I also want to explore the logical end of a world that has grown tired of cruelty and builds itself anew in unexpected, interesting ways, with more imaginative and hopeful hearts.
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