All ample proof that Eileen Gunn really is the business.
Vancouver, 5 14 04
PREFACE: The Secret of Writing
Eileen Gunn
October, 1987. Armadillocon, then the hippest science fiction convention on the face of the earth. I ran into Bill Gibson.
“We have to talk,” he said. “I’ve discovered the secret of writing.”
Gibson is a master of the conversational hook.
We sat down. We got caught up. Someone came and dragged Bill off to opening ceremonies, of which he was an essential part. Then things moved faster and faster, and pretty soon the weekend was over.
Two weeks later, at home in Seattle, I answered the phone. It was Gibson. “I forgot to tell you the secret of writing,” he said.
“Okay,” I said. “What’s the secret of writing?”
A beat, for emphasis. Then: “You must learn to overcome your very natural and appropriate revulsion for your own work.”
It was the most useful writing advice anyone has ever given me.
Hooray for Eileen!
Michael Swanwick
Hooray for Eileen and her bully machine
That turns out such volumes of stuff!
Some think it queer
She’s so seldom here
Few find her absence enough.
She lives in this town
(At least, here’s where’s she’s foun
d); She is graced with a runcible style.
Some think that she should
Write what they wish they could
But she freezes them out with a smile.
Let’s all celebrate
Before it’s too late
And time’s wingéd chariot’s seen,
That queen of the text,
Seldom sour, never vexed,
Eileen! — and her bully machine.
Michael Swanwick
July 16, 1994
Seattle
acknowledgments
My thanks to Paul G. Allen, Leota Anthony, Brian Attebery, Steve Ballmer, Stephen P. Brown, A. Fluffy Bunny, Jonathan Canick, Susan Casper, Victoria Cooper, Karen Corsano, Ann M. Dailey, Ellen Datlow, Avram Davidson, Cory Doctorow, Gardner Dozois, Ron Drummond, L. Timmel Duchamp, Warren Ellis, Carol Emshwiller, Karen Fishler, Karen Joy Fowler, Jeffrey Frederick, The Fugs, Bill Gates, William Gibson, Jeanne Gomoll, Joe and Gay Haldeman, Dottie Hall, Sam Hamill, Rowland Hanson, Rachel Holmen, the Holy Modal Rounders, Leslie Howle, Nicholas D. Humez, Michael Hurley, James Patrick Kelly, John Kessel, Ellen Klages, Damon Knight, Mari Kotani, Eleanor Lang, Ursula K. Le Guin, Kelly Link, Diane Mapes, Don McAlister, Vonda N. McIntyre, Bob Morales, Pat Murphy, Debbie Notkin, Paul Novitski, Robert O’Brien, Spike Parsons, Linn Prentis, John S. Quarterman, Joanna Russ, Geoff Ryman, Jessica Amanda Salmonson, Tony Sarowitz, Peter H. Salus, Kate Schaefer, Scott Scidmore, Nisi Shawl, Willie Siros, Bruce Sterling, Michael Swanwick, Avon Swofford, Takayuki Tatsumi, Tamara Vining, Howard Waldrop, Don Webb, Wendy Wees, Jacob Weisman, Henry Wessells, Leslie What, Kate Wilhelm, Sheila Williams, Connie Willis, Robin Scott Wilson, Jack Womack, and to my family, and to all the others who have helped make my writing better and have kept me creatively and financially on track.
STABLE STRATEGIES AND OTHERS
To my partner John D. Berry
and my nieces Erin Gunn and Kelsey Gunn
Stable Strategies for Middle Management
Our cousin the insect has an external skeleton made of shiny brown chitin, a material that is particularly responsive to the demands of evolution. Just as bioengineering has sculpted our bodies into new forms, so evolution has changed the early insect’s chewing mouthparts into her descendants’ chisels, siphons, and stilettos, and has molded from the chitin special tools — pockets to carry pollen, combs to clean her compound eyes, notches on which she can fiddle a song. — From the popular science program Insect People!
I awoke this morning to discover that bioengineering had made demands upon me during the night. My tongue had turned into a stiletto, and my left hand now contained a small chitinous comb, as if for cleaning a compound eye. Since I didn’t have compound eyes, I thought that perhaps this presaged some change to come.
I dragged myself out of bed, wondering how I was going to drink my coffee through a stiletto. Was I now expected to kill my breakfast, and dispense with coffee entirely? I hoped I was not evolving into a creature whose survival depended on early-morning alertness. My circadian rhythms would no doubt keep pace with any physical changes, but my unevolved soul was repulsed at the thought of my waking cheerfully at dawn, ravenous for some wriggly little creature that had arisen even earlier.
I looked down at Greg, still asleep, the edge of our red and white quilt pulled up under his chin. His mouth had changed during the night too, and seemed to contain some sort of a long probe. Were we growing apart?
I reached down with my unchanged hand and touched his hair. It was still shiny brown, soft and thick, luxurious. But along his cheek, under his beard, I could feel patches of sclerotin, as the flexible chitin in his skin was slowly hardening to an impermeable armor.
He opened his eyes, staring blearily forward without moving his head. I could see him move his mouth cautiously, examining its internal changes. He turned his head and looked up at me, rubbing his hair slightly into my hand.
“Time to get up?” he asked. I nodded. “Oh God,” he said. He said this every morning. It was like a prayer.
“I’ll make coffee,” I said. “Do you want some?”
He shook his head slowly. “Just a glass of apricot nectar,” he said. He unrolled his long, rough tongue and looked at it, slightly cross-eyed. “This is real interesting, but it wasn’t in the catalog. I’ll be sipping lunch from flowers pretty soon. That ought to draw a second glance at Duke’s.”
“I thought account execs were expected to sip their lunches,” I said.
“Not from the flower arrangements…,” he said, still exploring the odd shape of his mouth. Then he looked up at me and reached up from under the covers. “Come here.”
It had been a while, I thought. And I had to get to work. But he did smell terribly attractive. Perhaps he was developing aphrodisiac scent glands. I climbed back under the covers and stretched my body against his. We were both developing chitinous knobs and odd lumps that made this less than comfortable. “How am I supposed to kiss you with a stiletto in my mouth?” I asked.
“There are other things to do. New equipment presents new possibilities.” He pushed the covers back and ran his unchanged hands down my body from shoulder to thigh. “Let me know if my tongue is too rough.”
It was not.
Fuzzy-minded, I got out of bed for the second time and drifted into the kitchen.
Measuring the coffee into the grinder, I realized that I was no longer interested in drinking it, although it was diverting for a moment to spear the beans with my stiletto. What was the damn thing for, anyhow? I wasn’t sure I wanted to find out.
Putting the grinder aside, I poured a can of apricot nectar into a tulip glass. Shallow glasses were going to be a problem for Greg in the future, I thought. Not to mention solid food.