A Fresh Start

This year has been a complicated one. There have been the extreme joys of watching my son in his first year of life, the awe of each new discovery he makes and the ongoing marvel that he is indeed my son and I am a father. Not sure I'll ever get used to that bit but it is fantastic.

Then there's been the downsides. The biggest being the loss of my father-in-law to cancer. He battled the disease for over a year and for much longer than was initially predicted. He was a good man and it was good to see him with my son, they got on so well and shared many laughs. I won't say any more about that here, but he is sorely missed in this house.

On top of that I was made redundant from a job I'd had for almost a decade. I didn't love the job but losing it so suddenly shook me up and my sense of purpose. As it happened the timing was very good, I was able to be there for my wife when her mother was sick and she had to look after her father. I also got to see more of my son as he learnt to crawl and stand and so much more.

And now it seems that I have two options. I could find another job I don't love just to make an income, or I could have a go at creating my own niche and living my creative dreams. I will still need a job of some description, at least initially, but I think it's important I take this opportunity to live my life my way.

Already I've written a short story which I submitted to an anthology which is coming out in December. I won't know if my story will be included for another month I imagine but it was good to write and finish something. As it happens it was a prequel for one of the minor characters in The Scarlet Ring, the sequel of which I'll be having another go at in NaNoWriMo.

So there's writing going on; I'm going to look into recording audiobooks to release on Bandcamp; and I'll offer my copy editing services to people who have written manuscripts and plays.

A bleak year is turning around. A pitfall is becoming an opening to a new opportunity and Stoppard's Player from Ros & Guil are Dead was distinctly correct, every exit is an entrance some place else. Screw plan B, grab your chances and ...

Keep dreaming!

Initial Response to Each to Each by Seanan McGuire

I just read the opening story in Lightspeed No 49, the Women Destroy Science Fiction Special. It's Each to Each by Seanan McGuire. I'm torn over it in a number of ways.

It's about a Navy made up of genetically modified women, essentially engineered mermaids, and how the 'modifications' as they're called have unexpected consequences. The women begin to feel non-human, to lose all connection with land dwellers and to have a deep emotional and psychological connection with each other. It's a great idea and well examined in the story which is well written and clearly had an effect on me.

As I come to write this next point I realise I'm not as torn as I first thought. The idea of altered humans and the mysteries of the deeps reminded me of pulp age stories and I was thinking of ways it could have worked better in those terms. I was thinking about its atmosphere and how it could have been built up with a greater sense of fear of the unknown - as with the pulp horror I was thinking of. I even started to think how changing the narrator to the unaltered captain could have helped and thinking of ways the story could still work.

And now I realise that's the problem. The plot could still develop but the story would be irreparably altered. Fear of the unknown was not the point - in fact there's a certain lure to it. The story is about the new type of women, the way they've been shaped by the military which is driven by society, and how in so doing a new community/species/world is created. It does that perfectly. Is it an analogy for how society tries to shape women the way it wants them to look? Yeah I'd say so, there are parts that rather beat the reader over the head with that message, but it also goes beyond that to raise questions of humanity. It doesn't answer them, just raise them.

So it reflects society as it is but peers into deeper issues at the same time - which is the point of science fiction isn't it? I'm not so torn after all, I just needed to adjust my headset. Well done Seanan McGuire.

Keep dreaming!