Eugene Fischer

Category: Writing

Recent Writing by Friends of Mine

My friends are talented and prolific! Look at their things!

NONFICTION:

  • “Luxury Shopping, From The Other Side of the Register” – In December Carmen Machado wrote for the New Yorker about what it’s like to be working retail during the busiest shopping days of the year.
  • “Bummed Out and Ugly” – Alice Sola Kim with a beautiful and personal remembrance of Philip K. Dick.
  • “Crossroads and Coins: A Review of Naomi Mitchison’s Travel Light” – Amal El-Mohtar writing for NPR, another quite personal piece. Having recently read the book myself, I can confirm that it is as delightful as Amal claims.
  • “Scattered Leaves” – Ben Mauk writing for the New Yorker about the current practice of dismembering ancient manuscripts and selling individual pieces of them on eBay, as well as the long history of “book breaking.”
  • “To Flip a Flop” – Also in the New Yorker, Elizabeth Weiss writes about the economics of the broadway show, using the example of the largely unsuccessful Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark.

FICTION:

  • “The Glitch” – Rebekah Frumkin shows off her talent for claustrophobic interiority and familiarity with 64-bit Zelda games in this story at Granta.
  • “The Engineers” (pdf link) – Rebecca Rukeyser with a story in the Massachusetts Review of expatriate courtship in South Korea.

The Traditional Ceremony of Robots

Another semester done, another class of fearless Science Fictionauts heading out into the future with their robot companions.

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Writing and Reading Science Fiction, University of Iowa, Fall 2013

Interviews: Nathan Ballingrud, Kelly Link

In the last couple of days two great interviews have hit the net. The first is a Weird Fiction Review interview with author Nathan Ballingrud, whose collection North American Lake Monsters is getting wide acclaim and is sitting next to my bed this very moment, probably making every other book in the room nervous. In the interview Nathan talks about his artistic goals, and lists a ton of favorite pieces of horror fiction.

With the stories in North American Lake Monsters, I wanted to write pieces that hurt. I wanted to write about people we’re conditioned to regard as contemptible, or dull, or even as villains, and get to their humanity. If I can get a reader to feel some empathy for somebody on the cusp of joining a white supremacy movement, or an ex-con who treats his own family with the same hostile suspicion he felt for other inmates, or a man who turns his back on his mentally ill wife, then I’ve succeeded in my intent. I have no interest in redeeming any of these characters, necessarily. But we live in a society that encourages us to view each other in simplistic and tribalistic terms, and that leads to an erosion of empathy, which is destructive to the human condition – to our ability to live successfully in an integrated society. It’s important that we look at people we think of as evil or irredeemable, and find the thing inside them that can still be loved. We’re doomed, if we can’t do that.

The second is Meghan McCarron interviewing Kelly Link for Gigantic Magazine. The talk about Kelly’s love for The Vampire Diaries, and pattern in stories, and Kelly’s forthcoming collection Get In Trouble. Click through for two of the most brilliant people I know riffing on what kinds of storytelling are exciting them these days. Also, Kelly’s favorite contemporary vampire stories!

I’m no longer watching television in which middle-aged men figure out how to be men. I’d rather watch shows about teenaged girls figuring out what it means to be a monster. I like coming-of-age stories, ghost stories, horror stories. I love stories about doppelgangers.

New Writing: Ted Chiang, Ben Mauk, Carmen Machado

New things for you to read!

“Especially Heinous: 272 Views of Law & Order SVU” by Carmen Machado

The best new thing on the internet today is this novella by Carmen Machado. I saw a draft of this story in workshop when she wrote it, and have been waiting impatiently ever since for the day when I could share my enthusiasm for it with everyone else. It’s a hypnotic and haunting look at the cultural reception of sexual violence, and structured to make reading it feel like you are on a secret Netflix binge. It’s brilliant. No familiarity with the show is required.

Read “Especially Heinous: 272 Views of Law & Order SVU” at the American Reader.

New Tradition

To the best of my knowledge there had never been a class specifically on fantasy at Iowa before, and robots didn’t seem thematically appropriate anyway, so for my Fantasy Fiction Writing class I gave my students tiny Cthulhus to end the term. Here they are, course complete, conquered gods in hand.

(Fantasy) Fiction Writing, University of Iowa, Spring 2013.

(Fantasy) Fiction Writing, University of Iowa, Spring 2013.

Tradition

“It is traditional,” Kevin Brockmeier said, “to end every science fiction workshop at Iowa with gifts of robots.” It was the end of Spring semester 2012, and he had just finished teaching the first such graduate workshop that Iowa had ever offered. He passed a box of wind-up robots around the class. Mine was Bender from Futurama, holding a beer can and a magic wand, wearing a blond wig and a tutu printed with the words, “Gender Bender.”

It’s now the end of the Fall semester of 2012, and I just finished teaching the first Fiction Writing class for undergraduates devoted specifically to science fiction. Seventeen students read and wrote about genre classics, wrote stories of their own, and workshopped the fiction of their peers. At the end, in accordance with tradition, I got them some robots. Here are the intrepid Science Fictionauts of the University of Iowa, with their steadfast automata companions.

(Science) Fiction Writing, University of Iowa, Fall 2012

 

My Fortune

(Click to enlarge.)

On Genre Writers and MFA Programs

I couldn’t attend ICFA this year, but I’ve been following along as best I can on social networks. Earlier today Nick Mamatas livetweeted a panel discussion on graduate school and job possibilities for writers with MFAs/PhDs. Apparently someone (or several someones) at this panel expressed an opinion that Nick summarized as “Genre writers seeking MFAs shouldn’t do only genre in samples or classes. Or try milder non-real not hardcore space opera.” I think that, in the absence of a discussion about why one is seeking an MFA in the first place, this advice is misguided.

If your only goal is to receive an MFA, and you either do not care about or consider it of secondary importance where you go and what kind of experience you have, then sure, you can probably maximize the statistical likelihood of MFA program X accepting you by leaning toward realism in your writing sample. But if what you want is to spend a few years working on your writing in the company of supportive teachers and receptive peers, then you do yourself a disservice by misrepresenting the kind of writing you plan to focus on. If hardcore space opera is what you want to write, finagling an acceptance to an MFA program where you will be told that exploding spaceships are a waste of the workshop’s time is a pyrrhic victory.

I applied to MFA programs with a portfolio that consisted entirely of genre fiction, and made it clear in my personal statement that I intended to continue perpetrating genre at any program that accepted me. My theory was that, as a person primarily interested in being a science fiction writer, I wanted to be rejected by any program with a culture unsupportive of that goal. I was rejected by 4/5 of the programs I applied to, but accepted by the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Iowa, I came to learn, is actively expanding the varieties of fiction they champion. I’m the only pure SF writer in my class, but this semester they have Kevin Brockmeier teaching Iowa’s first-ever graduate workshop specifically devoted to science fiction and fantasy. We are discussing stories by authors like Theodora Goss, Arthur C. Clarke, and J. G. Ballard, and everyone is trying their hands at some variety of fabulism. (And if Kevin hadn’t chosen to do a class on SF, the other visiting professor, Andrew Sean Greer, says he would have.) More personally, I was just awarded a fellowship for my second year, on the basis of the stories I wrote my first semester: one hard SF story, one fantasy story. I’m having a wonderful experience, and I feel valued both as a student and as part of a project to diversify my program’s literary culture. That’s a project I couldn’t have been selected for if I hadn’t signaled my writing intentions in my application.

So, to summarize, my advice for genre writers looking to get MFAs is this: if what you are looking for is a good experience, rather than just a degree, don’t try to juke the system. Write the kind of stories you want to write. Write them as well as you can. Then let the MFA faculties do their jobs and decide whether or not you are a good fit for their program. That way you can be confident that any program which accepts you is interested in supporting the kind of fiction you are passionate about.

Facebook Meme: How Did We (Not) Meet?

A few months ago there was a meme on Facebook that I particularly liked. The core of it read:

I would like my Facebook friends to comment on this status, sharing how you met me. But I want you to LIE. That’s right, just make it up. After you comment, copy this to your status, so I can do the same.

There were plenty of fun responses. These were my favorites.

Sarah Miller

How she met me:

We bumped into the street, our glasses fell off, I accidentally grabbed yours, you accidentally grabbed mine …. little did I know that your glasses in fact housed a sentient mini-computer with decided opinions about how I ought to be living my life.

How I met her:

It’s amazing that you noticed me at all. You had been leading your tours through the cavern for the barest flash of an instant, just a decade or two. “These structures formed over millions of years,” you buzzed. “This chamber was undisturbed for millennia.” When no one else was with you, you sat silent playing your light over my face. You were nearly a child when my eyes opened, and an old wrinkled thing by the time they closed. You will surely be dead when I open them again, but we shared a moment.

Kat Howard

How she met me:

 I don’t usually chase down people in the street, it’s simply that I’m very picky about my coffee. And I told you the cup was mine, and you didn’t listen, and my head was aching, and.

Well. I’m sorry about the stitches, but the scar should be very interesting.

How I met her:

The requisition order clearly called for part #A0-73462, a self lubricating ball bearing. That you were delivered instead was not my fault, and it was a grave injustice when they severed my linkages to The Superstructure. Left bereft, I had no choice but to fall in with your anarchic league.

Dan Pinney

How he met me:

I admit, I was taken in. That Fischer dude, he is a smooth character.

So he told me, over the phone, he had a thing he had to sell, on the QT. Weird tech. I didn’t know what it was, and honestly I still don’t. I gave him ten bills for it, exchange made under the table, in a bar in Houston. I probably had too much to drink that night, but, well, you know.

So he got the money, I got something that I think, given the research I’ve done, was probably some part of the innards of a microwave or some damn thing. Him, well, you hear his name dropped on the nightly news from time to time, usually when they’re talking about some sort of green technology thing. Only green I think about when I think about him, of course, is those ten bills.

I tell you, the man is good.

How I met him:

You were showing off, of course. Broke into the hookah bar with your friends and stole a pipe and an unlabeled box of shisha that you really shouldn’t have touched. You took it back to the shed behind your parents garage, warmed the coals on a hot plate. But the smoke made you feel lightheaded in a way it never had before, and when you blew a smoke ring to impress Melanie from down the street, I came tumbling out still glistening from my bath. I hate this place with its enormous dullards and empty sky. You will know no peace until you find a way to return me to my home!

Megan Kurashige

How she met me:

Oh. My. God. You know that mad scientist bloke who lives up the road? Well, I can’t expect you to believe it, but he has got the most miraculous theater built into the basement of his house. Not the basement proper, but this room, this palatial, expansive place that you can only get to through an absolute warren of tunnels. You walk and you walk and you carry on walking through the dark with only a torch in your hand (no, silly, not a REAL torch, an electric one). And you keep on walking until your nose bumps up against the heavy red of a velvet curtain, and then you have a choice. Pull it aside. Or, leave it shut. Because you know what’s on the other side, don’t you? (Oh, of course you don’t.) Nothing. There’s exactly nothing there, not til you make the choice. And then, when you do, it’s whatever the mad scientist sees fit to put there, for you, in that exact moment.

How I met her:

I had heard for years about the cosmetologist, who hasn’t? But it wasn’t until the accident, when it seemed there was nothing left worth wrapping fingers around and holding fast to that I sought you out. I chased whispers into basements and down alleys and over rooftops until I found you. You tilted me back in your chair and painted a new face on me, the face of someone else, someone who still knew how to value things in this world. I never looked out through my own eyes again.

Dana Huber

How she met me:

Church– you were the only person to realize my ‘speaking in tongues’ was actually an epileptic attack. Thank god you called the ambulance!

How I met her:

>run VirusScan
**Scanning**
**Virus Detected.**
>delete virus
**Virus Removal Failed. See Log File.***
>open log file
# 2008-06-29 - [VirusScan] - Kill signal received
# 2008-06-29 - [???} - Message: Hey, stop it.
# 2008-06-29 - [???} - Message: This filesystem and I are just getting acquainted.
# 2008-06-29 - [???} - Message: Whatever happened to basic hospitality?

Ferrett Steinmetz

How he met me:

We have never met. You do not actually know I exist. In fact, you will never read these words and retain them to memory, for the moment you read them the link between short-term memory and long-term memory will be temporarily severed.

I do occasionally appear in your dreams, or in Facebook statuses, or in glowing IMs on your computer to issue commands I’d like carried out. Sometimes they’re simple: EAT MISO SOUP. Sometimes they’re more complex emotional urges, and you wonder why you’re so attracted to that girl even though you know she’s wrong for you.

I have my own agenda. You can only hope it’s good for you, in those remaining seconds before your short-term memory cuts out and the focused blindsight I’ve induced in seeing my name in other circles kicks in again and you go on your merry way, oblivious.

By the way. You’re welcome for that writing workshop. I have plans for you there, too.

How I met him:

I was the only one who knew from the beginning it wasn’t me you wanted. After all, I was just the intern on the ship, tagging along on a seafloor mapping project for course credit. But it had become clear weeks ago that I was going to be allowed to do little more than turn winches on and off, change filters, and sit in a chair for hours making sure there were no feed interruptions. So when your zodiac bumped against the hull and your crew climbed onto the deck with your guns to take the ship, I knew it wasn’t me you were after. But when you changed the ship’s heading toward the undersea cable and explained that the internet was a more valuable hostage than any hold full off eggheads, I could tell that my bosses were almost hurt it wasn’t them you were after either. I fell in love with you a little bit for that.

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