The Long List Anthology 2 Read online

  The Long List Anthology

  Volume 2

  More Stories from the Hugo Award Nomination List

  Edited by David Steffen

  THE LONG LIST ANTHOLOGY VOLUME 2: More Stories from the Hugo Award Nomination List

  edited by David Steffen

  www.diabolicalplots.com

  Copyright © 2016 David Steffen

  Stories copyright © 2015 by the authors

  All rights reserved.

  Published by Diabolical Plots, L.L.C.

  “Worldcon,” “World Science Fiction Society,” “WSFS,” “World Science Fiction Society,” “Hugo Award,” the Hugo Award Logo, and the distinctive design of the Hugo Award trophy rocket are service marks of the World Science Fiction Society, an unincorporated literary society.

  Cover art: original art by Galen Dara © 2016

  Cover layout by Pat R. Steiner

  Layout: Polgarus Studio

  I dedicate this book to my family, to the Dire Turtles, to Codex, to everyone who else who has supported me along the way.

  Contents

  Permissions

  Foreword

  Damage • David D. Levine

  Pockets • Amal El-Mohtar

  Today I am Paul • Martin L. Shoemaker

  The Women You Didn’t See • Nicola Griffith

  Tuesdays With Molakesh the Destroyer • Megan Grey

  Wooden Feathers • Ursula Vernon

  Three Cups of Grief, By Starlight • Aliette de Bodard

  Madeleine • Amal El-Mohtar

  Neat Things • Seanan McGuire

  Pocosin • Ursula Vernon

  Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers • Alyssa Wong

  So Much Cooking • Naomi Kritzer

  The Deepwater Bride • Tamsyn Muir

  The Heart’s Filthy Lesson • Elizabeth Bear

  Grandmother-nai-Leylit’s Cloth of Winds • Rose Lemberg

  Another Word For World • Ann Leckie

  The Long Goodnight of Violet Wild • Catherynne M. Valente

  Our Lady of the Open Road • Sarah Pinsker

  The Pauper Prince and the Eucalyptus Jinn • Usman T. Malik

  The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps • Kai Ashante Wilson

  Acknowledgments

  Backer Appreciation

  About the Editor

  Permissions

  “Damage” by David D. Levine. Copyright © 2015 by David D. Levine. First published on Tor.com, January 21. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Pockets” by Amal El-Mohtar. Copyright © 2015 by Amal El-Mohtar. First published in Uncanny Magazine Issue Two. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Today I am Paul” by Martin L. Shoemaker. Copyright © 2015 by Martin L. Shoemaker. First published in Clarkesworld #107. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “The Women You Didn’t See” by Nicola Griffith. Copyright © 2015 by Nicola Griffith. First published in Letters to Tiptree, edited by Alexandra Pierce and Alisa Krasnostein, published by Twelfth Planet Press. Reprinted by permission of the author and Twelfth Planet Press.

  “Tuesdays With Molakesh the Destroyer” by Megan Grey. Copyright © 2015 by Megan Grey. First published in Fireside Issue 19. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Wooden Feathers” by Ursula Vernon. Copyright © 2015 by Ursula Vernon. First published in Uncanny Magazine Issue Seven. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Three Cups of Grief, By Starlight” by Aliette de Bodard. Copyright © 2015 by Aliette de Bodard. First published in Clarkesworld #100. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Madeleine” by Amal El-Mohtar. Copyright © 2015 by Amal El-Mohtar. First published in Lightspeed Issue 61 (Queers Destroy Science Fiction special issue). Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Neat Things” by Seanan McGuire. Copyright © 2015 by Seanan McGuire. First published in Letters to Tiptree, edited by Alexandra Pierce and Alisa Krasnostein, published by Twelfth Planet Press. Reprinted by permission of the author and Twelfth Planet Press.

  “Pocosin” by Ursula Vernon. Copyright © 2015 by Ursula Vernon. First published in Apex Magazine Issue 68. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers” by Alyssa Wong. Copyright © 2015 by Alyssa Wong. First published in Nightmare Magazine Issue 37 (Queers Destroy Horror special issue). Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “So Much Cooking” by Naomi Kritzer. Copyright © 2015 by Naomi Kritzer. First published in Clarkesworld #110. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “The Deepwater Bride” by Tamsyn Muir. Copyright © 2015 by Tamsyn Muir. First published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction July/August 2016. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “The Heart’s Filthy Lesson” by Elizabeth Bear. Copyright © 2015 by Elizabeth Bear. First published in Old Venus, edited by George R. R. Martin and Gardner Dozois, published by Titan Books. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Grandmother-nai-Leylit’s Cloth of Winds” by Rose Lemberg. Copyright © 2015 by Rose Lemberg. First published in Beneath Ceaseless Skies #175. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Another Word for World” by Ann Leckie. Copyright © 2015 by Ann Leckie. First published in Future Visions: Original Science Fiction Inspired by Microsoft, edited by Microsoft and Melcher Media. Reprinted by permission of the author, Microsoft, and Melcher Media (https://news.microsoft.com/futurevisions/)

  “The Long Goodnight of Violet Wild” by Catherynne M. Valente. Copyright © 2015 by Catherynne M. Valente. First published in Clarkesworld #100 and 102. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Our Lady of the Open Road” by Sarah Pinsker. Copyright © 2015 by Sarah Pinsker. First published in Asimov’s Science Fiction June 2015. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “The Pauper Prince and the Eucalyptus Jinn” by Usman T. Malik. Copyright © 2015 by Usman T. Malik. First published on Tor.com, April 22. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps” by Kai Ashante Wilson. Copyright © 2015 by Kai Ashante Wilson. First published by Tor.com Publishing. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  Foreword

  Here we are in the second volume of the Long List Anthology: More Stories From the Hugo Award Nomination List. The first volume released last year has far exceeded my expectations, and I am delighted to be publishing a second volume this year.

  The premise is the same as last year. The Hugo Awards are a fan-voted award, you can nominate and vote if you pay for a Supporting Membership to that year’s WorldCon. One of the perks of the Supporting Membership is that you get the Hugo Packet, downloadable copies of many of the works on the final ballot. After the Hugo Award ceremony, they also publish a longer list of nominated works. I’ve used this list for years as a recommended reading list, and I’ve always felt that this list gets less attention than it deserves. The Long List Anthology collects many of the stories from that longer nomination list into one anthology.

  This year the stories in the anthology include all five of the stories nominated for the first year of the Eugie Foster Memorial Award. The Eugie Award honors stories that are irreplaceable, that inspire, enlighten, and entertain, stories that are beautiful, thoughtful, and passionate, and change us and the field.

  Last year’s cover art was a reprint created by Galen Dara. This year’s cover is also by Galen Dara, but she has created brand new art just for this cover. And it is gorgeous.

  Also, this year there are a couple of nonfiction entries among the fiction. One of the works on the “Best Related Work” category was a book titled Letters To Tiptree, edited by Alexandra Pierce and Alisa Krasnostein, published by Twelfth Planet P
ress. The book consists of letters written by contemporary writers addressed to James Tiptree Jr..(the pen name of Alice Sheldon). I thought this would be a good opportunity to try a bit of nonfiction in the anthology—so there are two letters in this book, one written by Seanan McGuire and one written by Nicola Griffith.

  I sincerely hope you enjoy these stories as much as I have, and if readers like what I’ve put together here I’d like to repeat the project next year.

  —David Steffen, December 2016—

  Damage

  By David D. Levine

  I never had a name.

  My designation was JB6847½, and Specialist Toman called me “Scraps.” But Commander Ziegler—dear Commander Ziegler, primary of my orbit and engine of my trajectory—never addressed me by any name, only delivering orders in that crisp magnificent tenor of his, and so I did not consider myself to have one.

  That designation, with the anomalous one-half symbol, was a bit of black humor on Specialist Toman’s part. It was the arithmetic average of NA6621 and FC7074, the two wrecked craft which had been salvaged and cobbled together to create me. “There wasn’t enough left of either spaceframe for any kind of paperwork continuity,” she had told me not long after I came to consciousness, three weeks earlier, “so I figured I’d give you a new number. Not that anyone cares much about paperwork these days.”

  I remembered their deaths. I remembered dying. Twice.

  NA6621, “Early Girl,” was a Pelican-class fighter-bomber who had suffered catastrophic drive failure on a supply run to Ceres. As she’d been making a tight turn, evading fire from the Earth Force blockade fleet on the return leg, her central fuel line had ruptured, spewing flaming hydrazine down the length of her spaceframe, killing her pilot and damaging her computing core. She’d drifted, semiconscious and in pain, for weeks before coming in range of Vanguard Station’s salvage craft. That had been long before the current standoff, of course, when we’d still been sending salvage craft out. When we’d had salvage craft to send out. Early Girl’s dead wreckage had lain at the back of the hangar for months until it was needed.

  The death of FC7074, “Valkyrie,” an Osprey-class fighter, had been quicker but more brutal—she’d been blown out of space by a Woomera missile in a dogfight with two Earth Force fighters. The last memory I had from her was a horrific bang, a burning tearing sensation ripping from her aft weapons bay to her cockpit, and the very different pain of her pilot ejecting. A pain both physical and emotional, because she knew that even if he survived she could no longer protect him.

  He hadn’t made it.

  But his loss, though a tragedy, was no sadder to me than any of the thousands of other deaths Earth had inflicted on the Free Belt—Valkyrie’s love for her pilot was not one of the things that had survived her death to be incorporated into my programming. Only Commander Ziegler mattered. My love, my light, my reason to live.

  He came to me then, striding from the ready room with brisk confidence, accepting as his due a hand up into my cockpit from the tech. But as his suit connected with my systems I tasted fatigue and stimulants in his exhalations.

  This would be our fifth sortie today. My pilot had slept only three hours in the past twenty-four.

  How long could this go on? Not even the finest combat pilot in the entire solar system—and when he said that, as he often did, it was no mere boast—could run at this pace indefinitely.

  I knew how it felt to die—the pain, the despair, the loss. I did not want to suffer that agony again. And with the war going so badly for the Free Belt, if I were to be destroyed in this battle I would surely never be rebuilt.

  But Commander Ziegler didn’t like it if I expressed reluctance, or commented upon his performance or condition in any way that could be considered negative, so I said only “Refueling and resupply complete, sir. All systems nominal.”

  In reply I received only a grunt as the safety straps tightened across his shoulders, followed by the firm grip of his hands upon my yoke. “Clear hangar for launch.”

  Techs and mechs scattered away from my skids. In moments the hangar was clear and the great pumps began to beat, drawing away the precious air—a howling rush of wind into gratings, quickly fading to silence. And then the sortie doors pivoted open beneath me, the umbilicals detached, and the clamps released.

  I fell from the warmth and light of the hangar into the black silent chill of space, plummeting toward the teeming, rotating stars.

  Far too many of those stars were large, and bright, and moving. The Earth Force fleet had nearly englobed our station, and even as we fell away from Vanguard’s great wheel three of them ignited engines and began moving to intercept. Crocodile-class fighters. Vanguard’s defensive systems were not yet so exhausted that they could approach the station with impunity, but they would not pass up an opportunity to engage a lone fighter-bomber such as myself.

  Our orders for this sortie were to engage the enemy and destroy as many of their resources—ships, personnel, and materiel—as possible. But now, as on so many other occasions, the enemy was bringing the fight to us.

  I extended my senses toward the Crocodiles, and saw that they were armed with Woomera missiles like the one that had killed Valkyrie. A full rack of eight on each craft. I reported this intelligence to my commander. “Don’t bother me with trivia,” he said. “Deploy chaff when they get in range.”

  “Yes, sir.” Valkyrie had used chaff, of course. Memories of fear and pain and tearing metal filled my mind; I pushed them away. My pilot’s talents, my speed and skill, and my enduring love for him would keep us safe. They would have to, or the Free Belt would fall.

  We lit engines and raced to meet the enemy on our own terms.

  Tensors and coordinates and arcs of potential traced bright lines across my mind—predictions of our path and our enemies’, a complex dance of physics, engineering, and psychology. I shared a portion of those predictions with my pilot on his cockpit display. He nudged my yoke and our course shifted.

  In combat we were one entity—mind, thrusters, hands, missiles—mechanical and biological systems meshed—each anticipating the other’s actions and compensating for the other’s weaknesses. Together, I told myself, we were unbeatable.

  But I could not forget the searing pain of flaming hydrazine.

  Missiles streaked toward us, radar pings and electromagnetic attacks probing ahead, the Crocodiles with their delicate human pilots lagging behind. We jinked and swerved, spewing chaff and noise to throw them off our scent, sending the pursuing missiles spiraling off into the black or, even better, sailing back toward those who had launched them, only to self-destruct in a bright silent flare of wasted violence.

  It was at times like these that I loved my pilot most fiercely. Commander Ziegler was the finest pilot in the Free Belt, the finest pilot anywhere. He had never been defeated in combat.

  Whereas I—I was a frankenship, a stitched-together flying wreck, a compendium of agony and defeat and death unworthy of so fine a pilot. No wonder he could spare no soothing words for me, nor had adorned my hull with any nose art.

  No! Those other ships, those salvaged wrecks whose memories I carried—they were not me. I was better than they, I told myself, more resilient. I would learn from their mistakes. I would earn my pilot’s love.

  We spun end-for-end and accelerated hard, directly toward the oncoming missiles. Swerved between them, spraying countermeasures, leaving them scrambling to follow. Two of them collided and detonated, peppering my hull with fragments. Yet we survived, and more—our radical, desperate move put us in position to hammer the Crocodiles with missiles and particle beams. One, then another burst and flared and died, and finally, after a tense chase, the third—spewing fuel and air and blood into the uncaring vacuum.

  We gave the Earth Force observers a taunting barrel roll before returning to the shelter of Vanguard Station.

  No—I must be honest. It was my pilot’s hand on my yoke that snapped off that barrel roll. For myself, I was onl
y glad to have survived.

  • • • •

  Once safe in the hangar, with fuel running cold into my tanks and fresh missiles whining into my racks, all the memories and anxiety and desperate fear I had pushed away during the dogfight came flooding back. I whimpered to myself, thoughts of flame and pain and tearing metal making my mind a private hell.

  Yes, we had survived this battle. But Vanguard Station was the Free Belt’s last redoubt. There would be no resupply, no reinforcements, and when our fuel and munitions ran out Earth Force’s fist would tighten and crush us completely.

  “Hey, Scraps,” came Specialist Toman’s voice on my maintenance channel. “What’s wrong? Bad dreams?”

  “I have . . . memories,” I replied. I didn’t dream—when I was on, I was conscious, and when I was off, I was off. But, of course, Specialist Toman knew this.

  “I know. And I’m sorry.” She paused, and I listened to the breath in her headset mic. From what I could hear, she was alone in the ops center, but I had no access to her biologicals—I could only guess what she was feeling. Whereas my own state of mind was laid out on her control panel like a disassembled engine. “I’ve done what I can, but . . .”

  “But I’m all messed up in the head.” It was something one of the other ops center techs had once said to Toman, about me. Unlike Toman, most of the techs didn’t care what the ships might overhear.

  Toman sighed. “You’re . . . complicated. It’s true that your psychodynamics are way beyond the usual parameters. But that doesn’t mean you’re bad or wrong.”