IGMS Issue 17 (20 page)

This is a long, round-about way of saying that it is always easier to envision the gloom-and-doom scenario when you are sitting down to write the story than it is to envision the positive one. I think that is a natural human failing which explains why dystopias are easier to write.

SCHWEITZER:
If you could figure out, even satirically, what that beneficial action would be, you'd have a great story.

Di FILIPPO:
There's one little story that I think about. It's a Mack Reynolds story called "Depression or Bust." [Published in
Analog
August 1967 - DS]. I think of it in the current economic conditions too, because it's very relevant. We follow Joe Q. Public. He's coming home from his job. He looks at a display of televisions in the store, and he says, "My television is on the way out. I'd like to buy a new one, but I didn't get that raise, so I'm not going to buy the television." Then it cuts from him to the store owner, who says, "Gee, I didn't sell twelve televisions this month. I only sold eight. I've got to lay off a worker." Then Mack Reynolds builds this cascade where, by the time it is done, the economy is in shambles. There's a world-wide depression. So all the scientists and politicians get together and say, "What the hell caused this depression? We were humming along great." That track it back to the man who didn't buy the TV. They go to his house. They give him $200 and say, "Go buy yourself a new TV." Then it cascades in the reverse direction and all of the sudden the global economy is humming again. So, yeah, you wonder, are there hidden
tai chi
pressure points in the world. You're right, it would be a wonderful story, and it might be more fantasy than science fiction, though you could put a science-fictional spin on it, where someone discovers psychohistory only it's not psychohistory. You'd have to come up with some great scientific term for it. But someone discovers the pressure points of the universe. It you can touch it just right, something great happens.

SCHWEITZER:
You write it.

Di FILIPPO:
I think I will. You've inspired me.

SCHWEITZER:
I guess we should talk about what you are writing now or about to publish.

Di FILIPPO:
I have two books coming out from PS Publishing, Pete Crowther's wonderful UK small press. They're coming out this year. The first one is called
Roadside Bodhisattva,
and it's a totally mimetic, naturalistic novel. I am very proud to have him publish it. He's done a little straight crime stuff with Ed Gorman's books, but he doesn't do mimetic novels, so I have a feeling that he liked this one and thought it was worth doing. I've written a couple of previous novels which have contemporary settings, but the events are so absurd and surrealistic that even though there's nothing supernatural of fantastical, to me they always read like fantasies. This earlier books are
Joe's Liver
and
Spondulix.
The events were over-the-top and outrageous and postmodern. But I wanted to sit down and see if I could actually meet the goal that everybody tells us is so great, and write a literary novel. It's not super-literary, Thomas Pynchon or anything. But I wanted to try to write a strictly naturalistic novel, and I think I did a pretty good job. But it did feel like having one hand continuously tied behind my back. Every time I had an impulse to put something fantastical on the page, I had to stop myself.

So that's coming out, and the second book from Pete's firm is my sequel to
A Year in the Linear City.
That's one of my best-received books. It got onto a couple award ballots and people have been asking me for a sequel for a long time. I kind of resisted, because I don't do sequels, in general. But I finally got a way to wrap my mind around doing a sequel. So this one is called
A Princess of the Linear Jungle.
It's kind of Burroughsian, which I think might appeal to a lot of readers, but at the same time it's a kind of New Weird, science-fictional mishmash that I hope will take off.

Those two are coming out, and I've a picked up a novel that I'd put aside called
Up Around the Bend.
It's named after that great Creedance Clearwater Revival song. It's kind of a post-apocalyptic thing, but with a lot of surreal, timeslip elements in it. That's pretty much my major project right now.

SCHWEITZER:
Thanks very much, Paul.

Putting this magazine on hiatus was not an easy decision to make. Even though the weekly review columns continued to be posted regularly, this would be the first time we missed an issue of
stories
in almost three years. That was a record I was proud of - and loathe to give up - but to be blunt, life had overwhelmed me and I needed a break. Everyone knows the old cliché about "when life gives you lemons, make lemonade," but I've had enough lemons coming at me over the course of the past year to fill the Pacific Ocean with that popular summer-time beverage.

Once we got back to work (and by "we" I really mean "me," because while I was licking my wounds, managing editor Kathleen Bellamy, web-guru Scott Allen, all of our assistant editors (Sara Ellis, Eric James Stone, Scott Roberts, and Chris Bellamy), and all of our columnists worked ceaselessly and tirelessly to keep things moving along) Okay, so . . . once
I
got back to work, the first thing we did was step back and assess the way we had been doing things here at
IGMS.
And as we did so, a better way of doing things would present itself, or become absolutely necessary, or become suddenly obvious when it hadn't been before. And when we changed that one
thing
(whatever that thing may have been - process, procedure, policy, whatever), another would present itself, and then another, and another, until it was clear that we had inadvertently created the perfect opportunity to make the magazine over and re-launch it, fresh-faced and reinvigorated. We would have been fools not to make the most of it.

So here it is:
Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show
, v2.0.

The biggest and most obvious changes are two-fold (as befitting a v2.0):

1) Our web designer worked long and hard to give
IGMS
a cleaner, sharper look. Navigation around the site will be simpler. With each new issue, the background will change to showcase some aspect of the issue's cover art. Explore it; I think you'll find it an intuitive and pleasantly easy experience.

2) We now have something available that our readers have been asking for for a long time: an annual subscription. From now on, instead of having to purchase each issue individually, you can buy a year's worth of
IGMS
at one time and then not have to worry about it again; each issue will be there for you, ready and waiting as soon as it's published. And there's particularly good news (and a good reason to subscribe); the way our new subscription will work, you will not only have access to each new issue as it is published, you will immediately have access to every issue already published. That means that if you missed any of our previous issues, your $15 dollars will gain you access not just to the
next
six bimonthly issues, but to
all
sixteen
issues
already published. And that unrestricted access will last as long as you keep your subscription current. That means for those of you who've only read an issue or two, you'll be getting every story we've ever published for less than a buck an issue. So if you've seen
IGMS
mentioned in numerous Year's Best anthologies, on Locus's recommended reading list, or on any number of awards ballots, and wondered what the magazine was all about, there's never been a better time to try us out.

Other smaller changes await as well, ranging from the addition of things that will be readily apparent (such as our on-going weekly comic strip
Dedd and Gohn
, following the adventures of Mike Dedd and Julia Gohn, a pair of Gen Y paranormal investigators who explore everything from the horrors of ghosts who won't go away, to the horrors of personal relationships when they want to get married but one of them still lives at home with his parents), to things less readily apparent (such as the way we've asked our artist and illustrators to do their work in a format more suited to presentation on a computer screen).

We've also lined up some exciting things for upcoming issues beyond our re-launch issue. We've got a brand new story coming soon from regular and beloved
IGMS
contributor
,
Peter S. Beagle. And to celebrate our fifth anniversary issue
,
the October 2010 issue (#19) has something extra special in store: a brand new tale from the man who founded and publishes this magazine; the first new Orson Scott Card story we've published in over a year and a half. It's not just a story though, it's a sneak peak at his forthcoming novel,
Pathfinder
. The first fifteen chapters of
Pathfinder
each have a mini-prologue, that, when strung together, form a complete story. So
IGMS's
sneak peak isn't just a sneak peak, it's the only place you find "The Expendables" complete and whole, as a stand-alone story.

I could go on and on about the changes, but at this point I think the best thing I can do is shut up and let you get to the good stuff: Issue #17's science fiction and fantasy. "Ten Winks To Forever" by Bud Sparhawk; "An Early Ford Mustang" by Eric James Stone; "Sparrowjunk" by Margit Schmitt; "Sister Jasmine Brings The Pain" by Von Carr; "Frankie and Johnny and Nelly Bly" by Richard Wolkomir; another in our series of author interviews by Darrell Schweitzer; plus an audio production of "An Early Ford Mustang" that you can download and listen to anytime, anywhere.

I can't say it often enough, but I'll limit myself to saying it one more time: I hope you can tell how excited I am by the relaunch of
IGMS
. I hope you'll join us; and I hope you'll stay with us for a long, long time. It's going to be a lot of fun.

Edmund R. Schubert
Editor,
Orson Scott Card's InterGalactic Medicine Show

P.S. As usual, we've collected essays from the authors in this issue and will post them on our blog (www.SideShowFreaks.blogspot.com). Feel free to drop by and catch The Story Behind The Stories, where the authors talk about the creation of their tales.