If you hang out in our Writing forum, you’ve probably read about our short story anthologies. Each year, we try to wrangle novice – and professional – writers into creating short stories on a theme.
For 2019, our forum regulars chose the subject ‘Dying Earth’. Not everyone is familiar with the Jack Vance Dying Earth concept, so our editors read a wide range of possibilities for a dying Earth. From among over 60 stories submitted, we accepted 16 great short stories. Half can be slotted into the science fiction genre while the other half conveniently fell into a fantasy setting, one of which is a beloved longer piece by a Jack Vance aficionado, Matthew Hughes. And heading our collection is a story that tells of our Earth not necessarily dying, but definitely going through some growing pains. Written by award-nominated Sue Burke, her story shows us that maybe a changing Earth can be just as interesting and deadly as a dying Earth.
We thought you’d like to get to know our featured authors a bit more, so please enjoy these mini-interviews of Sue Burke, writer and translator, and Matthew Hughes, writer.
SFFWorld.com: What’s so important about short stories? Why should we read them?
Sue Burke: Short stories originated in prehistoric times in the form of folk tales and legends, and they remain a versatile art form to this day, constantly being renewed. They bring us the magic of fiction as a quick, strong shot, like a fine liqueur or well-brewed espresso. You can sit down to read, enjoy an emotional adventure, and stand up with renewed vigor.
Matthew Hughes: It’s a well-established literary form. In fact, a couple of generations ago, far more people in the English-speaking world read short stories than read novels. Mass circulation magazines brought new stories to millions of subscribers every week and it was common to find people discussing their weekend read over the water cooler.
Then a number of trends, especially the consolidation of magazine distribution in North America, worked against the genre fiction magazines. And television took the place in mass culture that used to be occupied by magazines like The Saturday Evening Post and Collier’s.
So they’re not all that important now, if you measure by eyeballs-on. But there are things you can do in a short story that you can’t do in a novel: especially building a story around a small incident and a minimal cast of characters. Any story is a matter of posing a dramatic question and answering it; in a short story, you can ask and answer pretty narrow questions.
Why read them? For the same reason you read anything: to be entertained, to be moved, to be amused, to be confronted, to be enlightened, to have your philosophy confirmed.
SFFWorld.com: What attracts or attracted you to the theme of “Dying Earth”?
Sue Burke: I enjoy destroying the Earth — that is, I like writing stories with big ideas. The end of our home planet, or at least our tenure on it, is an idea big enough to contain boundless stories. As a metaphor, I also see it as a way to explore human mortality, writ large. One consolation for mortality: we don’t have to die alone if we all die at once. But—and here’s another big idea—maybe we don’t have to die. As Ray Bradbury said, “I don’t try to predict the future; I try to prevent it.” Maybe I can do a little bit of Earthly good by doing a whole lot of imaginary bad.
Matthew Hughes: It was created by Jack Vance, whom I have been reading (and revering) for almost sixty years. As an author who, like Vance, enjoys writing picaresque tales set in environments populated by narcissistic psychopaths, the Dying Earth is an attractive setting for what I want to say. Also, the idea of a world in which everything that could have been done has been done, and redone, forgotten and rediscovered, and forgotten again — that’s a promising milieu.
SFFWorld.com: Outside the context of a story, do you ever worry about our Earth dying?
Sue Burke: Yes and no. We humans are relatively fragile beings, and it’s increasingly possible for us to foolishly undermine our environment to the point of perishing of illness, hunger, asphyxiation, thirst, war, or rampant inhumanity—we’re a social species and require the environment of a functional society in order to survive. But we’re only one species, and, at a minimum, bacteria will outlive the worst we can do. Life on Earth is guaranteed, but not our lives.
Matthew Hughes: No. The earth will go on until, billions of years from now, the sun expands to swallow it up. We probably won’t last, but the planet will, and life will. Though we wouldn’t recognize the species that will evolve as the climate changes and the continents continue to move around. I recommend an interesting book, After Man, by Dougal Dixon that envisions what rabbits, rats, and starlings will evolve into after we empty so many ecological niches then destroy ourselves.
Many thanks to our featured authors, Sue Burke and Matthew Hughes!
Stay tuned for more upcoming announcements. Dying Earths – Lost Lives and Last Days, expected to be published by mid-August 2019.
