Remember when I said selling two different stories to two different Year’s Best was a first for me? I spoke a little too soon…
Sean Wallace just let me know that Rich Horton wants to reprint “Scattered Along the River of Heaven” and “Heaven Under Earth” in his Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy 2013. That’s four freaking different stories to three different Year’s Best anthologies…
*faints*
If you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll be off to do some massive squeeing….
Got the recent Locus, and Rich Horton recommends “Heaven Under Earth”, and says this in his review:
Best of all is ‘‘Heaven Under Earth’’ by Aliette de Bodard. Liang Pao is the First Spouse of a man on a planet where, for some reason, women are rare. Liang is genetically male, but has been altered to be able to bear implanted children as have his fellow Spouses, but now he must welcome a surprise – an expensive female bride. His first concern is for his own position, but he soon understands that the woman is in a difficult position herself – an aging ex-prostitute who had no interest in this marriage. Again, the hints of the society in the background are very interesting, and the predicament and position of Liang Pao is involving and affecting.
Rather pleased 🙂
“Heaven Under Earth” mostly started as a dystopia: I wanted to show a society in which women were so scarce that men had had to improvise around their lack. This involved quite a bit of handwavium (mostly a background biological weapon developed by neo-Confucians to keep women in their place, and which backfired when used in the field), none of which actually showed up in the story but was necessary to help me design it!
My story “Heaven Under Earth” is up at Electric Velocipede:
Husband’s new spouse is brought home in a hovering palanquin decked with red lanterns, its curtains displaying images of mandarin ducks and kingfishers—the symbols of a happy marriage.
First Spouse Liang Pao has gathered the whole household by the high gate, from the stewards to the cooks, from the lower spouses to their valets. He’s standing slightly behind Husband, with his head held high, with pins of platinum holding his immaculate topknot in place—in spite of the fact that he’s been unable to sleep all night. The baby wouldn’t stop kicking within his womb, and the regulators in his blood disgorged a steady stream of yin-humours to calm him down. He’s slightly nauseous, as when he’s had too much rice wine to drink—and he wonders why they never get easier, these carryings.
Check it out here, and tell me what you think.
Author’s notes forthcoming Thursday or Friday, depending how much free time I have.
Electric Velocipede is also having a kickstarter to fund their next year of online fiction, here: if you want to support quirky online fiction, this is the place!
ETA: edited this slightly to save my comments on the story for the author’s notes.
John Klima let me know this afternoon that he was accepting “Heaven Under Earth”, a sort-of-Chinese SF novelette for Electric Velocipede. Yay! Very much thrilled to be in such a lovely magazine again.
This was very much a group project given the number of rewrites it went through… Many thanks to everyone who took a look at it: Justin Pilon, Marshall Payne, Patrick Weekes, Oliver Dale, Pam L. Wallace, and the VD gang: Ben Rosenbaum, Rochita Loenen-Ruiz, Floris Kleijne, Stephen Gaskell, Sara Genge, John Olsen, Jeff Spock, Ruth Nestvold, Chance Morrison, and Deanna Carlyle
Snippet:
Husband’s new spouse is brought home in a hovering palanquin decked with red lanterns, its curtains displaying images of mandarin ducks and kingfishers–the symbols of a happy marriage.
First Spouse Liang Pao has gathered the whole household by the high gate, from the stewards to the cooks, from the lower spouses to their valets. He’s standing slightly behind Husband, with his head held high, with pins of platinum holding his immaculate topknot in place–in spite of the fact that he’s been unable to sleep all night. The baby wouldn’t stop kicking within his womb, and the regulators in his blood disgorged a steady stream of yin-humours to calm him down. He’s slightly nauseous, as when he’s had too much rice wine to drink–and he wonders why they never get easier, these carryings.
With gender changes. And babies. Also, red kites.
