Micro-interview with Jonathan Olfert

We’re joined for this week’s micro-interview by Jonathan Olfert, author of “Whiskey Mud” in The Future Fire #71.

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Art © 2024 Cécile Matthey

TFF: What does “Whiskey Mud” mean to you?

Jonathan Olfert: I guess at the level past 'no institution will ever love you (back)' and 'elephants are people too,' it's about how our level of intelligence waxes and wanes, and how frightening it can be to be less intelligent than you were yesterday, with worse judgment. Maybe that's not a universal experience but I think it's a pretty common fear that we don't really talk about.

TFF: This is the second futuristic elephant story you've put in TFF; would it ever be possible for us to start treating the other sapient species on our planet as equals?

JO: Equal in dignity maybe, at an individual level, but I'm enough of a cynic about institutions writ large to say no. I think the main common element of those two stories is that although Chalt and Sara travel farther than any of their species ever have, it's always on others' terms and mediated by others' opinions of their limits and possibilities and dignity.

TFF: If you had to invite the protagonist of your current work-in-progress to dinner, what would you cook for them?

JO: That would be the turncoat tithe collector Ander Carmora, wandering the red-grass prairies between the Churchlands and the Five Deserts, and he'd be ravenous for anything that's not roast jackal. I make a decent lentil curry off the Curries With Bumbi channel, so let's roll with that.

TFF: What is the most important thing to remember about writing?

JO: I mean, 'never pay a submission fee' is evergreen, but I'll go with 'cut yourself some slack, your best day's tomorrow.'

TFF: What are you working on next?

JO: I'm just wrapping up that story and I'm starting to feel the itch to write another one. Seeing a few Carmora stories come out over the next year will probably light a fire under me. And since most of those stories stem from my feelings about authoritarianism, I'm guessing I won't run short of inspiration anytime soon.

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Extract:

Hanging from thirty-seven cables in his nutrient tank, Chalt missed the churning skies of home. The billion metal shards in low orbit, just barely too small to see individually—even with thick lenses—made the starscape wriggle. The whole sky sloshed around from dusk to late morning. If you saw the moon in daylight, its dusty craterscape itched and twinkled as LEO debris skidded past.

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Reminder: You can comment on any of the writing or art in this issue at http://press.futurefire.net/2024/10/new-issue-202471.html.

New issue: 2024.71

“Europeans brought with them the view that men were the absolute head of households, and women were to be submissive to them. It was then that the role of women in Cherokee society began to decline. One of the new values Europeans brought to the Cherokees was a lack of balance and harmony between men and women. It was what we today call sexism. This was not a Cherokee concept. Sexism was borrowed from Europeans.”

—Maria Mankiller

Issue 2024.71

Short stories

• ‘Whiskey Mud’, Jonathan Olfert - art by Cécile Matthey
• ‘Deep Sea Baby’, Faith Allington - art by Sebastian Timpe
• ‘That Small, Hard Thing on the Back of Your Neck’, Vanessa Fogg - art by Ellis Bray
• ‘In the Field’, Shelly Jones - art by L.E. Badillo
• ‘Deirdre’s Skin’, Amalie N. Ingham - art by Sarah Salcedo

Poetry

• ‘A Moon Witch Seeks a Shell’, Devan Barlow - art by Melkorka
• ‘Two Hybrids’, Rachel Rodman - art by Fluffgar

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Full issue and editorial

Micro-interview with Jonathan Olfert

Jonathan Olfert, author of “Collective Bargaining” in The Future Fire #67, came by for a short chat about the story, equity, AI and the future of education.

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Art © 2023, Carmen Moran

TFF: What does “Collective Bargaining” mean to you?

Jonathan Olfert: It's just a little story about how underresourced one-size-fits-all accommodations can be useless or worse. I first thought of it during the emergency remote delivery/remote proctoring debacle, at the same time as massive government cuts were forcing support staff layoffs. I came back to the idea several times during some of my own struggles with disability. I wondered what accommodations a hive mind would need, or would be forced to need by a system designed for boring old one-bodies like us.

TFF: Is gen-AI going to make examining fairly and equitably harder or easier?

JO: Anyone who says they can reliably and consistently tell the difference between mildly edited gen-AI and a second-year undergrad's authentic paper (or online quiz response, or cover letter, or scholarship application) is dreaming. So a student's uncertainty about a fair assessment is only going to rise, and uncertainty comes with unevenly distributed hazards. Just as one example, I think of many international students I've known who've learned an extra-formal style that can have that gen-AI 'feel.'  And since instructors often have the academic freedom to decide standards for gen-AI use in their classes, students may be juggling five different risk profiles a semester whether they've even used gen-AI or not. On a side note, want to hear something unsettling? I ran a survey on textbooks a couple of months ago at work, and out of almost 1100 undergrads, 4%—over forty of them—had explicitly used ChatGPT instead of buying a textbook. Which doesn't just speak to the quality of the information they and other gen-AI users are receiving, it can inform their writing style, so they may join the ranks of people more likely to get flagged even if they write all their own papers from scratch.

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Extract

Jane swarmed up the chair legs and settled into a rustling cluster. “All I want to do is write the exam,” they said through many tiny voices.

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Reminder: You can comment on any of the writing or art in this issue at http://press.futurefire.net/2023/10/new-issue-202367.html.

New Issue 2023.67

“To invent stories about a world other than this one has no meaning at all, unless an instinct of slander, belittling, and suspicion against life is strong in us: in that case, we avenge ourselves against life with a phantasmagoria of another, a better life.”

—F. Nietzsche, Götzen-Dämmerung

Issue 2023.67

Flash fiction

• ‘Collective Bargaining’, Jonathan Olfert - art by Carmen Moran

Short stories

• ‘Just as You Are’, Juliet Kemp
• ‘Microseasons of the Dead’, Vanessa Fogg - art by Cécile Matthey
• ‘Woman, Soldier, Girl’, Priya Chand - art by Katharine A. Viola
• ‘Crumb Cutie Exodus’, Bernie Jean Schiebeling - art by L.E. Badillo

Poetry

• ‘How to Plant an Olive Tree on the Moon When All Is Lost’, Elena S. Kotsile - art by Fluffgar
• ‘How Magic Will Help You Take the Bastards Down’, Beth Cato - art by Melkorka

Download e-book version: PDF | EPUB

Micro-interview with Jonathan Olfert

We welcome Jonathan Olfert, author of “The Thousand Tongues of Sara” in The Future Fire #64, to answer a few short questions.

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Art by Cécile Matthey, © 2023

TFF: What does “The Thousand Tongues of Sara” mean to you?

Jonathan Olfert: I found a lot of meaning in the fear and excitement of engaging with a diverse universe through languages and food. I’ve lived in something like fifteen towns and cities across North America: I’ve blundered through language barriers and loved all manner of cuisines.

TFF: What other species on Earth do you think should count as sapient (if we manage not to drive them to extinction in the meantime)?

JO: Drawing a firm person/not-person dichotomy has rarely been on the right side of history, but based on metacognition, tool-making, ritual, humor, and language, yes, some kinds of cephalopods, great apes, and cetaceans are people. Where the rubber hits the road: I eat pork but not octopus.

TFF: What are you working on next?

JO: These days I’m trying genre after genre to see what really clicks. I’ve sold bits of paleofiction, horror, poetry, and sword-and-sorcery, and I’ve given myself permission to write about neurodivergent people like me. Who knows, maybe next year I’ll be engrossed in romance and experimental lit fic. It could happen.

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Extract

Humans, the matriarch Sara understood, experienced time as a thing to be counted, as if days were hyenas guarding a watering hole. They’d used only numbers (310 days each way, plus 40 on the alien world, all carefully translated) to tell her how long she’d be away from Earth. What they should have said, if they cared, was that she’d miss family and sky as long as any of her pregnancies had been, with just as many tears.

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Reminder: You can comment on any of the stories, poems or art in this issue at http://press.futurefire.net/2023/01/new-issue-202364.html.

New Issue: 2023.64

“We need to have a movement that is willing to let everyone speak, to create space, to listen to different voices, to be challenged.”

—Talissa M. Soto

Issue 2023.64

Short stories

• ‘Purity’, Jennifer R. Donohue - art by Fluffgar
• ‘His New Body’, Simon Kewin - art by Miguel Santos
• ‘The Thousand Tongues of Sara’, Jonathan Olfert - art by Cécile Matthey
• ‘Side Effects May Vary’, Avra Margariti - art by Toeken

Poetry

• ‘Going Under’, Ujjvala Bagal Rahn
• ‘Solitary’, David Birch Ellis - art by Joyce Chng
• ‘The Later Life of Herr Samsa’s Picture’, Elizabeth R. McClellan - art by Dr T. Eratopo
• ‘Mageochory’, S. Brackett Robertson - art by Dr T. Eratopo

Download e-book version: PDF | EPUB | Mobi