My Augmentation: A Look at Star Trek: Discovery’s Airiam

Guest post by Jordan Hirsch

[CW: mental health issues]

Picture it: a Family-Feud-style board. Steve Harvey at the mic. A studio audience silent and waiting. The question: what comes to mind when thinking about Star Trek?

Survey says: space, utopia, starships, Vulcans.

Mental health? [X]

Disability representation? [X]

Bodily autonomy [X]

While these are good answers and cases could be made for each of them when looking at specific episodes, none of the above have historically been major themes in the long-running franchise.

But let’s rewind from the 23rd century back to 2018.

The past six years have been some of the hardest of my life. I won’t go into too much detail, but between religious trauma, broken relationships, and losing what I thought was my dream job on top of the ongoing pandemic, the necessary civil uprising here in Minnesota after George Floyd was murdered, and the general despair of our political climate, my mental health plummeted. This manifested in depression and anxiety disorder, which my nervous system translated to vertigo-like symptoms, digestion issues, some agoraphobia, and probably other things I’ll realize down the road weren’t normal for me.

I don’t share this laundry list of experiences for pity, but for context and solidarity with anyone who might be dealing with something similar.

It took more than two years to discover the above symptoms were due to my anxiety disorder, after finally seeking medication during a ten-day, unrelenting panic attack. I was prescribed an SSRI, and let me tell you, I wish I’d started it so much sooner. At the time, though, I experienced what I now know so many others have when starting medication for their mental well-being.

Was I a failure? Weak? Would I be taking these pills for the rest of my life?

Would I even be myself while on these meds?

Should I survey 100 people to see what they said, top 6 answers on the board? Thankfully, answers for me lay elsewhere.

Star Trek: Discovery, which just wrapped its fifth and final season a few months ago, reignited the franchise when it came on our screens in 2017. In many ways, it truly went where no Star Trek had gone before. From the first on-screen canon gay couple to re-designed Klingons to darker and grittier storylines, Discovery paved its own frontier.

Other Trek series have dipped their toes into themes of mental health before, in episodes such as “It’s Only a Paper Moon” of Deep Space Nine, “Extreme Risk” of Voyager, and season 3 of Enterprise. However, these arcs were contained, leaving little to no lasting effects that would come up for characters later in the series. Discovery, however, tackled these issues with multiple characters over multiple seasons, and one in particular has made a lasting impression on me as I’ve navigated my own health.

Airiam is a quiet and steady member on Discovery’s bridge. Unfortunately, for most of the first season and half, we don’t get to know much about her. She’s dutiful, she’s smart, she’s dependable. She has friends on the ship, and she’s even third in command. She also has a tragic backstory.

When returning from eloping, Airiam was in a tragic shuttle accident that damaged most of her body and killed her husband. To stay alive, she had to be cybernetically augmented, with most of her body needing to be artificial. Now, Airiam’s brain can’t store memories properly, and when her artificial storage reaches capacity, she has to choose which memories to delete and which ones to keep.

None of this stopped her, however. She still pursued her Starfleet career, she still spars and trains with shipmates, she still rocks at board game night.

Airiam lives on her own terms, and (spoilers) heroically, she dies on her own terms as well, sacrificing herself after becoming infected by a malicious AI.

We see a lot of on-screen deaths in Discovery, but we rarely see any post-death ceremonies. However, we do get to see Airiam’s funeral, and during that time, her crewmates share what she meant to them, speaking of her impact, her resilience, her loyalty, and her outlook on life.

However, it was what Airiam’s friend and Discovery’s pilot Keyla Detmer said that puts my own sentiments into words: “[Airiam] showed me that my augmentation didn’t make me an imitation of myself. It made both of us new, that there could be a future.” You see, Keyla had been injured in the Klingon War, losing an eye and having her own augmentation.

Her words cut right to my core as I questioned if starting medication would alter my identity.

The analogy isn’t perfect; they never are. But what is perfect is the way this character gave me permission to need my own augmentation, the way she assured me I’d still be me, even while on medication.

My SSRIs aren’t permanent like Airiam’s augmentations. I can change my dose, stop taking them, choose something else with my doctor’s advice and supervision. But even if they do need to be a tool in my toolbox for the rest of my life, that doesn’t mean that I’m less myself. That doesn’t mean I’ve failed or I’ve forsaken all or part of who I am. On the contrary, I’m more myself than I’ve been in a very long time.

Would I have made it here without Airiam?

The optimist in me likes to think so. But I owe the Star Trek: Discovery writers and creators and the two actresses that played Airiam (Sara Mitich and Hannah Cheesman) so much for making this journey easier for me. For helping me embrace what proper medication could do for my brain, my body, my life. For showing me that an augmented me is still entirely me. For giving me permission to, once again, live life on my own terms.

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Jordan Hirsch’s poetry chapbook, Both Worlds, is available from Bottlecap Press (https://bottlecap.press/products/both).

Jordan Hirsch writes speculative fiction and poetry while occupying the ancestral and current homelands of the Dakota people, Mni Sota Makoce. She is a recent graduate of Concordia University’s MFA in Creative Writing program and is a member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association. You can find more of Jordan’s work on her website (jordanrhirsch.wordpress.com).

Micro-interview with Petra Kuppers

We’re delighted to have Petra Kuppers, author of the poem “Bone Planet” in The Future Fire #68, join us for a short chat.

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Art © 2024 Toeken

TFF: What does “Bone Planet” mean to you?

Petra Kuppers: “Bone Planet” is a poem about pain, and about my ongoing long-term speculative engagement with my deteriorating joints as a world of experience. As a somatic practitioner and dance artist, I often travel into my own body’s fields, and then through its sensations and imagery out into the wider cosmic world. So this sonnet is part of a crown (i.e. seven linked sonnets) that all travel around a planet of my inflamed interior.

TFF: If you moved to another planet, what animal from Earth would you bring with you?

PK: As I do travel so often, all the time, to other planets, I take with me what lives in me: mitochondria and other organelles, bacteria, all the tiny creatures that surround the particular energy of my own conscious life.

TFF: Would you like to live forever?

PK: In terms of material and energetics, I might anyway: stardust, transformed, vibrations, shimmerings… in terms of unified consciousness, probably not.

TFF: What are you working on next?

PK: I have just released a poetry collection that brings together true crime, decaying bodies, horror tropes and ecopoetry, full of nematodes, springtails and worms and the aliveness of soil (Diver Beneath the Street, Wayne State University Press, 2024). Now I am working on the material this poem is part of, a kind of Starship Poetics, a science fiction pain/joy universe.

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Extract:

In the grey-green shelter of living bone, you grow ragged,
edges blood-less, crusted. Leucocytes eat this brown lump

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Reminder: You can comment on any of the writing or art in this issue at http://press.futurefire.net/2024/01/new-issue-202468.htm.

Companions and Earthbound double anthology

We’re very pleased to receive a visit from Olivia Dreisinger, who recently published a pair of linked anthologies through Painwise Press: Companions and Earthbound. The volumes group together stories on the themes of disability and the environment (themes that have long been dear to us at TFF), in creative nonfiction and SFF respectively. We asked Olivia to tell us a bit about the books (and if you read to the end, there’s a little gift for TFF readers as well).

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Companions & Earthbound
A paired anthology of new disability writing

Edited by Olivia Dreisinger

Painwise Press, 2021. 168 pages.

This 2-in-1 anthology collects writing by nine authors about disability, animals, and the environment. A werewolf with PTSD and an environmentally ill AI are featured alongside human characters living with brain injury, chronic pain, neurodivergence, and more.

Contributors: Alexandra Box, Olivia Dreisinger, Sophie Helf, Bára Hladík, Cypress Marrs, Koyote Moone, seeley quest, Vanessa Santos, and George Wu Teng.

Cover concept by Sasha Zamani
Artwork by Audrey Leshay

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Endorsements

“You might think that an anthology centered on disabled people and animal companions, captured with a wide-angle eco lens, might end up too narrowly focused. In Companions and Earthbound, the opposite is true: from its chosen center point, the stories and essays burst outwards with energy, complexity, and tender, thoughtful detail, all different, all unique, all worth spending time with.”
—Lori Selke, editor of Outlaw Bodies

“The experience of reading the stories and creative essays in Olivia Dreisinger’s Companions and Earthbound dual anthologies is akin to sitting down with a friend who intimately knows both the pleasures and pains that come with disability. The catch, however, is that friend is a shape-shifter: sometimes animal, human, or imagined intelligence. No matter their shape or space of residence, the voices of these narratives underscore the connections of sinew, blood, dirt, and spirit that bind us together, reminding us that disabled bodies, animal bodies, are expansive and whole and beautiful.”
—Kathryn Allan, editor of Accessing the Future and Disability in Science Fiction: Representations of Technology as Cure

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I’m a first-time editor. While assembling this anthology, I found myself constantly referring back to my well-worn (and much-loved) copy of Accessing the Future. How could I ever pull off something as amazing as this, I thought to myself. The stories in Accessing the Future pushed me—hard. I’d be lying if I said this anthology measured up to Accessing the Future, but maybe let’s just say they’re different.

This 2-in-1 anthology looks at disability, animals, and the environment. An encounter with a therapy horse and, later, a service dog in my life really got me thinking more seriously about what disability and animal liberation had in common. Most of the stories inside don’t push for liberation (well, some do). Instead, they focus on our proximities to animals in sometimes banal—or overlooked—ways. (There is something to be said about the banal.)

The anthology is split into two sections: contemporary non/fiction and speculative fiction. I wanted to be open to different styles of writing and telling stories—styles that may very well be informed by the writer’s disabilities. Maybe it’d be accurate to describe the anthology as a disabled hodge-podge—something that I hope you will find generative. May these stories matter.

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You can buy Companions and Earthbound from Painwise Press. As a special gift to TFF readers, if you use the code TFF10 at the checkout you can receive a 10% discount.

Interview with Petra Kuppers

It is our pleasure to welcome to the blog Petra Kuppers, author of The Road Under the Bay and River Crossing in TFF, and of Playa Song, part of our disability-themed anthology Accessing the Future. We asked Petra to tell us more about her work as disability activist and performance artist, and about her new publication Ice Bar; a collection of short stories on disability, LGBTQ experiences and the future; pain, myths and the body; climate change, access, and non-realist embodied and enminded difference in science fiction, fantasy, horror and literary work.

Petra Kuppers, an internationally active disability scholar and artist, is a recipient of the American Society for Theatre Research’s best dance/theatre book award, and the NationalWomen’s Caucus for the Arts’ Award for Arts and Activism. She received nominations for a Pushcart (from the Dunes Review) and for the Best of the Net Anthology (from Anomaly/Drunken Boat). Petra is a Professor of Performance Studies in the University of Michigan’s English and Women’s Studies Departments, and she teaches on the MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts at Goddard College. She’s a disability culture activist, a wheelchair dancer, and a community performance artist.

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TFF: You are a professor of Performance Art and part of a performance and dance collective. Movement seems to be something very important in your life. How did it start?

Petra Kuppers: I think the fact that my love of movement has lasted into adulthood has to do with being a disabled woman of size who loves to move and be in her body! If everybody around you tells you, “this is not for you,” it’s quite easy to go all contrary and make that something the center of your life. That’s certainly the case with me. I remember being in my late teens in Germany, in hospital, waking up from one of my knee operations. The doctor told me “I am sorry, but you won’t dance again.” Maybe that doctor was doing me a weird kind of favor, offering me a challenge I could not resist. I continued to dance, explored Contact Improvisation, Butoh, Laban Creative Movement, and many somatic modalities. These days, I dance in a different form: five-minute dances, little engagements with specific environments, which then lead to dances with words. I often free-write after movement, and these little site-specific movement/writing nuggets become the seed of a story. That’s the way most Ice Bar stories were born. Site-specificity is still central to most of the stories: sitting on a wheelchair ramp in Grand Rapids, Michigan, by the Rio Grande in New Mexico, or on a barrier island in Georgia.

The Olimpias: The Asylum Project  at Judson
Church/Movement Research. Photo Ian Douglas

TFF: Do you think that performing on stage holds a particular value for people belonging to minorities and marginalised communities?

PK: Yes. On stages, we can show ourselves as well as the wider world our own beauty, pain and depth. I am mainly a street/park performer, which means that I work with fellow disabled people in public environments rather than on stages and in galleries. So few disabled people have (cultural) access to those spaces. Having fun while disabled in public feels like a very powerful way of shifting stereotypes around disability. The same is true with fiction: disabled authors tend to write about everyday life differently from someone ‘imagining’ what it would be like to be disabled. Non-disabled people often make a particular disability (and often its cure) a major plot point. Few disabled writers do that in the same way… for most of us, disability is part of our make-up, not the central feature of it. We can get on with character and plot development in a different way, if we are not caged in by non-disabled stereotypes. We can have fun… in stories as well as on stages.

TFF: Reading praise for your upcoming collection Ice Bar, I was fascinated by the adjectives used to describe your style: “gemlike”, “psychedelically nightmarish”, “gritty”, “fabulist” and many more. What is the most unexpected description of your writing that you have come across?

PK: What an excellent (as unexpected) question! One of my readers wrote in an Amazon review about me being ‘an explorer.’ That seemed a fabulous and surprising way of thinking about what I am doing in Ice Bar: I write as an ethnographer of disability culture, approaching new forms (poetry/performance/dance/fiction) all the time in my ongoing journey to chart cultural ways of understanding difference…with ’disability’ being just one of these borderzones of difference.

TFF: In all three of your Ice Bar stories originally published by TFF, water seems to become a space for transition, either into other places or into other identities and states of mind. Many of the stories in your anthology also explicitly reference to water—what makes this such an interesting and flexible narrative setting?

PK: This goes back to being a disabled woman. I live with pain and fatigue, and water is my dancerly medium. That’s where I can move, can shift my heavy body easily, can gyrate and twist in the ways I want. It’s my science fiction fantasy of low gravity! When I was a little one, my mother, who also had a pain-related disability, would go to thermal springs to help her pain, and I have inherited that habit. I will travel far for a good warm mineral soak for my aching bones. During the writing of the Ice Bar stories, a different kind of water pain was also with me: the protest actions around the oil pipelines, water protectors, in particular the indigenous women who walked the rivers and reminded all of us of our dependence and love for life-giving water. Each day I wrote Ice Bar, I checked in with their news stories and Facebook pages, and joined the protests in my own way.

TFF: The stories in Ice Bar seem to explore a larger than usual range of genres. Was that a deliberate experiment or did you just follow your multiform literary inspiration?

PK: It was deliberate. I love reading horror and dark fantasy, but it’s sometimes hard to be a feminist and queer woman and do that with real enjoyment. So I looked to feminist, queer, solarpunk, afrofuturist and other inspirations, and wrote myself into the interstices of genres, from cli-fi to science fiction and fairy tale retelling, from fabulist erotics to contemporary myth-making. All slippery genres which I approached from social justice perspectives. One of the books I had with me a lot during the writing of Ice Bar was Octavia’s Brood—that’s the kind of meta-genre and community work that inspired me.

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Thank you Petra for being our guest. We wish you the best of luck and we look forward to read all the stories in Ice bar!

Accessing the Future reviewed in BMJ

Our 2015 anthology of disability-themed speculative fiction, Accessing the Future guest edited by Kathryn Allan, has received a fabulous, in-depth, lengthy and positive review in an imprint of the British Medical Journal. (The journal Medical Humanities has been running since 2000, and the fourth issue of 2016 was themed “Science Fiction and Medical Humanities.”)

This review, by Hannah Tweed (University of Glasgow), is behind BMJ’s paywall, but the first couple of paragraphs are available at the link:

http://mh.bmj.com/content/42/4/e36

(Full citation: Medical Humanities 42.4 (December 2016): Science Fiction and Medical Humanities. Pp. e36-e37.)

Dr Tweed summarizes the goals of the anthology in some detail, including the fact that the volume is not just about accessibility, but endeavors to be accessible as far as possible. She then discusses most of the stories individually, drawing out themes including intersectionality and disability, access, autonomy, invisible disability and communication. This is a scholarly review from a critical studies and English literature tutor who I think really gets what we were going for, so it’s great to see it in such an august venue! (If you get the chance to read the whole thing—try logging onto wifi in your local university library if they subscribe—do, it’s worth it.)

Interview with Katrina S. Forest

This week we have a visit from Katrina S. Forest, whose wonderful mid-apocalyptic short story “The Poisoned City” appeared in TFF #31 back in 2014, and is now the title story in her self-published collection The Poisoned City and Other Stories. She answered a few questions about her writing, collaboration, and learning d/Deaf sign language.

Katrina S. Forest is a preschool teacher by day, speculative fiction author by any-other-time-she-can-get. In 2009, she had the pleasure of attending Clarion West Writers Workshop in Seattle, and her short fiction has appeared in a variety of venues, ranging from Flash Fiction Online to Crossed Genres. Her kids think she’s eccentric, but don’t say so because their vocabularies aren’t that big yet.

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TFF: Your short story “The Poisoned City,” in TFF #31 two years ago, has a Deaf protagonist, a life-saving android, and a whole city trapped in post-apocalyptic quarantine. Where did the plot and the characters come from?

Katrina S. Forest: That story had an odd origin. I misheard something on a show I was watching and thought one of the minor characters was secretly an android. Then while the show kept going, I got stuck on this concept and started forming a plot around how the android might be holding a cure for some type of disease or poison. I was working on another story that had a deaf protagonist at the time, and her no-nonsense attitude seemed to fit right into the role I was looking for with the delivery person. So she got an alter-ego in that story and I got to turn my moment of confusion into a fun, creative project.

Would you like to have a robot assistant? What tasks that you hate would you happily assign to them?

KSF: I hate driving. I would be happy to have a robot drive me places. Of course, the car itself would likely be the robot. I am currently hoping that robot cars become the norm before my kids are old enough to get their driver’s licenses.

If you could choose, who (real or fictional) would be your companion in a post-apocalyptic scenario?

KSF: Hmm… let’s go fictional and say Hermione Granger. If I’m in a post-apocalyptic scenario, a companion with useful magical powers is a must. (Or am I thinking too practically about this?)

“The Poisoned City” was also the story that helped you gain acceptance to Clarion West a while back, I believe. What was the experience of such an intense, residential program like?

KSF: It was pretty crazy. Mostly all our time was spent writing, reading, or talking about writing or reading. It was six weeks of entering a completely different world. A lot of writers dream of writing as a full-time job, but this was more than that. It was writing as a full-time job in a building with seventeen other people doing the same thing.

I’ve heard other Clarion graduates say they’re divided as to whether the intense writing tuition or their new “family” of co-students was the best thing to come out of the workshop. Which is it for you?

KSF: I think it’s the family. Everyone there treated everyone else like a professional. It was okay to experiment and write something bad; you didn’t feel like you had to prove yourself to the group. I think often times in critique groups, writers feel pressure (valid or not) to show they’ve got some reasonable level of skill. They may only put forward work they don’t really plan on polishing anymore. I know my work has improved after Clarion West, but I think a lot of had to do with learning how to be critical of it and seek out people who will tell me what’s wrong, not just people who will pat me on the back and tell me I’m doing great.

Your current collection, The Poisoned City and Other Stories, explores the themes of what makes us human. Can you tell us a bit more about some of the stories, and how they approach this theme differently?

KSF: The collection largely consists of stories I’ve sold previously, but there are a few new ones in there, too. Some of the stories are about characters who are losing their human bodies. One character begins trading her flesh limbs and organs for synthetic ones. Another character is slowly transforming into an alien species. In these stories, there’s someone who views the protagonist as less than human, even though the person inside is the same.

Other stories focus on the commonalities we share—our emotions, our wishes, our desire to connect and communicate. Hopefully it’s a collection that people enjoy reading as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Have you ever thought of writing a sequel or prequel to a famous story?

KSF: Several times. When I was younger, I kept wanting to write a sequel to Rikki Tikki Tavi. I later got into Greek Mythology and I’ve taken several shots at writing a novel about the three gorgons. I always felt like they got shortchanged in the whole Perseus myth.

What is it like for you to engage with the Deaf community as a non-native speaker? You’ve mentioned that you have an editor who helps you with cultural sensitivity and accuracy, for example. How does that work?

KSF: So far it’s been very humbling. I’m fortunate; my area has an organization that, along with providing communication services for the deaf, also provides education for the hearing and organizes events to help bring the communities together. I’ve been taking ASL classes there for a few years, and all my teachers have been wonderful. I’m looking forward to when my skills are such that they don’t have to slow down their fingerspelling quite so much for me.

My editor is Chase from Chase Editing. We connected on a writing forum originally, and since then, he’s edited one of my novels and several of the short stories in my collection. For those stories featuring a deaf protagonist, he’s pointed out moments when I might not be portraying my character’s experience or culture as accurately as I could be. He also points out overuse of “that” and my comma splices. Thankfully, these are my more frequent errors.

Can you recommend any books (speculative fiction or otherwise) by Deaf authors or with Deaf protagonists that our readers should be aware of?

KSF: Deaf in America is a collection of essays by a variety of authors; that was one of the first books I read when I wanted to learn more about Deaf culture. If you’re into comics, El Deafo is a wonderfully heartfelt and honest book, exploring author Cece Bell’s childhood through vivid artwork (of bunnies!). Ms. Bell mentions that while she herself is deaf (with a lowercase d), she has not yet “pursued a direct role” in Deaf (with a capital D) culture, and her author’s notes at the end helpfully explain the terms for readers. If you’re a fan of YA, I recommend the blog Disability in Kidlit. There are a lot of books featuring Deaf and disabled characters that aren’t necessarily written by authors with that life experience, so getting the input of at least one voice from the community is invaluable to me as a reader.

I understand you’re currently working on a novel in collaboration with another TFF author. Can you tell us anything about that work yet?

KSF: I can tell a little, I think. The author I’m working with is Sara Patterson, whose story “A Sense All Its Own” was featured in Accessing the Future. The novel takes place in that story’s setting with Sara’s character on a world-saving mission alongside one of my own characters. Our book is tentatively titled Feral Prime, after the destination that the characters are headed towards.

Do you write differently when you do it as a collaborative work?

KSF: In the case of Feral Prime, the book is told from two POVs, so we each work on the chapters featuring our own characters, then we swap for editing. I’m going to miss it a lot when I write my next solo work… having someone guiding the book’s direction with me as we go is a huge advantage.

What can fans of Katrina S. Forest look forward to in the near future? Any more stories or other publications on the way that you can sneak preview?

KSF: Most all of my writing efforts are going into Feral Prime right now, but anyone who’s interested can always check out my website for updates: katrinasforest.com. Thank you so much for the opportunity!

Thank you for answering our questions, Katrina!

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You can find Katrina’s short story collection at Amazon and other online booksellers. The first appearance of her story “The Poisoned City” was in TFF #31.

Guest post: Lost Manual for Life

The Lost Manual for Life (™)
Guest post by Jo Thomas

Futurefire.net Publishing recently (at time of writing) announced their next anthology, Problem Daughters, which will look at intersectional feminism and excluded voices, including (among many others) disabled women. Which set off a bunch of neurons in my brain, because I’m a woman with Asperger’s Syndrome. I’m not sure whether it shows to others in my writing but I feel that the experience of life it has given me does actually make it easier to write particular styles.

The best place to go if you want to know more about Asperger’s, considered to be part of the Autism Spectrum, is to go and have a look at some sources like the National Autistic Society. However, the bit that I want to mention is feeling like you lost the manual to life and everyone else has a copy.

This is, I’m told, a very common feeling. So common that when it’s mentioned to your GP or anyone else while you’re considering pursuing a diagnosis, the “But everyone feels like that” response will run the whole gamut between affectionate exasperation and outright dismissal. The main difference is that an aspie, given that we have problems processing facial expressions and tones of voice, may not actually pick up on the display of emotion that went with it. It depends on the aspie’s mindset as to how painful that disagreement is to them, not the feeling the other person was trying to convey.

Again, you may say this is universal, and I agree. These things are never binary and there is a matter of degree involved.

Because this feeling of not fitting in is so universal, it’s often a key part of a view-point character. As a reader, it’s easier to grasp what’s going on in a new world if it’s also new to the person they are experiencing it through or is describing it to them. As if they, too, are writing their own manual as the experience the world and adjust their understanding accordingly.

For me, this goes so far that it’s much easier for me to grasp the story I need to tell—and the world it is unfolding in—if I can hook into a particular character who is new to the world and to the plot I’m exploring. (Again, I have no doubt this is a “But everyone feels like that.” Then again, I can’t speak for other writers.) So it’s probably not a surprise that my first published novel was told in first person.

The first person in question is the young Elkie Bernstein who, in the not-so-urban fantasy 25 Ways To Kill A Werewolf from Fox Spirit Books, is a teenager without a manual when she finds out that werewolves really do exist. The first book is essentially Elkie working out how to write her own manual for life (something her creator has yet to achieve). Of course, even if she knows that there’s a way things are supposed to be, her plans are somewhat ruined by having monsters going bump in the night. Something her creator has yet to experience, thankfully.

Just when Elkie thinks she’s got a handle on things, despite not being on her imagined life-track, book 2 came along. A Pack of Lies (also Fox Spirit Books) is what happens when you realise that the world is bigger than you thought—that feeling we all run into when we gradate, or change jobs, or move somewhere new. These are all things that can be stressful for anyone, because the rule book changes and we have to learn what the new-to-us community or neighbours will or won’t accept. In my case, this is something I’m starting to realise is easier when one can understand more than the literal meaning of the words people use.

Now, of course, I have completed my act of trilogy, a common crime against fantasy writing, and Elkie’s world has expanded again. Fox Spirit Books saw fit to release this one into the wild as well and Fool If You Think It’s Over is due out in January. This time, Elkie’s manual needs to expand as she realises that no-one does a favour without expecting something in return. She’s also finally come to that stage of adulthood, required by the plot in order to tie everything up as much as possible, where she’s beginning to realise that much of what is happening is in response to her own reactions in earlier situations. It’s very rare for us to realise the full implications of our choices, and our misunderstandings, until it’s too late to do anything about them. Elkie’s misunderstandings and reacting without forethought has made her realise the manual needs to cover more than werewolves.

Writing Elkie has been about trying to make someone who had an experience that irrevocably moved their expected life-track and left their manual changed in a way that was difficult to get over. After all, 25 werewolves are going to leave a mark. Elkie, like the rest of us, has to deal with the results of every decision and face the next choice with the rules she has already worked out. As the quote goes “generals are always fighting the last war.”

Using first person allowed her to tell me the story in a way that made sense—and pulls the reader (and me) into Elkie’s view of things so that her reactions and mistakes are understandable rather than being just another young person flailing wildly in the dark. If she’d been given a manual, or even the script, in advance, I strongly suspect she would have refused the role.

I know the feeling.

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Jo Thomas also has three stories in TFF: “Good Form,” “Hunting Unicorns” and “An Invisible Tide,” and can be found at journeymouse.net. The Elkie Bernstein trilogy can be purchased from Fox Spirit Books.

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Access the Future

Guest post by Nicolette Barischoff

As a writer living with Cerebral Palsy, I’ve always been wary… no, squeamish, when it comes to writing about disability. Why? Who exactly knows. There’s the old standby paranoia of not wanting to be told what I “ought” to be writing, not wanting to be used as some able-bodied person’s Teaching Moment or inspiration blow-up doll. There’s my stubbornly held belief that a writer who can only write with honesty and empathy about their own experiences (or characters whose experiences are similar to their own) is not a particularly good or useful writer.

But I suspect that most of my aversion to disability-themed fiction stems from the fact that a good portion of it is just not very much fun.

So many bad stories that feature disability (sometimes written by the well-meaning able-bodied, but just as often perpetrated by writers with disabilities intent on fictionalizing a particular kind of experience they think might be dramatically interesting) treat disability as a source of social isolation, misunderstanding, and physical limitation. Very often, their goal as stories is to show that the disabled person’s reality comes with a particular set of hardships—usually brought upon them by an ignorant, inaccessible, or prejudicial society—that is separate from the set of hardships experienced by most human beings. As one narrative about disability, this has value. As the only narrative about disability, it is tedious, divisive, unrealistic, and unhelpful.

What so appealed to me about Accessing the Future was not only how much fun it promised to be (The Future, as we know, is chock full of giant robot battles, generation ships, designer creatures, fancy holographic limbs, and hot sex in zero gravity) but how naturally and effortlessly its premise promotes an alternative narrative about disability.

By merely depicting futures that include people with disabilities, futures in which disabilities have not “gone away” or “got better,” Accessing the Future takes disability out of its Otherized position as a special group with special problems for able-bodied people to feel things about, and puts it back where it belongs, squarely within the spectrum of Humanity.

As long as there have been humans, there have been humans of varying ability, aptitude, and strength. And guess what? They have all found uniquely human ways of surviving and thriving.

The relative concept of “disability,” just like the relative concept of “poverty,” has always existed, of course, and always will exist, even as, especially as, the human landscape of ability is radically altered.

But by suggesting to us what that disability might look like in the future (what technologies might be at its disposal, what spaces it might share) ATF reminds us that Disabled People are not an anomaly, engaged in their own separate, alien struggle, but simply another example of humans doing what humans have always done when they have found their environment to be inhospitable: Adapting.

Humans at all levels of ability have always adapted, facing down incredible physical inequity with a combination of clever tools, innovative solutions, and sheer bullheadedness. Once we understand that, humans with disabilities become simply humans, neither special objects of inspiration nor of pity, but participators in the collective human struggle: bucking the system, searching for meaning, spitting in Natural Selection’s eye, and just generally being an irrepressible pain in the ass.

In writing “Pirate Songs,” I wanted to speak to our adaptability as a species, and our ability to adjust when our own particular worldview has been shattered. Thus, I divested my protagonist Margo of her wheelchair before I put her aboard a shipful of outlaws who would have no idea what to do with her. I trusted she would grit her teeth and hold her own. And she did.

In Margo, I sought to create a protagonist that behaved like a protagonist. Another important thing this anthology has done for the de-Otherization of disability is allowed people with disabilities to be at the center of their own stories. In generating such a dynamic space for characters with disabilities to play, ATF practically demands protagonists that are a fully-realized and active driver of the story they’re in.

Disability in fiction is so often objectified, there to be reacted to, or to be acted upon. Even when a disabled character is purportedly the Main Character of a story that is about her, it is often other people in the story who do the majority of the growing and the changing and the driving that defines a protagonist. She remains emotionally (and oftentimes physically) static, while those around her become inspired, learn to be more inclusive, have their expectations challenged, change the rules of their favorite sport, etc, etc.

In part, people with disabilities are kept from occupying the role of true Protagonist because there are so many bad stories designating them as a special group with special problems. The perceived otherness of what are assumed to be their concerns makes it difficult for a less-than-imaginative writer to imagine those concerns growing or changing or being shattered as the story progresses.

But the ability to imagine someone growing, changing, learning, is nothing more or less than the ability to imagine them as a fully complete and complex human being. The ability to envision another person as the full-fledged hero of their own story, with their own hard lessons to learn, their own disappointments and victories and tragic flaws, is nothing more or less than empathy. One reason it becomes so important to give disabled children a protagonist they might see themselves in, is quite simply that Protagonist is the opposite of Other.

Nicolette Barischoff is the author of “Pirate Songs,” one of fifteen short stories in Accessing the Future: A Disability-Themed Anthology of Speculative Fiction, available in print and e-book this month from all online booksellers. More details, including links to bookstores, can be found at the Accessing the Future press page.

Call for Illustrations: Accessing the Future

THIS CALL IS NOW CLOSED.

WE HAVE MORE ILLUSTRATION PITCHES THAN WE KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH!

Accessing the Future will be an anthology of short stories and art on the theme of disability and science fiction. (See the original call for stories.) The editors are looking for single-page, black and white illustrations to include in the anthology. The illustrations will be free-standing (i.e. not depicting scenes from the stories). The editors want to include illustrations from as many and diverse people as possible. The editors especially encourage submissions from people with disabilities or chronic illness, and people who are neuroatypical.

Illustrations that the editors want:

The editors want illustrations that depict disability and people with disabilities in the future. The editors also want the illustrations to reflect diversity (in terms of race, nationality, gender, sexuality and class). Illustrations can be abstract or realistic and use any technique appropriate to creating high contrast, black and white images.

Here are some questions the editors want artists to think about when drafting their illustration:

• How will people with disabilities change the future world?
• What kinds of new spaces (on Earth and in outer space) will there be to explore and live in? Who will have access to these spaces? In what ways will people use these new spaces?
• What kinds of technology will people use in the future to make their lives easier?
• What does an accessible future look like?

If including technology in your illustration, the focus should be on the human user(s) and not on the technology. Please avoid proposing illustrations of cyborgs or any image that dehumanizes the user(s) of technology.

Submission Guidelines

In the first instance, please pitch the idea for an illustration to the editors. The editors will select the ideas that work best, and will work with artists to make sure the final images are a good fit for the anthology.

• Send the editors an email with a description of the planned illustration and an explanation of how it fits the theme. This may include a rough sketch. The pitch should also include a link to an online portfolio or previous examples of artwork.
• Email the editors at accessingfutureatgmailcom with your pitch as soon as possible. The call for illustrations will remain open until the editors have as many images as they need. Final versions of images will be needed by January 31, 2015.
• Final images will be approximately 11cm x 19cm (4.5" x 7.5") in portrait orientation. Images will be printed in black and white, on off-white book paper.
• The editors do not ask artists to identify themselves as a person with a disability. The editors respect anyone’s desire to self-identify.

Payment and Rights

The publisher will pay $75 (USD) for global English first publication rights in print and digital format. The artists retain ownership and copyright.

About the Editors and Publisher

Kathryn Allan is an independent scholar of feminist SF, cyberpunk, and disability studies. She is the first Le Guin Feminist Science Fiction Fellow (2013-14). She is editor of Disability in Science Fiction: Representations of Technology as Cure (2013, Palgrave MacMillan). Kathryn is an Associate Editor and Reader of The Future Fire. She tweets and blogs as Bleeding Chrome.

Djibril al-Ayad is a historian and futurist. He is the owner of Futurefire.net Publishing. He co-edited both Outlaw Bodies (2012, co-edited by Lori Selke) and We See a Different Frontier (2013, co-edited by Fabio Fernandes). He has edited The Future Fire magazine since 2005.

Accessing the Future: plain language call for stories

(by Kathryn Allan)

Note new closing date: December 31, 2014.

Accessing the Future will be an anthology of speculative fiction short stories. The theme of the book is disability. Kathryn Allan and Djibril al-Ayad are the editors of Accessing the Future. The editors want to receive stories from as many people as possible. The editors encourage submissions from:

• people with disabilities (this includes physical and mental disabilities)
• people with chronic illness
• people with mental illness
• people who are neuroatypical
• people who understand disability politics
• the QUILTBAG community
• people of colour
• non-North American writers
• people who are sensitive to intersectional politics

Stories the editors want:

The editors want to read stories that depict disability and people with disabilities in the future. The editors also want the stories to be mindful of race, nationality, gender, sexuality, and class. Stories can take place in virtual spaces (like the internet). Stories can also be set in outer space or anywhere on earth. Stories can deal with prosthetic technology (like brain implants or artificial limbs). Stories can also be about medical technology (like gene therapy).

Here are some questions the editors want writers to think about:

• How will people change the future world?
• What kinds of new spaces will there be to explore and live in? Who will have access to these spaces? In what ways will people use these new spaces?
• What kinds of technology will people use to make their lives easier in the future?
• How will new technology change existing differences in ability, class, gender, sexuality, nationality, and race?
• What does an accessible future look like?

Stories the editors will reject:

• Stories where people with disabilities are “cured,” or receive medical treatment without consent.
• Stories of people with disabilities as “extra special,” “magical,” or “inspirational” because of their disability.
• Any story that is racist, sexist, or homophobic.
• Any story that is insulting or harmful to any person or group of people.

Payment and Rights:

The editors will pay $0.06/word (six cents a word) for global English first publication rights in print and digital format. The authors retain copyright.

Submission Guidelines:

• Send stories to accessingfutureatgmailcom by midnight on December 31st, 2014.
• Story length is between 2500-7500 words.
• No reprints or simultaneous submissions.
• Attach the story as a .doc, .docx, or .rtf file, with the author’s name, the story title, and the wordcount on the first page.
• The editors do not ask authors to identify themselves as a person with a disability. The editors respect anyone’s desire to self-identify.

About the Editors and Publisher:

Futurefire.net Publishing is the publisher of The Future Fire magazine. Futurefire.net Publishing also published Outlaw Bodies (2012, co-edited by Lori Selke) and We See a Different Frontier (2013, co-edited by Fabio Fernandes). Djibril al-Ayad is a historian and futurist. He co-edited both Outlaw Bodies and We See a Different Frontier. He has edited TFF since 2005.

Kathryn Allan is an independent scholar of feminist SF, cyberpunk, and disability studies. She is the first Le Guin Feminist Science Fiction Fellow (2013-14). She is editor of Disability in Science Fiction: Representations of Technology as Cure (2013, Palgrave MacMillan). Kathryn is an Associate Editor and Reader of The Future Fire. She tweets and blogs as Bleeding Chrome.

Accessing the Future CFS

Inspired by the cyberpunk and feminist science fiction of yesterday and the DIY, open access, and hacktivist culture of today, Accessing the Future will be an anthology that explores the future potentials of technology to augment and challenge the physical environment and the human form—in all of its wonderful and complex diversity. We are particularly interested in stories that address issues of disability (invisible and visible, physical and mental), and the intersectionality of race, nationality, gender, sexuality, and class—in both physical and virtual spaces. Accessing the Future will be a collection of speculative fiction that places emphasis on the social, political, and material realms of being.

We want stories from as many diverse people as possible, especially from people with disabilities (visible and invisible, physical and mental), chronic illness or mental illness, who are neuroatypical, or people who have an understanding of the institutional and social construction of disability. We welcome stories from marginalized groups within the speculative fiction community (e.g., QUILTBAG, people of colour, non-North American writers), and from anyone with sensitivity to intersectional politics.

Submission Guidelines

We pay $0.06/word (six cents a word) for global English first publication rights in print and digital format. The authors retain copyright.

• Send your submissions to accessingfutureatgmailcom by midnight UTC on November 30th, 2014.
• Length 2500-7500 words (with a preference for 4000-6000 words).
• No reprints or simultaneous submissions.
• Attach your story as a .doc, .docx, or .rtf file, with your name, the story title, and the wordcount on the first page.
• We do not require or request that submitting writers identify themselves as a person with a disability, but we respect anyone’s desire to self-identify.

We want stories that place emphasis on intersectional narratives (rejection of, undoing, and speaking against ableist, heteronormative, racist, cissexist, and classist constructions) and that are informed by an understanding of disability issues and politics at individual and institutional levels. We want to read stories from writers that think critically about how prosthetic technologies, new virtual and physical environments, and genetic modifications will impact human bodies, our communities, and planet.

For details, see the full CFS at futurefire.net/guidelines/accessingfuture.html.

Guest Post: Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes?

By Tade Thompson

Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes is a phrase better known to speculative fiction fans as 'Who watches the watchmen?', popularised by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbon's opus Watchmen. It holds other significance in psychiatry.

Louisa Lowe wrote Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes? in 1872. She married Rev George Lowe in 1842 and moved out in 1870. When she would not return the good Reverend had her detained in an asylum. She languished there for eighteen months. Her documentation is one of the reasons we know about abuses in asylums.¹

Asylums ran wild with treatments such as isolation, blood-letting, turning, centrifuging, and water-dousing. None of these were evidence based, and many were cruel. Society let it happen because nobody cared about the mentally ill. It was a gender issue (approximately twice as many women were lobotomised as men); it was (and perhaps still is) a race issue (ethnic minorities are compulsorily detained more in the UK), it's a disability issue, yet still there is something about mental illness that triggers discrimination.

Maltreatment of the mentally unwell and stigma does not just affect the patients. Psychiatrists are not the most esteemed medical specialists. There appears to be a problem with parity. The disease burden is clear, but the funding is not proportional. WHO says “Depression is the leading cause of disability worldwide, and is a major contributor to the global burden of disease.”² Yet we, as a society, do not appear to care enough about our mentally ill. There is a lot of rhetoric, but little action.

Speculative fiction in all its guises has always been a place for ideas to thrive. Weird, wacky ideas like, hey, how about a world in which mental illness is not a punchline? Where are the narratives where mental illness is not used as a ‘random’ factor to drive your plot in any direction you want? Mental illness isn’t random. Where are your nuanced characters? I love Douglas Adams, but Marvin the paranoid android wasn't paranoid, he was depressed. Even the Black Sabbath song ‘Paranoid’ has lyrics that suggest depression rather than paranoia. I feel people should do a little more research.

I wrote a 7-part primer on mental illness for writers of speculative fiction,³ because I believe the books people read and the films people watch and the music people listen to all play a part in forming a view of those who are mentally ill. If the depictions are non-sensational and well-informed, perhaps we can foster a better understanding.

¹ Lowe’s report (The bastilles of England; or, the lunacy laws at work):
https://archive.org/details/39002086343093.med.yale.edu
² WHO Factsheet on Depression:
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs369/en/
³ Tade Thompson, Mental Illness Primer for Speculative Fiction Creators:
http://tadethompson.wordpress.com/2014/08/20/mental-illness-primer-for-speculative-fiction-creators-contents-page/

Blog hop: Accessing The Future Fiction

Guest post from Jo Thomas

The Future Fire are crowdfunding another science fiction anthology, this time focussing on the issues that come with disability—and the intersections with other issues such as race, gender, sexuality, class, etc, as our friendly socio-politcal SF magazine are wont to do. You may have noticed the blog about it here: http://igg.me/at/accessingfuture.

In order to help explain why such an SF discussion is necessary, the editors (Djibril al-Ayad and Kathryn Allan) brainstormed a bit of a blog hop with a bit of help from Jo Thomas (www.journeymouse.net) and Dylan Fox (www.dylanfox.net)

We've set up the questions so they can be asked of both writers and readers:

1. Tell us about your Work In Progress (WIP) / Current Read (CR) and the world it's set in.
2. Who are the most powerful people in this world?
3. Where does their power come from?
4. What physical and/or mental characteristics underpin their positions of power?
5. How does this affect the weakest people in the world?

Jo has launched the "Accessing The Future Fiction" blog hop at
http://journeymouse.net/wp/?p=3677

If you want to take part and you haven't been nominated, please do so. All that we ask is that you post a comment on this post so that others can find your part of the "Accessing The Future Fiction" blog hop and that you mention the Indiegogo fundraiser in your preamble! It would be nice if you could link in some other victims volunteers to carry on the blog hop, too.

And if reading this or taking part means you want to help fund some more inclusive fiction, follow this link here: http://igg.me/at/accessingfuture.

Edited to add: The anthology is now fully funded. As people are still showing an interest in the blog hop, would any future bloggers please link to the Call for Stories (http://futurefire.net/guidelines/accessingfuture.html) instead of the Indiegogo page?

Accessing the Future: anthology fundraiser

Quick Pitch

We are running a campaign via IndieGogo to fund an anthology of dis/ability-themed speculative fiction, Accessing the Future, co-edited by Kathryn Allan and Djibril al-Ayad, to be published by Futurefire.net Publishing.

Support the anthology here: http://igg.me/at/accessingfuture

This anthology will call for and publish speculative fiction stories that interrogate issues of dis/ability—along with the intersecting nodes of race, nationality, gender, sexuality, and class—in both the imagined physical and virtual spaces of the future. We want people of all abilities to see themselves, as they are now and as they want to be, in our collective human future. The call for stories will open as soon as the fundraising campaign ends in September.

Who We Are

Futurefire.net Publishing is the publisher of both The Future Fire magazine of social-political speculative fiction, and of two previous anthologies, Outlaw Bodies (2012, co-edited by Lori Selke) and We See a Different Frontier (2013, co-edited by Fabio Fernandes). Djibril al-Ayad, a historian and futurist, co-edited both volumes and has edited TFF since 2005.

Kathryn Allan is an independent scholar of feminist SF, cyberpunk, and disability studies, and is the inaugural Le Guin Feminist Science Fiction Fellow (2013-14). She is editor of Disability in Science Fiction: Representations of Technology as Cure (2013, Palgrave MacMillan), an Associate Editor and Reader of The Future Fire, and her writing appears in both academic and popular venues. She tweets and blogs as Bleeding Chrome.

The Anthology Details

Inspired by the cyberpunk and feminist science fiction of yesterday and the DIY, open access, and hacktivist culture of today, Accessing the Future will be an anthology that explores the future potentials of technology to augment and challenge the physical environment and the human form—in all of its wonderful and complex diversity.

We are particularly interested in stories that interrogate issues of dis/ability—and the intersecting nodes of race, nationality, gender, sexuality, and class—in both physical and virtual spaces. Dis/ability is a social construct, and all bodies do not fit into or navigate the material environment in the same way(s). Personal and institutional bias against disability marginalizes and makes “deviant” people with certain differences, but it doesn't have to be that way.

We want to ask:

• How will humanity modify the future world?
• What kinds of new spaces will there be to explore and inhabit? Who will have access to these spaces and in what ways?
• Given that we all already rely on (technological) tools to make our lives easier, what kinds of assistive and adaptive technologies will we use in the future?
• How will augmentations (from the prosthetic to the genetic) erase or exacerbate existing differences in ability, class, gender, sexuality, nationality, and race?
• What does an accessible future look like?

Accessing the Future will be a collection of speculative fiction that places emphasis on the social, political, and material realms of being. We aren’t looking for stories of “cure,” that depict people with disabilities (or with other in/visible differences) as “extra special,” as inspirations for the able bodied, or that generally reproduce today’s dominant reductionist viewpoints of dis/ability as a fixed identity and a problem to be solved. We want stories that place emphasis on intersectional narratives (rejection of, undoing, and speaking against ableist, heteronormative, racist, cissexist, and classist constructions) and that are informed by an understanding of dis/ability issues and politics at individual and institutional levels. We want to hear from writers that think critically about how prosthetic technologies, new virtual and physical environments, and genetic modifications will impact human bodies, our communities, and the planet.

Contribute to the Accessing the Future fundraiser, and reserve your copy of the anthology now! 
Save this URL: igg.me/at/accessingfuture

Guest post: Hush!

by Kay T. Holt

I have a secret. A gift. It sets me apart in ways that are both dangerous and rewarding; it’s like being a superhero. I can’t fly or walk through walls, but I do have a special sense: I’m hard of hearing. I think of it as the opposite of ESP. Anything others can hear, I can hear... Differently. If at all.

In the ordinary world, my hearing loss is disadvantageous. I rarely pass a day without blundering into social pitfalls as a result of missing or mis-hearing something subtle or important. And I can’t just listen-up for threats like most people. Cars, bicyclists, creepers on my tail? Even if someone helpful shouts a warning, I may not hear it. And if I do, I may not understand what I’ve heard in time for it to make a difference. After a lifetime of injuries and insults, I’ve developed survival habits: I glance over my shoulder a lot, always double-check before crossing the street, keep my back to the wall, stay as far to one side of paths and sidewalks as I can, and look up often from whatever I’m reading or fiddling with in my hands. Whenever I’m out with someone and they ask why I’m distracted, I tell them, “I’m just paying attention.” To everything, all the time. It’s exhausting.

Guest post: Pygmalion and Galatea

by Jo Thomas

You might be familiar with the names Pygmalion and Galatea. In the classical myth, Pygmalion is the sculptor who scorned the women of his city as being imperfect of feature and character, and who created a beautiful sculpture, called Galatea in many versions. Pygmalion finally found a woman he could love and, after the sculpture was brought to life, they apparently lived happily ever after. That’s the short, short version.

What does this have to do with Outlaw Bodies? Well, several things can be taken from the idea of having a relationship with a perfectly formed statue that’s recently been brought to life but let’s go with image and perception. As the William James quote goes:

“Whenever two people meet there are really six people present. There is each man as he sees himself, each man as the other person sees him and each man as he really is.”

However the story is put together, Pygmalion and Galatea’s relationship revolves around one main point: Pygmalion is the creator who has made his choice, Galatea is his creation and honours that choice (or not, depending on the version). When it works, it is because their perceptions of each other match up.

Outlaw Bodies ToC

We’re delighted to be able to announce the table of contents of the forthcoming Outlaw Bodies anthology, published by The Future Fire and guest co-edited by Lori Selke.

• Emily Capettini, ‘Elmer Bank’
• Anna Caro, ‘Millie’
• Fabio Fernandes, ‘The Remaker’
• Vylar Kaftan, ‘She Called me Baby’
• Lori Selke, ‘Frankenstein Unraveled’
• Stacy Sinclair, ‘Winds: NW 20 km/hr’
• M. Svairini, ‘Mouth’
• Jo Thomas, ‘Good Form’
• Tracie Welser, ‘Her Bones, Those of the Dead’

Plus introduction by Lori Selke and afterword by Kathryn Allan.

Outlaw Bodies will be available in print and e-book (PDF, Epub, Kindle) from early November 2012. (e-ARCs available from September: contact me if you’re interested in reviewing a copy.)