Alone With Gandhari

“Alone With Gandhari” appeared in Clarkesworld #42, in March 2010. It was the second story I sold in 2010, but the first to be published. It was very sudden, and very exciting!

Despite going from sale to print so quickly, my first attempt at the story was back in graduate school, sometime around 1999 or 2000. (In the dreadful original, a rural Indian named Gautam, working for his biotech-terrorist and nutball-Hindutvavādi uncle Prabinder, unwittingly unleashes a [fortunately quite unfeasible] biotech plague designed to emaciate cows and render them and their offspring permanently unfit for agricultural use; the plague ends up mutating and affecting humans too, and he and his young cousin flee across the border and make a futile attempt to take cover in Vancouver). Far-fetched it was, but hey, everything’s gotta start somewhere, right?

Other than the passing mention of this plague in the final story, the only element remaining from the original is the epigram, from Romesh C. Dutt’s (very) late-19th-century translation/abridgement of the Mahabharata; while condensed not as well-regarded as other translations, I find Mr. Dutt busted a hell of a rhyme for a man of that time.

Kate Baker’s commentary at the end of the Clarkesworld podcast of the tale is astute: the story feels among the most near-future of my published SF stories so far, simply because so much of what’s in it — an obesity epidemic, religious extremism, and the sickening state of the majority of the corporate world’s attitude towards nature — are all just slightly funhouse-mirror versions of things that are major concerns in North American (or maybe all of Western, or even, increasingly, world) culture right now.

And while Guru Deepak is a caricature, I shall have to hope that readers realize he’s not intended as a caricature of Indians in general (nor is his insane cult meant to be any sort of mockery of real Indian religion or religions); rather, I’m mocking the public persona (and New Age cult) of just one very famous Indian(-American?) who ranks among the biggest purveors of woo-based idiocy in the West. I’m sure readers aware of the fellow can easily guess whom it is I’m mocking.

Of Melei, of Ulthar

“Of Melei, of Ulthar” appeared in the October 2009 issue of Clarkesworld Magazine, which was thrilling for me. (And even better, it appeared on the Locus 2009 Recommended Reading List!) I was especially happy to have my work appear there, as  it was one of the first professional magazines to which I submitted my work, and because I’d long hoped to write something of the right length to submit there! And having just met Neil Clarke at WorldCon a few months ago just adds to the pleasure.

A little background: I started the story as a response to a call for Lovecraftian stories. HP Lovecraft was the first author within the wider genre whom I read. For me, at the time, he was a horror author and I was puzzled by his strangely bewitching Dreamlands stories. While a lot of people write stories that riff on his Cthulhu stuff, I don’t know so many who work with those lovely mythic fantasies. (And the few I know about, such as Brian Lumley’s Titus Crow novels, somehow didn’t work for me. I have ‘em on the shelf — found them in hardcover in a free-books pile in a foreigner bar in Korea — and tear through one occasionally, so yeah, I can say my opinion hasn’t changed.)

So I set out to write something in the Dreamlands… and failed. I set it aside for a few months, and then after a brief holiday on Jeju Island (a lovely island off the coast of Southern Korea) I was approached by someone who needed a story pronto. I didn’t have anything of the appropriate length, but said I could try finish this Lovecraftian story I had half-written. (Actually, not really half, more like 1300 words or so.) I sat down in the Sweet Buns coffee shop with a Korean study book and began writing, taking a two-hour break to have a Korean lesson. The final result wasn’t quite what got published, of course: I sent the story to the editor who’d solicited it and while he loved it (the rejection letter began with stunning praise), it didn’t quite fit his needs.

So I tweaked a little, fiddled a bit, trimmed and tickled and applied makeup, and send the story to Clarkesworld. End result? Yay!

There are a few Easter Eggs buried in the story for specific people to catch while reading it. I’m not telling what they are. But while bits of life are woven into this tale — life is all about decisions, is it not? — but the characters and situations are piecemeal assemblages, and I am pretty much a magpie gathering up shiny bits and lining my nest with them. Which is what every writer is, at bottom.

Cai and Her Ten Thousand Husbands

Cai and Her Ten Thousand Husbands appeared in Apex Online’s issue for February 3rd, 2009. You can read the story here.

Reviews:

“This is a vivid, engrossing tale, told in wrenching detail. Its subject matter is brutal, but its heroine rises above her situation with a strength and grace that is apparent in her voice from the beginning.”
— Kimberly Lundstrom (@ The Fix)

This is a story which grew from a very short flash piece I wrote during Clarion West in Seattle, when I found myself unsatisfied by my handling of the same theme in a historical setting.

The fact is, you cannot live in South Korea and not encounter, at some point, the “Comfort Women” issue. (The name is out of currency in Korea, where it is considered politically incorrect, but I use it here as it’s the best-known term in English for these women.) Hearing the most common Korean version of the story first–tales of evil Japanese kempeitai (military police) driving into towns and abducting girls, and recruiters tricking girls into thinking they’d be working as nurses or in factories (and then turning them over to the military to become sex slaves), you cannot help but feel a sense of horror that never really dissipates no matter how long you study the subject.

And then, when you look closer at the history, for example by reading books like Comfort Women Speak: Testimony by Sex Slaves of the Japanese Military by Sangmie Choi Schellstede and Soon Mi Yu and The Comfort Women: Japan’s Brutal Regime of Enforced Prostitution in the Second World War by George L. Hicks, you come to see plenty of blame to go around. Not only did Western troops end up using Asian girls in the same way, during the lingering military presence that followed the war in Japan, Korea, and elsewhere, but, worse is the complicity of  some Koreans in the enslavement of these women, and of many Koreans in these womens’ sufferings in the decades after their emancipation which many of these women spent as social pariahs and outcasts, until more than a small portion of Korean society decided to publicly acknowledge and protest the horror, long after many of the women had died and when the remaining ones all had white hair.

Even the contemporary political use of these women’s victimization–and the relationship, discussed in the Hicks especially, between contemporary Korean feminist groups and the surviving “Comfort Women”–is profoundly disquieting. Still more disquieting is the special status given to this particular form of exploitation of women, differentiating it profoundly from the larger pattern of misogyny and exploitation of women that prevailed in Asia both before and after World War II.

This is an era when at least some female children were so unappreciated as to be named things like “Hunam” (”After this, a boy!”) and “Seopseop” (”Disappointment”). Some women named these names are still alive today, though the preference for boys seems to be on the decline. The pattern of exploitation of women stretches quite far back, in Korean history, and it continued energetically after the war, not just in Japanese “kisaeng” (”geisha”) tourism (discussed briefly here) as a means of economic growth. (If you have access to JSTOR, ahem, there’s an interesting article from a critical Japanese woman’s point of view here which in part questions why the Korean government promoted postitution in this way, and also, interestingly in 1977, criticized the enslavement of Korean women, thirteen years before anything like a public movement arose in Korea regarding the issue).

In “villes” near military camps that were set up to “service” the American troops stationed in South Korea, women were also, according to men serving at the time, restrained against their will, sometimes by local police under the conceit of their being indebted to their “bosses.” Here’s a dated piece in Time about it. These days, it comes as little surprise that everyone is busily denying any involvement, but eyewitnesses tell a different story.

Not just in those forms did exploitation persist: a certain percentage of Korean women were always sexually exploited, and most heavily by their own countrymen, a fact that was always kept to the side, and which remains true even today;  in fact, it’s been claimed the trade escalated after widespread “crackdowns” on prostitution in recent years. And now, the exploitation has spread to that of women from other backgrounds: the trafficking of foreign women into Korea and of Korean and other women abroad, for example, is a growing problem, and as outgoing tourism explodes in Korea, Korean sex tourism is also on the rise in places such as Cambodia, Mongolia, and the Philippines. Meanwhile, the mail-order bride industry in Korea continues to grow at a stunning rate, with some — not all, but some — cases being depressingly exploitative. This is provoking interesting reactions abroad, including a sharp decline in Korea’s reputation in these places.

[I should note, however, that despite some occasional horror, a number of foreign wives, while finding life in Korea difficult, do not perceive themselves as exploited or as victims, even if there is a degree of "rational exchange" involved in their marriage. More here. Indeed, not all prostitutes see themselves as victims, or dream of liberation from their circumstances, either, else they would not have hit the streets and demonstrated against the crackdowns. (Photos and a brief discussion also here, in the context of other unusual protests in Korea.) It's a complex situation, is what I'm saying, and part of a larger context of systematic exploitation and disempowerment.]

To acknowledge this in a critical manner isn’t to excuse the terrible acts of Japan: nobody can or should ever try to excuse that. It’s just that those actions aren’t the whole story: they’re part of a bigger context which is often ignored in contemporary South Korean (and North Korean!) discussions of the subject.

But the discussion is rarely framed that way, in a historical context. To reframe it in discussions that way, if you are a Westerner, is sometimes to invite pretty harsh responses. Not always, mind you: I’ve had some really sensible discussions and debates, and learned a lot from those discussions, too. But some people just refuse to be–or are incapable of being–rational and resist reframing the “Comfort Women” in their larger historical context. Still, it leaves me leery of dealing with the subject too directly in a piece of fiction, although I have plans to do so at some point.

For this story, part of my solution for dealing with this is to having set in the future within a greater historical continuum of sexist exploitation, depicting it elsewhere (but not too far away), involving racial groups foreign to the debate in Korea, and linking it all to radical technological/social changes to show that show this is not just history, but a deep-seated issue that has persisted and mutated through radical cultural and social upheavals in Northeast Asia.

In any case, the story as it stands owes particular credit to Nick Mamatas, who knows who to write an instructive rejection letter; to feedback from several of my friends from Clarion West; and to help with Chinese terms (even if I ignored some good advice) from my long-lost friends Huang Xue (Faith) and 黄 绪 (Lisa).

The Country of the Young

“The Country of the Young” appeared in Interzone 219, December 2008.

If you missed the print edition, Interzone 219 is available as an eMagazine at Fictionwise.

This was the third full story I drafted at Clarion West, for the week when Nalo Hopkinson was our instructor.

(And both Nalo’s and the class’s comments, and some discussion of the biology of aging with my classmate Guy Immega, were a great help to me.)

I’d long been thinking of writing a story set in a post-reunification, corporate-annexed North Korea. A theme I’d intended to work with earlier ended up being set aside, in advance, for the next story I planned to write at the workshop, but that worked out well because it gave me a chance to explore themes in the corporatized North: politics and class, immigration, the glitchiness of life-extension technology and its effect on future immigration, intercultural relationships, and more.

Also, I decided to work very literally with a comment made by Maureen McHugh a few weeks earlier, but I won’t say more as it’s a spoiler for the story.

Reviews and Comments:

“… distinctly my favorite piece in the issue… Sellar has done a superb job on every count. The characters and setting feel alive, three-dimensional, and absolutely convincing. From these, the plot grows naturally—absorbing, meaningful, and free of contrivance. And detail is handled perfectly, showing real-life richness and complexity without ever getting bogged down, and without ever leaving the reader missing crucial information. Kudos, Mr. Sellar, for an excellent story.” — Ziv Wities @ The Fix.

“a sombre tale rich in detail, and a convincing look at how someone can be driven to the extremes of mass murder. Good stuff.” — Lawrence Conquest @ The Barking Dog

“A very realistic depiction of what a growing age difference would do to a marriage, set in a chillingly believable universe.” — Aliette de Bodard (!)

Wonjjang and the Madman of Pyongyang

This is where "Wonjjang and the Madman of Pyongyang" live...

This is where "Wonjjang and the Madman of Pyongyang" lives…

“Wonjjang and the Madman of Pyongyang” is now available in Tesseracts Twelve, the 2008 edition of the annual Canadian speculative fiction anthology, which was edited by Claude Lalumière. This story also appeared on the Locus 2008 Recommended Reading List.

(You can get Tesseracts Twelve at Amazon.ca, Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, or, in Korea, at Whatthebook.com.)

I’m really happy that this story has found a home. I have to confess, the idea was originally inspired by Cory Doctorow’s short story “The Super-Man and the Bugout,” which is a distinctly (Eastern-) Canadian remix of the Superman story. I thought it over, and realized that while superheroes have often stood as emblems of national power — especially in American comic books — I’ve never seen them used as such in an Asian setting. (Though I’m told there was a great superhero story published a few years ago that did this, I still haven’t tracked it down.) I started drafting it at Clarion West, realized it would be a long work, and quickly set it aside, to continue work for the remainder of 2006 and into early-to-mid-2007.

I found that it was just a few short hops and skips to the idea of writing about international relations in East Asia in an allegorical mode, with each nation represented by one or more superheroes… which led to it being about a team of international superheroes working in Seoul, in a privatized super-hero branch of one of the megacorps here, since, after all, every niche in Korea seems to be dominated by the same few big corporations.

While I was writing the first draft of this story, North Korea conducted nuclear weapons tests, which lit a fire under my backside and drove me to really hammer this tale home. Along the way, I also managed to work in a few specific things from my vague gleanings of Korean literature, and the ending is, indeed, intended as an echo of the allegorical ending found in so many of the Korean short stories I’ve read, but with a few unique twists.

A disclaimer is worth making: some readers will suggest this story is too critical of the Korean left and its Sunshine Policy. While I am critical of the Korean Left (which is hardly like what Westerners think of as left- and right-wing, by the way) there is also unbridled criticism aimed at the Korean Right and its fearmongering, of the whole political establishment’s desire to put off North Korea for some faraway future time, of corporate and bureaucratic power and irresponsibility (moral, economic, and environmental), and more. The story is a satire, and I don’t doubt that some readers, especially Koreans, will miss this point: but I intend the criticism to be so wide-ranging as to approach being universal.

This story benefited from many useful comments from various friends who served as critics and readers, but especially to Lime, who helped me nail the Korean speech and details (and get Wonjjang’s name right), and to my friend and Clarion West classmate Ben Burgis, who suggested a much better title than I originally came up with.

REVIEWS:

“New writer Gord Sellar’s first few stories have quickly attracted notice – and so should “Wonjjang and the Madman of Pyongyang”, yet another modern day superhero story. Wonjjang is a much put upon South Korean superhero, trying to lead a multinational group of “shoopers” against such supervillains as the title North Korean madman. But politics is a problem – the South is trying to make nice with the North – and so is his crush on a Japanese superhero – all while his mother is trying to match him up with any convenient Korean country girl.” (Rich Horton, Locus, November 2008.)

“Gord Sellar’s “Wonjjang and the Madman of Pyongyang” follows a well-trodden storytelling path, in this case a world where superheroes are omnipresent. While this has been the setting for a number of very good stories in recent years, Sellar takes a masterful leap by making his superheroes “shoopahs,” which is a Korean reworking of the English word. In the story, South Korean shoopah Wonjjang not only has to defeat Kim Noh Wang, the powerful evil villain of Pyongyang, he also has to manage his chaotic corporate group of international superheroes and deal with an overbearing mother who simply wants him to marry a nice girl from the North. This is a great story, and one which breaks out of its formulaic mold to become something very different. Highly recommended.” (Jason Sanford, The Fix, January 2009.)

Dhuluma No More

October/November 2008 Asimov’s SF
“Dhuluma No More” is the second story I’ve published in Asimov’s SF so far, and if I have my information right, it’s on newsstands now. (The Fictionwise eMagazine edition is up as well.) The advance notice of its forthcoming publication (in the September 2008 issue of Asimov’s) read,

the acclaimed Gord Sellar returns with “Dhuluma No More,” a counterpoint to Robert Reed’s novella from the perspective of a desperate African terrorist in an uncertain future

… which surely got me feeling wary: in a literary armwrestle between myself and Reed, I would not be betting on myself. It’s nice to share a ToC with him and Nancy Kress, though — and, neatest of all, Ian R. MacLeod, who was a teacher of mine at Clarion West in 2006. (And apparently carved out a piece of territory I was planning on visiting as well — he tells the Sepoy Rebellion as a tale of British uprising against Mughal rulers, where my alt-history reversal in that vein was a Chinese Opium War set in England. I’m looking forward to seeing what he does with it!)

Interestingly, that quote above reflects what I had in mind as I originally wrote the story, but in fact, the story is told from the POV of the reporter who talks the desperate African terrorist down off his ecological ledge.

This is the first story I finished drafting after attending Clarion West, though the redraft took me over half a year (of halting attempts) to get right. I started the first draft of this story somewhere within the Arctic Circle, but high above it in a passenger plane that was carrying me home to Korea, and it had a very, very sad ending. (The protagonist died, drowning in frigid water, as Ngunu carried out his awful, doomed plan.) I got some useful feedback from my friends and classmates from Clarion West, Shawn Scarber about Ngunu’s portrayal, and Guy Immega on some scientific glitches.

Illingsford is a reference to my old friend (and gifted poet and photographer) Jack Illingworth. (Which is one reason I had a change of heart and decided that somehow, Illingsford would damned well survive the conclusion!)

Ngunu’s middle name sounds exactly like the Korean word for “fool” (바보) but that’s not my intended reference. If you didn’t catch it, by the way, there’s a story you’re just gonna love, here. (Or download it, it’s the third in this book.) If it’s your first time with that piece, I envy you: it’s probably the best novella I read in all of my university years.

The range of interpretations that Melville’s story has received got me wondering whether I could tell a story with similarly ambiguous loyalties. Is that a happy ending? Or is it a tragedy? Can it be both at once?

What do you think?

Reviews:

Val Grimm reviewed the story at The Fix.

“… crackles with righteous indignation… an excellent, furious story about the real cost of humanity’s efforts to combat Climate Change, particularly on the developing world.” (Colin Harvey, Suite101)

Pahwakhe

Here’s Pahwakhe online at Fantasy magazine, along with the Author Spotlight (me being interviewed by K. Tempest Bradford) that went up around the same time.

My first real fiction sale to a real fiction market, Pahwakhe was the first of my two Clarion West Week 6 stories, and received a thorough critique by Vernor Vinge and my classmates. Fantasy magazine bought it shortly after I sent it to them, and it’s currently forthcoming sometime in 2007 early 2008.

What was really amazing was that I wasn’t the first to know. News of the acceptance was posted after I was emailed but before I woke, so I discovered, that morning, some email from Clarion West classmates congratulating me.

Update (11 Dec. 2007): This story is supposed to appear online in a few months, but Podcastle — the fantasy podcast-sibling of Escape Pod — has gone ahead and purchased reprint rights for the story. I’ll put a link up when the story goes live.

Update (2 May 2008): The PodCastle podcast is live! Listen to it here!

Reviews:

“The story feels very much like a tale told by a fireside… The prose is sometimes stark, sometimes lyrical and filled with images of startling clarity…” (Carol Ryles, Writing Walking Whatever)

“…blurs together myth and history in his standout story, “Pahwakhe.” … Sellar’s skillful merging of European traders and visitors from Ghost Town makes this retribution as poignant and creepy as it is unjust… [and his] use of descriptive writing and visual imagery make his tale effective and haunting.” (Val Grimm, The Fix)

“A moody little story that carries you to a sorrowful land.” (Pam Phillips, Writing Every Day)

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