Objects of Worship (27 page)

7.
Njàbò

The lives and plight of nonhuman animals in our human-dominated world has been a concern of mine since early
childhood. One of the most fascinating books I’ve read on
the subject of the clash between human and animal societies
is
Natural Enemies: People-Wildlife Conflicts in Anthropological
Perspective
, edited by John Knight. It’s there that I found
the inspiration for “Njàbò”: namely, in Alex Köhler’s essay
“Half-Man, Half-Elephant: Shapeshifting among the Baka
of Congo.” I should state that, for dramatic purposes, I took
many liberties with Baka lore, and any discrepancies with
reality should in no way be attributed to Köhler but entirely
to me.

8.
A Place Where Nothing Ever Happens

I’d been reading quite a lot of Paul Di Filippo’s short
fiction, including his many goofball romantic comedies
in sciencefictional settings, typically starring hapless and
clueless male leads opposite utterly charming female costars. So I thought I’d try my hand at one such story (albeit
in a more fantastical mode), at the same time turning on
its head the Talking Heads’ notion that “Heaven is a place
where nothing ever happens.”

9.
A Visit to the Optometrist

The Fespers — the neighbours from “The Ethical Treatment
of Meat” — were not part of my original conception of that
earlier story. They emerged during the writing and took on
a life of their own. By the end of that story I loved them so
much that I knew I would one day write another zombie
story with them as the focus. I didn’t want to force it, so
I filed that notion away in the back of my mind until the
right story presented itself. A few years later, “A Visit to the
Optometrist” just popped out of my subconscious with no
warning.

10.
Roman Predator’s Chimeric Odyssey

“Roman Predator’s Chimeric Odyssey” is an example of a
story eventually emerging from a long-gestating opening
scene. I blundered through more than a few false starts,
but I kept junking everything except for that opening and
then letting it sit for a few months before tackling it again.
Eventually, something stuck, and this story took shape.
The inspiration for “Roman Predator’s Chimeric Odyssey”
came from several totally unrelated short stories by Robert
Reed, but heavily filtered through my own preoccupations
and sensibilities.

11.
Destroyer of Worlds

Any reader of Jack Kirby’s comics will easily find echoes
here from, especially,
Fantastic Four
and
New Gods
. And, of
course, Jake Kurtz, as an aspect of Brahma the Creator, is
explicitly intended to be a doppelganger of Kirby himself,
one of the people whose oeuvre has had the most impact
on me. I just about worship Kirby’s work — it was inevitable
that I would dip into that well for inspiration. The first
thing that came to me was the opening scene — the original
version of which predates by more than a decade the period
I started writing seriously. Talk about a long gestation
period! And that had nothing to do with Kirby at first;
rather, it was a response to (i.e., a creative misreading of)
the framing sequence in Theodore Sturgeon’s “A Saucer of
Loneliness.” Over the years, I became increasingly obsessed
with that scene, rewriting it over and over again into various
stories that failed to go anywhere. Finally one of my many
attempts bore fruit, and “Destroyer of Worlds” poured out
of me. At one point it was twice as long as it ended up being;
it went through more revisions than anything else I’ve
written. Other stuff got thrown into the final mix, most
notably Roger Zelazny (especially his early mythology/SF
hybrids) and the 1960s British TV series
The Champions
.

12.
This Is The Ice Age

Julie Czerneda and Genevieve Kierans invited me to
contribute to their anthology
Mythspring: From the Lyrics
& Legends of Canada
. The idea was to take inspiration
from a Canadian song or legend and forge an entirely new
story. Instead of the expected folkloric sources, I opted
for Canadian New Wave band Martha & the Muffins and
their haunting and hypnotic sciencefictional song “This Is
the Ice Age.” In fact, many songs, and even the cover art
and design, from the album of the same name fed into the
tapestry of the story. Since I was clearly crafting a disaster
story, I decided to also pay homage to the greatest disaster
novelist of the twentieth century, and my favourite writer,
J.G. Ballard, as Ballard readers will easily notice. One of
the coolest things that happened as a result of this story
was that I got to meet Mark Gane and Martha Johnson, the
musicians at the heart of Martha & the Muffins.

“The Object of Worship” first appeared in
Tesseracts Eleven
(Edge
Publishing 2007), edited by Cory Doctorow & Holly Phillips.

“The Ethical Treatment of Meat” first appeared in
The Book of
More Flesh
(Eden Studios 2002), edited by James Lowder.

“Hochelaga and Sons” first appeared in
Electric Velocipede
#13
(Fall 2007).

“The Sea, at Bari” first appeared in
On Spec
#72 (Spring 2008).

“The Darkness at the Heart of the World” is previously
unpublished.

“Spiderkid” first appeared in
Reflection’s Edge
#22 (February
2007).

“Njàbò” previously appeared in
On Spec
#54 (Fall 2003), Kenoma
(December 2004), and
Expanded Horizons
#1 (October 2008).

“A Place Where Nothing Ever Happens” first appeared in
Interzone
#182 (November 2002).

“A Visit to the Optometrist” previously appeared in
SDO Fantasy
(October 2004) and in
The Best of SDO
(Perplexed Puffin Press
2005), edited by Mark Anthony Brennan & David Bowlin.

“Roman Predator’s Chimeric Odyssey” is previously
unpublished.

“Destroyer of Worlds” first appeared in
Electric Velocipede
#15/16
(Winter 2008).

“This Is the Ice Age” previously appeared in
Mythspring
(Red
Deer Press 2006), edited by Julie Czerneda & Genevieve
Kierans, and in
Year’s Best SF 12
(Eos 2007), edited by David
Hartwell & Kathryn Cramer.