Black Gate

Dominica Phetteplace is a name to which I pay attention, after having read many of her works now in Asimov’s. If I don’t point out her work enough, it’s because Phetteplace doesn’t usually construct whirling plots or astonishing metaphysics*, but instead sculpts a very convincing and immersive (what the literary genre calls “slice of life”) simulation of normal people living in a near-normal future. Phetteplace’s vision, on average, is ingenious, and “Digital Witness,” in the current issue of Asimov’s, is a standout.

Phetteplace’s attitude about our social-media-saturated future is both accepting of it and pragmatically cynical. This story, despite all of its darkness, is not a shrill prophecy about dystopia. If there are warnings here, then they are that marketing and digital commodities will have to be altruistically revolutionized. Rather, Phetteplace’s meditation seems resigned to how “business” will be conducted, how it will affect relationships and “true” social lives. Any canny reader should recognize that this reality is upon us now. And, if Phetteplace’s protagonist in the story actively works in the field of data mining, Phetteplace herself seeks to avoid self-commodification. In the editorial foreword, Phetteplace says that the story was inspired by herself choosing not to download an app that her physical therapist claimed would be of use to Phetteplace in monitoring back pain. In context of the story that Phetteplace ended up writing, it is clear that Phetteplace expected that following her therapist’s advice would infringe on her privacy and result in her information being traded within the digital marketplace.

In short, this is what this story is about: data mining as a business, showing what nefarious uses may result from it, and how commonplace in our world this already seems to be. Phetteplace strikes me as a very powerful and literary writer of science fiction.

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The March/April 2020 issues of Asimov’s Science Fiction and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
Covers by John Picacio and Mondolithic Studios

I’ve always liked big-idea fiction. That’s the stuff whose premise is so mind-boggling that even if I forget the characters and plot, I keep thinking about the story’s implications.

H.P. Lovecraft struck me that way. I started reading him in my 20s, and once I got past the prose (I used to think of him as Edgar Allen Poe on steroids and methamphetamines), the big ideas behind his stories weaseled their way into my head. Imagine the universe we know as a thin veneer over a cauldron of omnipotent indifference. Brrr! Lovecraft’s creation encouraged me to picture every cave as endless, and every unfathomable shadow at night to be a part of the pupil of a great old one’s eye, staring.

Other writers did a similar trick. Edgar Rice Burroughs gave me ancient civilizations of strange creatures on Mars (and the ability of get there if my desire was as strong as John Carter’s); Larry Niven built a ring structure around a planet so vast that it contained three million times the area of Earth; Alfred Bester imagined personal-teleportation so powerful that “the stars, my destination” was practical, not aspirational; and Douglas Adams relegated Earth to a role so small that it is destroyed to make way for a hyper-spatial express route.

See? Big ideas.

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I’m currently in Washington Dulles airport, waiting for my connecting flight back to Chicago. I flew to Tampa on Friday to help my parents, who snowbird in Florida every winter, to pack up and return to Canada a month early. They weren’t happy about it, but given the rate COVID-19 is upending things around the globe, they didn’t have much choice.

Mission Accomplished. But because of flight cancellations, I’m stuck in Dulles with an 11-hour layover before I can get home. Thank God for Locus magazine, which I grabbed on my way out the door on Friday. As usual, the March 2020 issue is packed with reviews, columns, photos and articles of keen interest to science fiction and fantasy readers. There’s even an excerpt from Kit Rocha’s upcoming Tor novel Deal With the Devil. But the feature that I found most fascinating was the interview with Nina Allen, author of The Rift and The Dollmaker. She talks about Doctor Who, Vladimir Nabokov, and Graham Joyce, and delivers perhaps the most on-point description of writing a novel I’ve ever read:

That’s what writing should entail — the fear and the terror and the joy of knowing that this problem is solvable, and there is only one person who can solve it, and it’s me…. I am in competition primarily with myself, because other writers’ talent should be nothing but a joy. When I see writers doing well and being better than me, that’s a joy and a goad and a challenge — not in any way negative. It’s wonderful. Nothing pleases me more than seeing people write brilliantly.

The March 2020 issue of Locus is still available at finer bookstores, and on the Locus website. Individual copies are $8.99. If you haven’t tried the magazine yet, you don’t know what you’re missing. Check it out.