Writers of the Future, Volume 30
“Place a bet?” a stubby bookie asked, jostling my elbow.
“That one. The scrawny one in the corner,” I said. He was even the right age.
“He looks lucky to you?” the bookie asked, skeptical.
“Yeah,” I said. “I like his smile.”
Synaptic Soup
by Val Lakey Lindahn
Val Lakey Lindahn started working as a freelance artist in 1971 and went on to produce hundreds of illustrations for Asimov’s and Analog magazines. Then in 1983 she and her husband, Ron Lindahn, decided to move to Georgia, where they formed Valhalla Studio to collaborate on illustrations for books, magazines, videos and movie posters. Their book cover illustrations have graced many top science fiction and fantasy authors’ works internationally.
Ron and Val are now collaborating on their own illustrated book projects and have published The Secret Lives of Cats, How to Choose Your Dragon and Old Missus Milliwhistle’s Book of Beneficial Beasties.
Twice nominated for the Hugo, Val has won the Chesley Award as well as the Gaughan Award and, together with her husband, the Frank R. Paul Award.
In addition to illustrating, Val also sculpts in ceramics and wood, animates in pixels and is a gourmet cook. Her work and Valhalla Studio have been featured in newspapers and magazines including the Atlanta Journal Constitution and she has been named the “Female Futurist” in Southern Living Magazine.
Val has been a judge for the Illustrators of the Future Contest since its inception in 1988.
Synaptic Soup
I was born blind, but I didn’t know it. Oh, I could see broad blurry shapes and clouds of color, but it wasn’t until I was well into the third grade that I discovered what the teacher was doing up at the blackboard, that trees had leaves and books could be read more than two inches from my face. That is when my eyes were finally tested and I received glasses with lenses rivaling those in the Hubble telescope. Being able to actually see was spectacular. But it was only the beginning. From somewhere within, a profound sense of wonder emerged. I was intoxicated discovering the world around me, and in my newfound delight I would ask “What else?” and “What if?” My already active imagination was sparked by my mother’s love of science fiction and the stories she would share with me.
It was a narrow miss. I could have continued growing up frightened and paranoid; instead I became a happy explorer of what-ifs. Now, these many years later, I am often asked, “Where do you get your ideas?” After much consideration I can report with some authority that ideas come from “Synaptic Soup.” Like stone soup, it is comprised of small contributions from everyone I meet and everything I experience. As I move through the world listening to music, reading voraciously, talking to friends, looking, seeing, touching and tasting the world, my soup becomes rich and hearty. Then when I ask the magic soup a question, my synapses snap erratically, synthesizing a bit of this and a morsel of that until, like the magic eight ball, an answer floats up to the surface of my mind. And it is usually a good one.
It is also useful to note that the quality of the question has a profound influence on the answer that emerges. Instead of simply asking myself, “Should it be red or blue?” I ask if there is a color that hasn’t been invented yet. Asking hard questions and being willing to wait for the soup to finish cooking are critical to developing an outstanding product.
Any creator, maker, visionary, if they are honest, will report that having the idea is only a small beginning. Everyone has their own version of “Synaptic Soup”; in every mind ideas percolate to the surface as regularly as waves kiss the sand. The idea is merely a seed. It is what we do to nurture that seed, to feed it, to create a loving environment for it, to remove the weeds (obstacles to its full realization), that help it grow. Then we put in the time and energy to help it blossom and flourish. If we are doing it right, we invest ourselves; that is, our creation becomes an extension of us, our child. We are to be found in every brush stroke, each small decision, in every letter, word and sentence. In the process we reveal ourselves; our real selves shine through, leaving us naked and vulnerable. True creation requires the courage to be seen.
In the early 1980s, the Writers of the Future Contest was established by L. Ron Hubbard to discover and nurture aspiring writers in the field of speculative fiction. While a great investment of time, energy and financial support, it had a precedent: Hubbard had done this before with great success. However, creating the infrastructure for a contest aimed at identifying and supporting up-and-coming artists had never been done. At that time every existing art-related contest required an entrance fee, or loss of rights to created works, or attendance at one of the many genre-related conventions. The world of science fiction, fantasy and dark fiction artists was lonely and regional. It was a Catch-22 world wherein one had to be published in order to get work and thus be published. This was the state of affairs when the question was asked: “How can new artists in speculative fiction be discovered and nurtured?” Eventually the answer surfaced: Set up a sister Illustrators of the Future Contest and enlist the aid of the best artists on the planet to assist in creating an international contest that has remained unchallenged in its achievement for a quarter of a century.
In February of 1988, Frank Kelly Freas was asked to help create the rules for entry and judging, and to select a world-class panel of judges to offer aspiring artists real-world guidance and feedback. The objective of the Contest: To identify new artists with potential and to make the transition to a professional level with their art rapidly and effectively. The panel of judges since the inception of the Contest has been stellar. Never before has a group of professionals at the top of their field come together to collaborate to insure that the future would be served by the best of the best. The seed was planted, nurtured, watered with energy and loving attention. Each obstacle, like a pesky weed, was removed. The idea grew from “What if?” to “What next?” What had begun as a simple desire to help, now blossomed into a most unique and productive means of finding talent and giving careers a jumpstart.
I was so honored to be selected for that first panel of judges. To be listed with the likes of Kelly, Frank Frazetta, Leo and Diane Dillon, Vincent Di Fate, Will Eisner, Paul Lehr, and so many of those who inspired and kept me motivated to do better, was a truly humbling experience. My heroes were now my virtual aunts and uncles in art. What a powerhouse family I found myself enjoying. And if that wasn’t enough to dazzle a little blind girl, my sense of wonder has blossomed into a forest over the past twenty-five years of working with the amazing talent that has percolated to the top of our Contest. Each year at our workshop I am again humbled by the talent and aspiration of our finalists. An extra feeling of satisfaction comes over me when I hear about the extraordinary successes of many of our winners. Some have excelled so much that they have been invited to join our panel of judges.
Some of our dear friends who served selflessly as judges for so many years are no longer with us. They are greatly missed, but their legacy lives on in their contribution to the many careers they assisted in fostering. In the creation of the Contest Mr. Hubbard wisely made provisions for its continued service far into the future. New judges have been added from the best of the field, including Stephen Hickman, Cliff Neilson and Stephan Martiniere.
After twenty-five years of delight in being a part of Mr. Hubbard’s Contest, sharing his vision for a better future by improving the quality of the present, working with up-and-coming talent, having the opportunity to contribute from my experience, I find myself deeply grateful. It is with heartfelt thanks that I honor L. Ron Hubbard for helping to keep my sense of awe and wonder alive for so many years. His seed has spread to every corner of the world, and it is a better place for it.
Robots Don’t Cry
written by
Mike Resnick
illustrated by
Andrew Sonea
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
A nati
ve of Chicago, Mike Resnick is, according to Locus magazine, the all-time leading award-winning author, living or dead, for short fiction and is fourth on the Locus list of science fiction’s all-time award winners in all fiction categories.
Mike has five Hugos (from a record thirty-six nominations), a Nebula and numerous other awards from the US and places as diverse as France, Japan, Croatia, Poland, Catalonia and Spain. He is the author of seventy-five novels, close to three hundred stories, three screenplays and has edited forty-one anthologies.
Mike was the guest of honor at the 2012 World Science Fiction Convention and is currently the editor of Galaxy’s Edge magazine.
By way of introduction to the story that follows, “Robots Don’t Cry,” Mike had this to say:
“I was thumbing through a coffee-table book on East Africa in Barnes & Noble, and I came across a photo of Dr. Richard Leakey standing holding up a skull of what I thought said ‘Australopithicus Robotus.’ I did a double-take, read it more carefully, and of course it said ‘Australopithicus Robustus.’
“But all the way home I kept wondering what an ‘Australopithicus Robotus’ would be like, and of course the only way to find out was to write the story.
“If I’d been enrolled in Writers of the Future the year I wrote ‘Robots Don’t Cry,’ it’s surely the one I’d have submitted. It’s science fictional, with the trappings of an imagined future, yet it is a very human story, which I think is the key to writing a good story in any field.”
ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR
Andrew Sonea is also the illustrator for “Rainbows for Other Days” in this volume. For more information about Andrew, please see here.
Robots Don’t Cry
They call us graverobbers, but we’re not.
What we do is plunder the past and offer it to the present. We hit old worlds, deserted worlds, worlds that nobody wants any longer, and we pick up anything we think we can sell to the vast collectibles market. You want a 700-year-old timepiece? A thousand-year-old bed? An actual printed book? Just put in your order, and sooner or later we’ll fill it.
Every now and then we strike it rich. Usually we make a profit. Once in a while we just break even. There’s only been one world where we actually lost money; I still remember it— Greenwillow. Except that it wasn’t green, and there wasn’t a willow on the whole damned planet.
There was a robot, though. We found him, me and the Baroni, in a barn, half hidden under a pile of ancient computer parts and self-feeders for mutated cattle. We were picking through the stuff, wondering if there was any market for it, tossing most of it aside, when the sun peeked in through the doorway and glinted off a prismatic eye.
“Hey, take a look at what we’ve got here,” I said. “Give me a hand digging it out.”
The junk had been stored a few feet above where he’d been standing and the rack broke, practically burying him. One of his legs was bent at an impossible angle, and his expressionless face was covered with cobwebs. The Baroni lumbered over—when you’ve got three legs you don’t glide gracefully—and studied the robot.
“Interesting,” he said. He never used whole sentences when he could annoy me with a single word that could mean almost anything.
“He should pay our expenses, once we fix him up and get him running,” I said.
“A human configuration,” noted the Baroni.
“Yeah, we still made ’em in our own image until a couple of hundred years ago.”
“Impractical.”
“Spare me your practicalities,” I said. “Let’s dig him out.”
“Why bother?”
Trust a Baroni to miss the obvious. “Because he’s got a memory cube,” I answered. “Who the hell knows what he’s seen? Maybe we’ll find out what happened here.”
“Greenwillow has been abandoned since long before you were born and I was hatched,” replied the Baroni, finally stringing some words together. “Who cares what happened?”
“I know it makes your head hurt, but try to use your brain,” I said, grunting as I pulled at the robot’s arm. It came off in my hands. “Maybe whoever he worked for hid some valuables.” I dropped the arm onto the floor. “Maybe he knows where. We don’t just have to sell junk, you know; there’s a market for the good stuff too.”
The Baroni shrugged and began helping me uncover the robot. “I hear a lot of ifs and maybes,” he muttered.
“Fine,” I said. “Just sit on what passes for your ass, and I’ll do it myself.”
“And let you keep what we find without sharing it?” he demanded, suddenly throwing himself into the task of moving the awkward feeders. After a moment he stopped and studied one. “Big cows,” he noted.
“Maybe ten or twelve feet at the shoulder, judging from the size of the stalls and the height of the feeders,” I agreed. “But there weren’t enough to fill the barn. Some of those stalls were never used.”
Finally we got the robot uncovered, and I checked the code on the back of his neck.
“How about that?” I said. “The son of a bitch must be five hundred years old. That makes him an antique by anyone’s definition. I wonder what we can get for him?”
The Baroni peered at the code. “What does AB stand for?”
“Aldebaran. Alabama. Abrams’ Planet. Or maybe just the model number. Who the hell knows? We’ll get him running and maybe he can tell us.” I tried to set him on his feet. No luck. “Give me a hand.”
“To the ship?” asked the Baroni, using sentence fragments again as he helped me stand the robot upright.
“No,” I said. “We don’t need a sterile environment to work on a robot. Let’s just get him out in the sunlight, away from all this junk, and then we’ll have a couple of mechs check him over.”
We half carried and half dragged him to the crumbling concrete pad beyond the barn, then laid him down while I tightened the muscles in my neck, activating the embedded microchip, and directed the signal by pointing to the ship, which was about half a mile away.
“This is me,” I said as the chip carried my voice back to the ship’s computer. “Wake up Mechs Three and Seven, feed them everything you’ve got on robots going back a millennium, give them repair kits and anything else they’ll need to fix a broken robot of indeterminate age, and then home in on my signal and send them to me.”
“Why those two?” asked the Baroni.
Sometimes I wondered why I partnered with anyone that dumb. Then I remembered the way he could sniff out anything with a computer chip or cube, no matter how well it was hidden, so I decided to give him a civil answer. He didn’t get that many from me; I hoped he appreciated it.
“Three’s got those extendable eyestalks, and it can do microsurgery, so I figure it can deal with any faulty microcircuits. As for Seven, it’s strong as an ox. It can position the robot, hold him aloft, move him any way that Three directs it to. They’re both going to show up filled to the brim with everything the ship’s data bank has on robots, so if he’s salvageable, they’ll find a way to salvage him.”
I waited to see if he had any more stupid questions. Sure enough, he had.
“Why would anyone come here?” he asked, looking across the bleak landscape.
“I came for what passes for treasure these days,” I answered him. “I have no idea why you came.”
“I meant originally,” he said, and his face started to glow that shade of pea-soup green that meant I was getting to him. “Nothing can grow, and the ultraviolet rays would eventually kill most animals. So why?”
“Because not all humans are as smart as me.”
“It’s an impoverished world,” continued the Baroni. “What valuables could there be?”
“The usual,” I replied. “Family heirlooms. Holographs. Old kitchen implements. Maybe even a few old Republic coins.”
“Republic currency can’t be spent.”
“True—but a few years ago I saw a five-credit coin sell for three hundred Maria Teresa dollars. They tell me it’s worth twice that today.”
“I didn’t know that,” admitted the Baroni.
“I’ll bet they could fill a book with all the things you don’t know.”
“Why are Men so sardonic and ill-mannered?”
“Probably because we have to spend so much time with races like the Baroni,” I answered.
Mechs Three and Seven rolled up before he could reply.
“Reporting for duty, sir,” said Mech Three in his high-pitched mechanical voice.
“This is a very old robot,” I said, indicating what we’d found. “It’s been out of commission for a few centuries, maybe even longer. See if you can get it working again.”
“We live to serve,” thundered Mech Seven.
“I can’t tell you how comforting I find that.” I turned to the Baroni. “Let’s grab some lunch.”
“Why do you always speak to them that way?” asked the Baroni as we walked away from the mechs. “They don’t understand sarcasm.”
“It’s my nature,” I said. “Besides, if they don’t know it’s sarcasm, it must sound like a compliment. Probably pleases the hell out of them.”
“They are machines,” he responded. “You can no more please them than offend them.”
“Then what difference does it make?”
“The more time I spend with Men, the less I understand them,” said the Baroni, making the burbling sound that passed for a deep sigh. “I look forward to getting the robot working. Being a logical and unemotional entity, it will make more sense.”
“Spare me your smug superiority,” I shot back. “You’re not here because Papa Baroni looked at Mama Baroni with logic in his heart.”