Fantastic Metropolis

The old saw “Money should flow to the writer,” then, is missing the point. The only thing that matters is that the best stories find their ideal audiences. That’s all. That’s all we can hope for as writers, and that’s all an editor can pray for. In the past, money and the transfer of capital with the requisite large infrastructures has expedited this process, and will continue to do so to a certain degree. But this is becoming less and less the case, which isn’t a bad thing at all.

I don’t necessarily think that a Unified Field is in the future; indeed, if there ever was one. Far from siphoning energy away from the genre, I think this attention to the edges can paradoxically give this quirky, necessary mode of writing even more strength, more vitality, more presence in the larger culture’s discourse. Community will become even more important. We will have no choice but to listen to each other. We will have to reach out and trust new audiences, or die. We have to allow stories to have edges that we don’t see, images that we don’t understand but are able to intuit, or die.

Because time is short. We all must think about what this all means in the long run. What does this all matter? All literature hangs in a state of existential suspension; or rather, the “we’re all going to die” clause that’s built into all of our genetic contracts. We like to think that the very act of inscription will provide us with some sort of immortality, but in most cases, it will not be so. Time, our time, is ephemeral.

So why not shoot for the moon? Science fiction writers are taking the extravagant ellipses that Gernsback himself provided, following them into the furthest fields of the unexpected. Into the terra incognita, where there is not necessarily a destination at all: no center, no single canon. In this constant flux, though it may appear terrifying at times, are small moments of unexpected redemption. The dream of the unified field can be put to rest. The ellipses can veer off the safe, straight lines to—well, who knows?

Alan DeNiro’s fiction has appeared in Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, Strange Horizons, Fence, and elsewhere, and has been shortlisted for the O. Henry Award. He is a frequent contributor to Rain Taxi, and is a correspondent for the weblog Ptarmigan. He is a member of the writers’ co-op the Ratbastards, which released their first chapbook, Rabid Transit, in May.