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This story originally appeared in the March/April 2016 issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction. It is the story referenced here. It is approximately 7100 words in length.
Red in Tooth and Cog
A phone can be so much. Your memory, your edge against boredom, your source of inspiration. There’s always an app for whatever you need. Renee valued her phone accordingly, even celebrating it by giving way to the trend for fancy phone-cases. Its edges were bezeled with bling she’d won on a cruise the year before, and she’d had some tiny opals, legacy of her godmother, set into the center.
It was an expensive, new-model phone in a pretty case, and that was probably why it was stolen.
Renee was in the park near work. A sunny day, on the edge of cold, the wind carrying spring with it like an accessory it was testing for effect.
She set her phone down on the bench beside her as she unfolded her bento box, foil flaps levering back to reveal still-steaming rice, quivering tofu.
Movement caught her eye. She pulled her feet away as a creature leaped up onto the bench slats beside her, an elastic-band-snap’s worth of fear as it grabbed the phone, half as large as the creature itself, and moved to the other end of the bench.
The bento box clattered as it hit the path, rice grains spilling across the grey concrete.
Renee thought the creature an animal at first, but it was actually a small robot, a can opener that had been greatly and somewhat inexpertly augmented and modified. It had two corkscrew claws, and grasshopper legs made from nutcrackers to supplement the tiny wheels on its base, originally designed to let it move to hand as needed in a kitchen. Frayed raffia wrapped its handles, scratchy strands feathering out to weathered fuzz. Its original plastic had been some sort of blue, faded now to match the sidewalk beneath her sensible shoes.
The bench jerked as the robot leaped again, moving behind the trashcan, still carrying her phone. She stood, stepping over the spilled rice to try to get to it, but the rhododendron leaves thrashed and stilled, and her phone was gone.
...
Short version: I’ve withdrawn my story from the Nebula ballot. Many congratulations to Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam, whose excellent story The Orangery replaces it on the ballot.
Long version: One of the best parts of being SFWA President or Vice President is that you get to be one of the people calling the Nebula nominees to tell them what’s up. This is a lot of fun because giving people good news is almost always a terrific experience. I’ve ever gotten to call former students on occasion, and thought my heart would burst from joy, because that is a terrific feeling.
This year I woke on February 16, the day we would be making the calls, to find a message from our Nebula Awards Commissioner asking me to give her a call. I did, and she presented me with news that both delighted and horrified me, that my novelette, “Red in Tooth and Cog,” was on the ballot.
Delighted, because I like that story, and think it’s a good one. A number of people whose opinion I value highly have expressed praise for it, and it’s also something that represents a victory for me. I was grimly determined to be published in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction ““ it was a publication that represented an enormous milestone to me ““ and that acceptance was my 44th submission to the magazine over the course of 12 years. It wasn’t that the other stories were bad ones. One of them, “Five Ways to Fall in Love on Planet Porcelain,” even went on to become a Nebula nominee in 2013.
And horrified, because I don’t want things to look like the Nebulas are motivated by concerns other than literary excellence, and it seemed to me that this could look like that since I have engendered a little popularity while President, mainly because I am so goddamn personable. And I was sure there would be a certain amount of grumbling about it. So before we moved forward, I had to decide whether or not to withdraw it
...
I write this amid a welter of notes, business cards, and obligations/opportunities acquired over the course of what was, for me, the best Nebula weekend I have ever attended. Part of that was the number of attendees who came up to express their appreciation of the programming, the award ceremony, the events, the overflowing book bags, the volunteers, the Nebulas issue of the Bulletin, the volunteer breakfast, and even with the way that they think SFWA has been going over the course of the last year. That is, to put it mildly, most gratifying, and is among the reasons I returned from Chicago renewed, refreshed, and re-enthused. A little under a year of my two-year presidential term lies behind me; I’m curious to see how much can be achieved in the next year.
Thank you to everyone who attended, both in person or virtually by spreading the word and retweeting. It was a weekend that was full of wonderful community and a chance to connect with new and old friends. There were so many moments that will live in my heart, including:
For me, so much of the weekend was a reaffirmation of joy in our genre and the worlds that we love, worlds created by some of the best and brightest. Opportunity to talk with so many talented, kind, and outstanding members of the industry. A chance to stand by one of my heroes, someone whose work I’ve read most of my life and who has been one of my role models, and see her body of work recognized. A chance to be in a place where people treated each other with respect as peers and took pride in each other’s accomplishments, where there weren’t the sort of meanspiritness and petty behaviors that belong on the playground rather than among fellow professionals. A chance to tell people some of what SFWA’s been working hard at in the past year, and some of what’s coming down the pike.
Here’s some of my favorite Nebula write-ups:
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(fantasy, short story)
General Aife Crofadottir was acknowledged the greatest military mind of her generation—perhaps even her century. No wonder then that the sorcerer Balthus recruited her early in her career, setting her to rally armies of Beasts and magically-equipped soldiers, planning campaign after campaign, until finally he stood the ruler of a vast expanse of the continent’s northeastern corner. Once fertile lands, once countries, now only uncontested, devastated territories. Three years after her death, she still labored in his service.
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