Early in the year, my story “The History Within Us” was reprinted in The People of the Book.  An excellent anthology of Jewish-themed science fiction & fantasy, I was pretty darn happy to share a table of contents with Neil Gaiman, Peter Beagle, and many other talents.

Another Jewish-themed story (do you sense a pattern?), “The Hands that Feed” appeared in Steam-Powered: Lesbian Steampunk Stories.  About an aging Jewish woman in a steam-punked Lower East Side of 1895, this story was a lot of fun to write.  People seemed to like this one quite a bit too, which made me very happy.

My big publication of the year was “The Bricks of Gelecek,” which appeared in Ellen Datlow’s urban fantasy anthology Naked City. Ellen said this story “blew me away” when she first read it.  And Shelf Awareness called it the “true gem in the collection.”  I’m quite proud of this story, especially since it takes place in the same universe as my novel in progress.  Over on the SFWA.org boards, Ellen has posted a copy of the story for SFWA members.  If you care to check it out, please let me know what you think!

GUD Magazine purchased my small-town tale “One Spring in Cherryville,” a story about a close band of twenty-somethings who discover something buried in an abandoned factory basement that changes their lives forever.  I don’t have a publication date for this one yet.

Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling purchased “The Great Game at the End of the World” for their YA dystopian anthology, After.  This was the first time that I’d written a story that put children in real harm, and I found some scenes painful to write.  But I think this is one of my best stories, and I’m excited to hear what people think of it when it comes out this fall.

Sean Wallace purchased a reprint of “The Hands that Feed” for The Mammoth Book of Steampunk, which will be out in June of this year.

Sadly, there was no issue of Sybil’s Garage in 2011.  Though I really wanted to do a new issue, a number of other projects have prevented me from finding the time.  This is not the end of the magazine, however.  It will return!

For my work on Sybil’s Garage and Senses Five Press I was nominated for a World Fantasy Award in the category of Special Award, Non-Professional.  Though I did not win, it was a great honor to be nominated.  Even better was sharing the ballot with my Altered Fluid mates Mercurio David Rivera and N.K. Jemisin.  Go team!

This year I did several readings of my work.  In February I read along side Rick Bowes at the Wold Newton reading series.  In a crowded bookstore in Cambridge, MA I read with other contributors of Naked City, and I participated in three more readings at Readercon.  At the San Diego World Fantasy Convention, Jeff Ford and I both read our stories from After.  Jeff was awesome by offering to merge our separate readings into one large one.  Overall I believe I did about eight different readings this year, which seems like a lot now that I think about it.

At Readercon I hosted a popular panel called “Dybbuks, Golems, Demons, Oy Vey!: Jewish Mythology and Folklore in Speculative Fiction.”  I had a lot of fun talking about the many great stories of Jewish fantasy and science fiction with the panelists, and the overcrowded room was testament to the panel’s success.

So, you may be wondering, what’s with all this Jewish-themed stuff?  Well, I’ve been working on a novel based on the Jewish myth of the Lamed Vav, the Thirty Six just men who sustain the world.  I finished a draft in August, the same day (no actually the same minute) that the northeastern U.S. was struck with a minor earthquake.  I had been writing about minor earthquakes in the final scene, so when the world actually shook, I was like, whoops!  Next time I’ll write about rainbows and universal harmony.  Anyway, I have recently begun revisions on the novel and I am about 25% of the way through.  I hope to have a final draft by the end of February.

The Fantastic Fiction reading series at KGB has been going strong all throughout 2011, with many excellent guests and regular large crowds.  The fundraiser from 2010 has allowed Ellen and I to continue to run the series throughout most of 2012.  I noticed a lot of new faces in the audience, which suggests that the series is expanding in popularity as well.  2012 is already shaping up to be amazing with January’s guests, James Patrick Kelly and Kelly Link.  In March, we will also have Terry Bisson, the series’ founder.  It’s going to be a good year.

Overall 2011 was a very good year for me, and I’m working hard to make sure 2012 continues that trend.  On that note, here’s hoping your New Year’s was a happy one and that 2012 brings you all the success you deserve.  Bye, for now.

(Also be on the lookout for a huge Sybil’s Garage announcement this weekend.)

Authors put their blood, sweat and tears into their work (I know, I’m one of them), and it can be horribly frightening and demeaning to see someone take that hard work and pass it off as their own, without permission, without credit.  The act is despicable, especially since it seems this offender — I dare not call him an “author” for he is nothing of the kind — has done this multiple times.

So I propose we celebrate original fiction.  I kindly ask that you please support Livia by reading her story “Jetsam” here and writing a comment in support of her and in support of original fiction. Please help spread the word that originality matters.

by Anil Menon

to the sound of Yaarodu Yaaro by Yuvan Shankar Raja & Ustad Sultan Khan…

This story appears in Sybil’s Garage No. 7.

I, ZULAIKHA, MUTANT, inconvenient and sixteen-point-two miraculous years old, declare myself Eve of a bold and brilliant species. I am Singular. Protoplast. Odd. In short, fucked. I am besieged by fallen apes, hairy and quarrelsome. I am besmirched on the neighborhood’s limestone walls. I am virginal, insolvent and oppressed. Says Zulaikha: bring it!

Note On Rejecting Modesty: Should a comet apologize for its blaze? I will bellow my existence, even though I’m motherless, solitary and desolate beyond human imagining. Unnatural Zulaikha, doomed to be a thinking angel amongst quarreling beasts. Unnatural Zulaikha, doomed with ocular excess in the Country of the Blind. Unnatural Zulaikha, doomed to love YUSUF!

I am the only child of a Coptic Christian man in Heliopolis, Egypt. Technically, that makes me Christian and an Egyptian. But that’s merely an accident of geography and biology. To what country does the Opposable Thumb belong? Under what species’ haunches does an America crouch? I imagine myself free. I must imagine myself free.

Imagination is the name of a river in Egypt. All things exist, absolute and immutable, in its incarnadine waters. Did I not fish my world from its sunless depths? Through imagination have I achieved freedom, escape velocity, solace. I imagine I am not Copt. I imagine I am not Egyptian. I imagine, therefore I deny.

Father says imagination is a form of denial. If so, there are many who would imagine a world without Copts. The Pharaoh denies them political representation. The Pharaoh denies the Copts permits to build their churches. The Pharaoh denies them licenses to start businesses. My father’s God kept a close tab on the Pharaoh’s denials.

There are all kinds of Gods. Gods who begat. Gods with thunder-throats. Gods lost in desert lands. Gods who court frightened swans. Gods who turn grief into pearls. Gods who giggle at funerals. Gods who pooh-pooh and Gods who march ahead. Gods with winter-faces and Gods not quite dead. There are all kinds of fathers.

I once asked Yusuf whom his God preferred more: the chaste or the virtuous. He thought about it, a smile playing about his shy lips.

“The virtuous seek to slay themselves, Zulaikha, but the chaste seek to slay the lover. Yahweh certainly prefers the virtuous.”

Hai Allah, how do I get Yusuf to plough me!

Additional Note on Rejecting Modesty, Sexual: I was born without webbed thighs, and so I infer I’m intended to spread, with a modicum of the infinite benevolence and generosity, that which Allah, praised be his name, hath left so delightfully hinged. Why won’t my Suleyaman grant this Hurrem a shoulder to rest her henna’d foot!

I have battled Life these sixteen-point-two miraculous years, and though the exterior of my corpus is without blemish, the interior — alas! My interior is Guernica. My interior is Soft Construction With Boiled Beans. My interior is engaged in two ruinous wars:

Enemy

Enemy

There are all kinds of fathers. Fathers who wilt in the sun. Fathers who cry in the rain. Fathers with desolate beds. Fathers with forbidden wings. Fathers lost in Egypt. Fathers who plot dreadful things. Fathers who are Moody Djinns. Fathers who will soon be dead. Fathers beloved beyond measure. My father is many fathers.

Yusuf, being of Adam-kind, has both a father and a navel. He’s a tall, loose, rumpled fellow. Such long fingers! I like the way he eats tomatoes. I like his gray eyes that once saw me naked; gray eyes that looked once and then twice. I like his smile when I make our eyes meet.

Yusuf, being of the tribe of Manasseh, has no foreskin. No, I have not verified the absence of the fact directly. The sense of an absence, I have read, can often substitute for the absent. Phantom limbs, phantom roots. I wonder if Yusuf has a phantom foreskin. I can’t get it out of my mind.

Dear Yusuf,

How’s it hanging, bro? Check this out:

“In conclusion, circumcision removes the most sensitive parts of the penis and decreases the fine-touch pressure sensitivity of glans penis. The most sensitive regions in the uncircumcised penis are those parts ablated by circumcision.” (Sorrells et. al., British J. Urology, 99, pp. 864-869, 2007)

Hugs,

Foreskin

The removal of the foreskin is an optional maneuver for Coptic Christians. I asked the Moody Djinn if he had exercised that option.

“No,” he replied, with unnecessary irritation.

Good, good. But my relief was temporary. The Moody Djinn turned melancholy, even remorseful.

“Not everyone is as righteous as Yusuf. He’s a true tzaddik, Zulaikha.”

Yusuf, a tzaddik! A teacher to those black-hatted, forelocked, Talmud-toting, Yiddish-speaking, Zulaikha-ignoring Hasidic Jews? Impossible! I hurried to query the Righteous One.

“No, I’m not a tzaddik,” says Yusuf. “I’m a Bnei Menashe. And I’m far from righteous.”

Exactly! Besides, what would a righteous soul be doing with the Moody Djinn? Some fathers are liars.

Tidbit: In the land of Hindustan, where the plausible is a malnourished sibling of the actual, Jews have long been welcome. There’s the Cochin Jews of Kerala, the Telugu-speaking Bene Ephraim, the Bene Israel of Maharashtra, the Kolkata Baghdadi and the Bnei Menashe of Mizoram. Bnei Menashe imagine they’re descendents of Manasseh, son of Joseph.

About Joseph: Abraham begat Isaac begat Jacob begat Joseph begat Manasseh, whose name tombstones all that Joseph has had to forget, namely: sold to Midianite traders by his own brothers, the decade of salt and slavery, the brush of Potiphar’s nipples on his back, the screams in Pharaoh’s prison, the rat-nibbles of other people’s dreams.

Manasseh’s mother is Asenath, mute daughter of Potiphar and Zulaikha. Asenath is clever, slender, and full of orgasms. When Asenath smiles, Potiphar imagines strange things: that she’s not his daughter, but a foundling, a secret given flesh. Othertimes, he imagines parenthood: his daughter, an hour-old, nestled in Zulaikha’s arms. Fatherhood is compatible with both explanations.

Old Potiphar has a wife. Zulaikha is her name. She perches on his shoulder, nibbles his ear. When she is bored, he opens windows and lets her out. She returns in minutes, days, sometimes weeks. She returns; bruised lips, folded wings. Then he buys her gifts: pearls, perfumes, salves and slaves. Let’s imagine him happy.

When Joseph’s lips meet Asenath’s mute lips, he forgets things. He forgets a desert God perched on his shoulder, whispering in his ear. He forgets a boy in a well, a boy in a splendiferous coat, a boy in a slaver’s grasp. These Josephs, Joseph is certain, differ from the Joseph kissing Asenath’s soft lips.

When Joseph’s lips meet Asenath’s lips, he imagines strange things. He imagine a little house with yellow slats on a cypress-scented hill. He imagines not being righteous, not being chosen, not being an exemplar, not knowing the meaning of dreams. He imagines being Egyptian. These Josephs, Joseph thinks, are also the immigrant kissing Asenath’s lips.

Joseph is an immigrant. An immigrant is ninety-percent imagination and ten-percent trace minerals. They are one solution to Kafka’s psychograms: the waiting-list, the penal colony, the courtroom, the burrow, the absurd metamorphosis. These moral instruments are categories of containment and cannot hold immigrants, for imagination devours all categories. Thus did Joseph ben Jacob become Zaphnath-paaneah.

What Asenath said: When my lips meet his, mother, and when my dust mingles with his, mother, and when I make him forget, mother, and when I seize what father seized, mother, and when I demand what you demanded, mother, why does Zaphnath-paaneah say: “It’s not you I love, beloved, it’s what you are not.”

On some cold and braziered nights, as the slave Amen plays the flute, opium entranced, and Asenath dances naked in front of Zaphnath, her upraised arms fluttering like the flame’s forked tongue, Zaphnath unlocks his burdened chest, shrugs on his imagination, luxuriates in the coat’s whorls, colors, and pockets, and then joins Asenath, dancing, dancing.

When Zaphnath, rich and powerful, brought Joseph’s family to Egypt, they dare not comment on his splendiferous coat. The guards wait, hands on swords.

“I use it to imagine,” says Zaphnath, smiling. “I imagine justice. I imagine forgiveness. I imagine happiness, family. I can imagine anything.”

Smiling, he insists they try his coat; smiling, smiling.

Their wedding is a noisy affair. Such laughter!

“Quiet, quiet,” mutters Zaphnath. “If I could but quiet the lord’s mouth as the lord silenced yours, Asenath.”

“Then let’s rename our first-born,” signs Asenath. “We’ll call him Manasseh: made for forgetting.”

It’s cold in the desert. Zaphnath dons his splendiferous coat, but the infernal cold endures.

Of Manasseh, son of Egypt and Israel, son of Zaphnath and Asenath: loyal, strong, married to a Syrian concubine, serene, responsible, and by tradition, a role-model for future Jewish kids. His tribal banner has a prancing unicorn against a black background. Over time his tribe spreads out of Canaan, perhaps into Asia or even: Mizoram.

Tidbit: Mizoram is a mountainous North-Eastern state of Hindustan. It has bamboo forests and bandicoot rats. The bamboo flowers every forty-eight years, the rats gorge on the seeds and multiply, the bamboo seeds run out, the rats turn to the food grains, people starve, the rats retreat, the bamboo flowers over and over and over.

In this land of bamboo forests, bandicoot rats and famines, nineteenth century British explorers came across a small Mizo tribe who had a harvest song about a divided red sea, a terrible desert exodus, pillars of cloud and fire, and about water that sprang from a rock. It’s true. Yusuf has sung me this song.

The people of Mizoram are short, stocky, nut-brown and have almond-shaped eyes. Yusuf is tall, slender, fair and has no epicanthic folds. He believes nonetheless that his ancestors were chased out of Canaan, two-thousand and seven-hundred years ago, by short, stocky, nut-brown Assyrians. The Moody Djinn agrees. He says Yusuf is as Jewish as Manasseh.

When the Moody Djinn and I had gone to pick up a tall, slender, fair, boy with no epicanthic folds in Neveh Dekalim, I caught my first glimpse of Yusuf’s people, the Bnei Menashe. They beat their palms against the tinted windows of our Mercedes. Chanting. Cursing. Spitting. Weeping. Wrinkled faces like old leather slippers.

Neveh Dekalim is one of the nineteen Jewish settlements in Gush Katif, a pretty-postcard place wedged between the blue Mediterranean in the northeast and the Negev. The settlement was being demolished, and the Jews forced out. This time, there were no plagues or pillars of cloud and fire. Just brother against brother. Just politics.

Moody Djinn greeted Yusuf with the warmth he reserved for the trusted. Yusuf was not much older than me, a few miraculous years at most, but Moody Djinn talked to him as an adult. Plotics. Giraffography. Horrorstory. Atrocity Theory. The car’s interior was very cold, but as the Moody Djinn talked, the desert crept in.

How to make Copts feel Somewhat Unwanted: Why do they take public safety for granted? Abduct their women while they’re shopping (Ingy Helmy Labibe, 01/04/2004), while enroute to work (Marianna Attallah, 05/2005), or just like that (Ingy Nagy Edwar, 09/27/03). Launch futile investigations. Insist they must have been asking for it. Deny the events happened.

How to make Copts feel Strongly Unwanted: Torture converts (Yousef and Mariam Suliman, 10/20/2003, Alexandria). Set them on fire (06/17/81, El-Zawia El-Hamra, Cairo). Murder Coptic monks (04/11/94, St. Mary’s Monastery, Asyut). A tender act of randomness (the slaughter of a dozen Sunday School students, 02/12/97, Abu Quorcas). The possibilities, as the advertisements say, are endless.

How I miss my mother. There are two types of mothers: Takiti and Maluma. Takiti is jagged, ragged, raven-beaked, the splint in Oedipus’ eye. Maluma is milk-heavy, curvy, cuddly, the feel of a soft thigh. Takiti mothers make good altars. Maluma mothers excel at making altar boys. These two X chromosomes are found in all women.

Yusuf: What’s the matter? You look sad.

Zulaikha: I’m trying to imagine my mothers.

Yusuf: Mothers? How strange. You have a child’s imagination.

Zulaikha: Yes, I’m a child. Leave me to my childishness.

Yusuf: No, no, dear Zulaikha. I envy your imagination.

Zulaikha: It’s contagious. Beware. Don’t sit so close.

(Space & Time)

Close. Kissing-close.

Isaac Newton on Space & Time: “Absolute, true, and mathematical time, of itself, and from its own nature flows equably without regard to anything external, and by another name is called duration. Absolute space, in its own nature, without regard to anything external, remains always similar and immovable.”

Zulaikha on Space & Time: What bunk.

I’ve discovered why Yusuf wouldn’t kiss me this afternoon. I’m HIDEOUS!! A pimple the size of the Bedou crater adorns the tip of my proboscis. Any further out, and it could issue Visas, print currency, compose national anthems. How can he ever sleep again! Burnt into his synapses is this… pimple. I’ve slapped myself twice.

“We have come to think of the actual as one among many possible worlds. We need to repaint that picture. All possible worlds lie within the actual one.” Nelson Goodman, ‘Fact, Fiction & Forecast,’ 1983.

This is Djinn’s favorite quote. I’ve never understood it, until now. Pimples and princesses are not mutually exclusive. Fucking universe.

The Moody Djinn has not stepped out of his office for days. Yusuf rarely leaves his side now. Strange men come and go. So it is going to happen again. Linear time, encircled. This time I must stop it. This time I must act. This time I must teach Yusuf to imagine a different ending.

I begin with an easy question. Time: Lunch; Venue: dish-washing; Situation: elbows touching, hips touching.

“Can robots kiss, Yusuf?”

“Let’s talk about something else. What colleges do you intend to apply—”

“If you were a robot tzaddik, is that what you’d counsel?”

“A robot tzaddik…” Yusuf smiles. “Theologically, I suppose robots could kiss.”

Wrong.

Question: Can robots kiss?

Answer: No. Though robots have identity, they lack individuality. Without individuality, robots might as well kiss the mirror. It is why robots can’t do jokes, hold conversations, or imagine a world where choice, not necessity, brings lips and hips, thighs and sighs together.

Conclusion: Student has misunderstood the question, perhaps willfully.

Time: Lunch; Task: dish-washing. It is very soothing: water, suds, the simple sounds of making things clean. Yusuf hums quietly, looking cow-happy. We could do this forever.

“Yusuf! Yusuf!”

“Pretend you don’t hear him,” I say. “Just pretend.”

He hesitates. Only for a second, true, but against a God, a whole second! O frabjous day!

Yusuf has offered to read the Bible with me, but there are such difficulties. Such parallels. Such brutalities. Time’s loom has folded and re-folded us, but here we are again, revenant, immutable: Joseph and Asenath.

“I remember a cold night,” I say, “when the fires fell low, and you showed me a coat. Remember, Joseph?”

Then spake Yusuf, the Righteous One: You blasphemy, dear Zulaikha. The gift our Lord God offers is linear time. We are crooked, true, and the past doubles back upon us, mottled and serpentine. But accept my God, your God, your father’s God, and we partake of his gift, for our Father’s world is our world.

“So this world is just a fantasy,” I say. “Incest, child sacrifice, genocide, murder… all shadows on our Father’s eternal face? Eternity allows everything to be imagined away?”

He considered my question as if it mattered. As if I mattered.

“Not everything,” says Yusuf, slowly. “There are unimaginable things. Some things even the imagination resists.”

Imaginative resistance. I looked it up. Professor Gendler defines it as the unwillingness of people to imagine morally deviant fictional worlds. I was in the bathroom, post-shower, so lost in wondering if readers could be so perverse, somehow I accidentally flashed Yusuf, who happened to be passing by. Damn unknotted bathrobe!

I hope he saw me.

Dinner consisted of roasted red-pepper strips, golden focaccia, lemon wedges, and filleted slices of white haddock seasoned with Moroccan spice. I told them about Dr. Gendler’s paper.

“Gendler merely named one of Hume’s puzzles,” growled the Moody Djinn. “Hume claimed that moral imagination had its limits. Rubbish. People can be made to imagine anything.”

It’s his tone. It’s the tone that bothers me. It makes me nothing. It flicks me away like lint. Yusuf smiles and compliments me about the food; he’s playing umpire, as always.

“I don’t know, father. Dr. Gendler’s stories are convincing.”

“Naturally.”

“How about an example, Zulaikha?” asks Yusuf.

Such a knight, my dear Jew.

“Okay, here’s one: In killing her baby, Giselle did the right thing. After all, it was a girl.”

The Moody Djinn frowns. “And?”

“Make that story morally acceptable!”

“Please. Let’s say Giselle has some terrible disease, peculiar to women. Alas, it’s transmissible and incurable. Why shouldn’t she kill her baby? After all, it’s a girl.”

“Imagination is not a choice,” says the Moody Djinn. He has the air of a man nursing a personal sorrow. “Necessity is God’s confessor. What must be done may always be forgiven, Zulaikha. Must be forgiven. Who will not forgive a robot?”

“Truly,” said Yusuf, in a quiet voice. “Truly, truly.”

False. False. False.

I found Yusuf in the garden, between dusk and a cypress tree. “So you’re leaving.”

“Aren’t we all? Sit, Zulaikha. Let’s sit here forever. Just you and I in this little house with yellow slats on a cypress-scented hill. So small a dream should be imaginable. Even for me. Show me how, Zulaikha. Come closer.”

The first kiss: With Yusuf, in the cypress-scented garden. I remember our teeth clickety-clicking as we kissed. We were so eager we kissed air a couple of times. I remember the flickering thrust of his tongue. Such wet urgency. His gray eyes ate me. God bless Yusuf, bless his dirty, pure soul. I am so Maluma.

We broke off, breathless (as I’d often read happened). Stupid, grinning, happy mammals. I was ready to sprout placenta then and there. I began to open my blouse, but he stopped me.

“Why not?”

Because.

I placed his trembling hands on my breasts. He suggested instead that we try kisses from the Kamasutra. Some Jew.

Moody Djinn had been teaching me statistical physics, and I’d never seen the point, but now an experiment occurs to me.

“What experiment?” Yusuf sounded cautious.

An equilibrium experiment, my dear mammal. If X = number of times I kiss you, then for what X would kissing you become as uninteresting as kissing myself? (Five points)

Tidbit: Vatsyayana’s Kamasutra, like all Hindu grammars, conquers by dividing. Kisses are classified into two main groups. The first set is recommended for virgins, the second for experienced sluts. For virgins, there are three recommended types: the Casual, the Throbbing, and the Insinuation. All require a complete lower-lip. Upper-lip kisses are not recommended for beginners.

Tidbit: For the experienced, the lower-lip types include the Equal kiss, the Sideways kiss, the Turned-around kiss, and the Impressing. The cynical may attempt the Hard Pressing. The perverted upper-lip kisses are treated separately. There are sleepy kisses, armpit kisses, navel kisses, kissing games. In each, the tongue plays the role of a verb modifier.

Conclusion: X is undefined. I could kiss Yusuf till the end of time, and it would always beat self-osculation.

“We’ll leave the Creeping Vine for later,” says my Vatsyayana, smiling. He finger-tests his lower lip, where I had bitten him.

“I wonder if kissing is ergodic,” said I, sighing. “So many boys. So little time.”

Ergodicity: it’s one of Moody Djinn’s dark passions. He’d been trained as a physicist, and the damage showed. He saw timepieces everywhere. He’d say “random” but he meant “covered timepiece.” When he says “statistical,” it’s short hand for “lots of timepieces.” When he says “ergodic,” perhaps he means “melting clock.” Absolute time for absolute fathers.

Ergodicity equates sequences and ensembles. One coin tossed a thousand times. A thousand coins tossed all at once. Statistically, there’s no difference! Coin tossing is ergodic. Moody Djinn claims no one really knows why. A single boy kissed a thousand times. A thousand boys kissed all at once. Kissing isn’t ergodic. That’s for sure.

Poincaré’s Theorem: Take a dough ball and add a blot of ink. Start kneading. Soon, the blot will stretch and spread throughout the dough. But keep kneading, and Poincaré proved that for such ergodic transformations, the original inkblot will recur. Maybe in a different spot, maybe after a long, long time, but reappear it will.

My lips are still sweetly sore from kissing. I’m sprawled out in the living room, lying my way through a college application. Yusuf is lost in deep thought. Or perhaps its guilt and remorse.

“It’s asking here for my strongest quality,” I say, looking up. “Virtue? Or is it Chastity? Whom does your God prefer?”

Poincaré’s Theorem (the formal version): Let T be a measure preserving transformation on a probability space (?,F,P). If B ? F, then for almost every point x ? B (with respect to P), ?k: T^k(x) ? B. Roughly, almost every point x in B is recurrent.

Yusuf: That was wrong.

Zulaikha: Yes, so perverted. I thought I’d faint.

Yusuf: It’s wrong. I can’t — mustn’t — fall in love.

Zulaikha: Hai Allah.

Yusuf: I betrayed your father’s trust.

Zulaikha: Well, he’s got an even greater shock coming.

(Silence)

Zulaikha: You’ll tell him, won’t you? That you can’t go through with it. Not anymore.

I think I am going mad. The kiss transformed me. Even now, I feel the weaving magic, sparking along my exhausted nerves, caressing me with the camel-brush of memory. The thighs’ wetness, the bristle’s brute scrape, lips wounded red — How could it not have made him anew? Cave animal. How can he still contemplate murder?

It has begun to happen. I overhear the Moody Djinn test-reading Yusuf’s note: “Do not mourn my death. Out of the eater, something to eat; out of the strong, something sweet. It is my time to be strong, to yield something sweet. I, Yusuf, am not afraid. I tread the road walked by my ancestors…”

The Moody Djinn is cleaning out the powder residue from the barrel, slide and magazine of his Kahr MK40. He’ll test-fire a round and then holster it in the De Santis, now cracked with age. Soon he’ll come to say goodbye. He will be very parental, even tender: “Nothing will happen to me, Zulaikha.”

Correct.

My father thinks: We Copts are a brutalized people. God, I love this weapon. We’ve been beaten, robbed, humiliated, raped, murdered and desecrated. Wonder if Yusuf checked his vest straps? We’ve kept our peace, our Word. Our patience has been misinterpreted. The situation cannot continue. Zulaikha loves tilapia; I’ll get some on the way home.

Yusuf thinks: I remember the jib of her thigh. A whorl of lime and haddock. O God, I’m so frightened. I need Galilee’s sands between my toes. We didn’t try the Creeping Vine. I must change my underwear. Did Gideon worry about underwear? I wish Zulaikha were here. Why do I panic? All things pass.

Moody Djinn: Let’s get you ready.

Yusuf: I’d like to say goodbye first.

Moody Djinn: Better not. It’ll only upset you.

Yusuf: Does it matter now what I feel? I’m a robot.

Moody Djinn: Rubbish. This is necessary. You’ve to avenge our innocents. The Lord will strengthen your arm.

Yusuf: She’s here! Kiss me, Zulaikha.

I wanted to dissolve in Yusuf, and he in me. I wound my right leg around my lover’s waist, threw my right hand around his neck, lowered his head to my upturned face — two statues around a temple pillar — and kissed Yusuf as if I would suck out his life. Ours was the world and time.

The Moody Djinn was so angry, his eyes mottled a urine red. Some fathers are demons. Some fathers are bone gardens. Some fathers must be sprung in bear traps and some fathers must be put to bed.

“Go to your fucking room,” he says. “Now.”

“Kiss me, father.” I throw my arms around his neck.

The filet knife is sharp. Sharper than a razor, sharper than my hate, sharper than the circumcision of Zipporah. Someone is trying to kill father. He stands so still, my bridegroom of blood. I slice everything in the quarter-traversal around the jib of father’s neck. It’s nothing like filleting fish. I’ll never be clean again.

The blot won’t stop spreading. My hands, the fallen knife, the fallen souls. It bleeds out of the little house with the yellow slats on a cypress-scented hill, over the green glad Earth, blotting out the sun.

Yusuf: It was necessary, beloved.

I shiver. What a chilly day.

Yusuf: I love you.

I shiver again.

What is necessary may be forgiven. Must be forgiven. The choice of love and the necessity of death. I have chosen love, so death shall have no forgiveness. All those stories in the Good Book. Why isn’t patricide one of them? Imagine a God of Choice. Imagine a God who dares imagine His own death.

I, Zulaikha, a few seconds old, sixteen-point-two miraculous years old, ten-thousand years old, deathless and ageless, unborn and perennial, a smudge in Time’s dough. I gaze at my father, squinting to blind the light crowning his head. He is smiling. He cradles me. We are going to be friends, I can tell.

In some world, there’s a Yusuf; burnt offering, spattered flesh. In some world, there’s a Moody Djinn, tribal and vengeful. In some world, there’s a Zulaikha, forever complicit and mute. Many worlds, many strange things. But all these worlds are guilty, and so cannot be this world, womb of all possible worlds, this blessed, bloodstained world.

Old Yusuf has a wife. Zulaikha is her name. She perches on his shoulder, nibbles his ear. When she’s bored, he opens windows and lets her out. She returns in minutes, days, sometimes weeks. But return she does; bruised lips, folded wings. Then he buys her gifts: pearls, perfumes, salves and stories. Imagine them happy.

— The End —

Anil Menon worked for about nine years in software before shifting to writing fiction. His short stories can be found in a variety of magazines such as Albedo One, Chiaroscuro, Interzone, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet and Strange Horizons. He was nominated for the 2006 Carl Brandon Society Parallax Prize, the 2007 Million Writers Award, and  the 2010 Last Drink Bird Head Award (non-fiction). In 2009, he helped organize  India’s first in-residence spec-fic writing workshop at the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur. His novel The Beast With Nine Billion Feet (Zubaan, 2009) was short-listed for the 2010 Vodafone-Crossword award. He can be reached at iam@anilmenon.com.

The Carl Brandon Soicety is an organization to help build further awareness of race and ethnicity in speculative literature and related fields. The Parallax Award is given for an outstanding speculative fiction work by a self-identified writer of color.   The Kindred Award is given for an outstanding speculative fiction work dealing with race, ethnicity, and culture.

Congratulations to Anil Menon for his nominations!

* [8/10/2011 -- Correction: Anil's story has been longlisted for both awards.  Anyone may nominate a story by going here.  The shortlist will be announced in February 2012.  We still wish to congratulate him for the nomination! ]

So it’s that time of year again for World Fantasy Award voting, and this is my humble plea for your votes in the categories of SHORT FICTION, BEST ANTHOLOGY, and SPECIAL AWARD NON-PROFESSIONAL.  Here’s what reviewers have said about Sybil’s Garage No. 7.

“Every story had something for me to like: vivid description, playful language, a character to root for, mystery, poignancy, tragedy, an intellectual puzzle, a sting in the tail.”
-SFF Portal, Alison Sinclair

“Sybil’s Garage achieves a satisfyingly universal appeal, and an extremely high degree of literary quality… it is pretty wonderful stuff — beautifully produced, and never dull. The stories are a mix of slipstream, near-future, horror, comedy horror, mythic and pseudo-mythic — eschewing anything as vulgar or misleading as a neat straightjacket of genre.”
-SF Site, Seamus Sweeny

“There are some excellent stories contained in this volume.”
-Tangent Online

“It’s been awhile since an anthology had this kind of emotional impact on me…this one is highly recommended.”
- N.K. Jemisin, Hugo-nominated author of The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms.

“Beautifully designed and printed as always, Sybil’s Garage which has been one of the best small press speculative fiction journals, graduates to anthology status.  With 195 pages of fiction, poetry and graphics this is a substantial book… These [stories] are getting attention and deserve more.”
- Richard Bowes, multiple World Fantasy Award-winning author

“The always interesting ‘zine Sybil’s Garage is back with a thicker than usual issue.  It provides a stimulating mix of SF, fantasy, poetry, and slipstream.  This time around my favorite is ‘The Poincare Sutra’ by Anil Menon, a perkily told but rather dark story of a 16-year-old Coptic girl in Israel, who falls in love with a Jewish boy while her father’s past pushes him in a different direction.”
Rich Horton for Locus Magazine

“Sybil’s Garage is a stylishly put together magazine, There’s plenty of poetry, art, and nonfiction in addition to the stories…My favorite was Anil Menon’s ‘The Poincaré Sutra.’ I also enjoyed stories by Swapna Kishore, Sam Ferree, Alex Dally MacFarlane, A.C. Wise, E. C. Myers, and Amy Sisson.”
Rich Horton in his yearly fiction summary

Please cast your vote for Sybil’s Garage in the following categories.  You must vote by May 31st!

ANTHOLOGY – multiple author original or reprint – single or multiple editors
1. Sybil’s Garage No. 7 — Senses Five Press (July 2010)

SPECIAL AWARD – NON-PROFESSIONAL
1. Matthew Kressel for Sybil’s Garage No. 7 — Senses Five Press (July 2010)

SHORT FICTION* – under 10,000 words
* I don’t feel it’s appropriate to pick five stories from among the eighteen that I published.  I of course loved all of them, otherwise I wouldn’t have published them!  I’ll instead list all the stories and let you pick your favorites.
“By Some Illusion” by Kathryn E. Baker
“Suicide Club” by Amy Sisson
“The Noise” by Richard Larson
“A History of Worms” by Amelia Shackelford
“Thinking Woman’s Crop of Fools” by Tom Crosshill
“The Unbeing of Once-Leela” by Swapna Kishore
“How the Future Got Better” by Eric Schaller
“The Telescope” by Megan Kurashige
“Under the Leaves” by A.C. Wise
“The Ferryman’s Toll” by Sam Ferree
“The Tale of the Six Monkeys’ Tails” by Hal Duncan
“The Poincaré Sutra” by Anil Menon
“Kid Despair in Love” by M.K. Hobson
“My Father’s Eyes” by E.C. Myers
“An Orange Tree Framed Your Body” by Alex Dally MacFarlane
“The Watcher Thorn” by Cheryl Barkauskas
“Other Things” by Terence Kuch
“The Dead Boy’s Last Poem” by Kelly Barnhill

Thank you for your support!

Sybil’s Garage No. 7

I believe it’s our best issue yet, and all these fine stories and poems deserve a wider audience.

Rich Horton has said, for example, “My favorite was Anil Menon’s ‘The Poincaré Sutra.’ I also enjoyed stories by Swapna Kishore, Sam Ferree, Alex Dally MacFarlane, A.C. Wise, E. C. Myers, and Amy Sisson.”

SF Site says, “E.C. Myers’ story was one of the most moving, and in an unforced way original, stories in the collection — my joint favourite with M.K. Hobson’s ‘Kid Despair in Love.’”

And multiple World Fantasy Award winner Richard Bowes says, “My favorites among the 18 short stories were M.K Hobson ‘Kid Despair in Love’ with its not terribly distant corporate warfare, Sam Ferree’s take on Charon and the River Styx, ‘The Ferryman’s Toll,’ Kelly Barnhill’s contemporary poete maudit ‘The Dead Boy’s Last Poem’, Eugene Myers’ ‘My Father’s Eyes’ about a young man’s search for a father gone very native indeed and ‘The Noise’ by Richard Larson about the life and loves of an East Village zombie. These and the other fiction and poetry are getting attention and deserve more.”

Since it’s Hugo and Nebula season, I’ve decided to offer the issue as a free PDF download for those who are interested.  I’ll make it available until February 15th, when Nebula voting closes.  I do hope you give these stories the consideration they deserve.

Download here:
Sybil”s Garage No. 7 (PDF 7MB)

Also, and as far as I know this is unique for reviews of the issue, they mention the poetry.  “The poems are of a high standard, and are consistently strongly-worked and compelling. Standouts include Sonya Taaffe’s ‘Candle for the Tetragrammaton,’ Jacqueline West’s ‘One October Night in Baltimore,’ and Adrienne J. Odasso’s ‘The Hyacinth Girl,’ and Marcie Lynn Tentchoff’s ‘Pathways Marked in Silver.’ West and Odasso invoke literary history, specifically the shades of Poe and Eliot. Tentchoff’s is a neat meditation on paths taken and not taken, and for my money here the recommended music (Dory Previn’s ‘Mystical Kings and Iguanas’) matches the mood and theme of the piece most naturally.”

You can read the full review here.

• Kathryn E. Baker’s ‘By Some Illusion’ opens with a tender look at a relationship that is sensual in its focus on touch, sight, smell, taste, and whilst it is sapphic it isn’t prurient.
• Swapna Kishore’s ‘The Unbeing of Once-Leela’ takes us to a quite different place, but with humanity still there, with karma and memories to be addressed.
• Hal Duncan’s ‘The Tale of the Six Monkey’s Tails’ provides some Oriental monkey-based relief (which no magazine should be without.)
• M.K. Hobson’s ‘Kid Despair in Love’ takes a slightly skew-whiff squinty look at Big Business and the CEOs who run them.”

You can read the full review here.

Anyway, surprisingly I have a lot of news today, considering it’s been a holiday.

First up is Sybil’s Garage, praised by Rich Horton in his year-end fiction round-up.  He says: “It’s a stylishly put together magazine, There’s plenty of poetry, art, and nonfiction in addition to the stories.  My favorite was Anil Menon’s “The Poincaré Sutra”, which I called (in Locus) “a perkily told but rather dark story of a 16-year-old Coptic girl in Israel, who falls in love with a Jewish boy while her father’s past pushes him in a different direction.” I also enjoyed stories by Swapna Kishore, Sam Ferree, Alex Dally MacFarlane, A.C. Wise, E. C. Myers, and Amy Sisson.”  I’m glad these stories are getting noticed because they are all really very good.  (Yes, I know I am biased, but I believe they all deserve wider looks.)

On the personal front, Lois Tilton reviews my story “The Suffering Gallery” in Beneath Ceaseless Skies and says, “Kressel’s piece is definitely a parody of sword-and-sorcery fiction, but it is otherwise true to the S&S conventions and winds up with a very satisfactory conclusion.”  It’s interesting in that I didn’t intend the overall story to be parody, but I did want the repartee between the antagonists to be darkly humorous.  In fact I had in mind the cartoon crooks Boris and Natasha from the Rocky & Bullwinkle Show.  I also wanted to play with point of view.  In a fantasy story, we usually expect the hero to succeed in his quest, and so I tried to play with those expectations.  It’s up to you to decide if it works.  You can read it here.  Or listen here.

And over on the Ordinary Day Anna the Piper reviews Steam-Powered: Lesbian Steampunk Stories, edited by JoSelle Vanderhooft.  Overall, they give the anthology 4 of 5 stars.  And of my story, she says, “Matthew Kressel, in “The Hands that Feed”, brings us a solid little tale of a shopkeeper with hidden talents, and the seemingly innocent young woman she comes to love. Our two heroines are Jewish and Hindu, as well as separated by thirty years of age, which makes for quite the unusual pairing indeed.”

So that was a nice way to ring in the new year!

Also, just released this month, The People of the Book, which contains a reprint of “The History Within Us.”  With stories from Neil Gaiman, Michael Chabon, Peter S. Beagle, Jane Yolen & more, this anthology looks fantastic.  It’s next on my to-read list.

Over at Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Scott H. Andrews has released a podcast of my story, “The Suffering Gallery.”  The production quality of the podcast is high, and I was pleasantly surprised by the audio effect Scott uses near the end to emphasize a particular aspect of a character.

Forthcoming from me in 2011, I have a story “The Hands That Feed” in Steam-Powered: Lesbian Steampunk Stories, which comes out in January.  I have “The Bricks of Gelecek” coming out in July in Naked City, edited by Ellen Datlow.  “Bricks” takes place in the same secondary world as “The Suffering Gallery,” and close readers will notice the overlap.  And sometime in 2011 I’ll have a non-fiction piece, “Mitigation Strategies” in Weird Tales #357. I’m also working on a redesign of the Weird Tales website, which we hope to launch soon.

Lately I’ve been working on a post-apocalyptic YA story, which is near finished (just needs one more read through), and been pecking at my novel for the past few days, cleaning up sections of the story with additions to the plot.  And Mercurio D. Rivera and I are working on a science-fiction graphic novel.

As of today, I have not scheduled a reading period for Sybil’s Garage.  Issue eight will go forward, but the reading period may be a little later than last year.  This is mainly because the editors and I all have been very busy.  When things settle down early in 2011 I’ll announce a date.

Until then, have a happy new year, and may you have much success and happiness in 2011!

I arrived at the set, made to look like a graffitied parking garage, in their office studio:

I know when working with creative people, it’s best not to micromanage.  Better to let their subconscious have free reign.  In my version of the film, people would be sitting across from each other in a kind of competition as they’d read sections of stories to a greater audience.  The one who moves the audience the most, “wins,” the metaphor being that each piece of Sybil’s Garage is more moving than the last.  This vision of the scene was confirmed when I saw the director writing out scripts like this*:

But then something happened.  I’m not sure what.  Somehow the scene ended up being shot like this:

A screaming, shouting, cussing, drinking mini-riot.  A literary rumble.  Not exactly the solemn affair I’m used to at KGB.  I decided to just roll with it.  I was not going to interject, like the school librarian, and say, “You know, these things are usually much more staid affairs.  Maybe we can tone it down?”  No way.  People were having too much fun, and so I stood there in my PJs (yes, I wore PJs; we were supposed to dress “eclectic”) as we shot the scene from about a dozen different angles.  The directors promised me an awesome promo film, and I trust them, even though our visions differ.  And you know, it got me thinking, maybe exactly what literature needs right now to make it hip and relevant is a little punk rock.  I’m looking forward to the finished product.

Oh, and doesn’t Paul Berger look totally f’n awesome here?  I’d hire him to solve a murder.  Or maybe commit one.

* The story is E.C. Myers’ “My Father’s Eyes”

Have you read Sybil’s Garage No. 7 yet?  Read what others are saying about the latest issue.

“It’s been awhile since an anthology had this kind of emotional impact on me…this one is highly recommended.”
- N.K. Jemisin, Hugo-nominated author of The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms.

“One of my favorite magazines.”
- John Klima, Hugo Award-winning Editor of Electric Velocipede

“Beautifully designed and printed as always, Sybil’s Garage which has been one of the best small press speculative fiction journals, graduates to anthology status.”
- Richard Bowes, multiple World Fantasy Award-winning author

“The always interesting ‘zine Sybil’s Garage is back with a thicker than usual issue”
- Rich Horton for Locus Magazine

“Every story had something for me to like: vivid description, playful language, a character to root for, mystery, poignancy, tragedy, an intellectual puzzle, a sting in the tail.”
-SFF Portal, Alison Sinclair

Get a copy here. Maybe Get two.  Or twelve.  It’s that time of year.

And Have You Seen?

• Functional Nerds Podcast – Hosts Patrick Hester and John Anealio interview Matthew Kressel & Kate Baker about Sybil’s Garage, Clarkesworld Magazine, Unicorn Pegasus Kitten, and more.

• Hour of the Wolf – Host Jim Freund interviews Matthew Kressel about Sybil’s Garage, with editors Paul Berger, Devin Poore, and Mercurio D. Rivera, plus readings by E.C. Myers, Barbara Krasnoff & Kathryn E. Baker

• How the cover of Sybil’s Garage No. 7 was made – a Youtube movie

• An Interview with Amal El-Mohtar…

Support your favorite small presses!  Remember to get your copy of Sybil’s Garage No. 7:
Amazon.com
Barnes & Noble.com
Powell’s Books

And in the UK, Europe, and other regions:
Amazon.co.uk
Book Despository
AdLibris.com

And always at:
Senses Five Press

Have a happy holiday season and a wonderful new year!

Best,
Matt Kressel

For only $1 you can win a Nook, Kobo eReader, or an Alex, preloaded with fiction from N. K. Jemisin, Nisi Shawl, Alaya Dawn Johnson, Terence Taylor, Ted Chiang, Shweta Narayan, Chesya Burke, Moondancer Drake, Saladin Ahmed, Rochita Loenen-Ruiz, and many others.  (They’ll also be preloaded with copies of Paper Cities and Sybil’s Garage No. 7).

You can find more about the drawing here.

You can read the full review here.

And you can get a copy of Sybil’s Garage here.

I’ve put the semi-finishing touches on Catherynne M. Valente’s “Prester John Online” website.  There she’ll be promoting her new and fabulous book The Habitation of the Blessed, and she hopes it will become the go-to place for all things Prester John.  I particularly love the artwork by Lisa Grabenstetter.

In publishing news, Sybil’s Garage and Paper Cities are now available at the Barnes & Noble e-bookstore for downloads as DRM-free ePubs.

At WFC, got to hang out with the awesomely cool Scott H. Andrews of Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and he informed me my story “The Suffering Gallery” will be online December 2nd.  This is my SFWA qualifying sale and I’m both excited and nervous to hear people’s reactions to the story.

And writing-wise, I’ve been working on a short story for a YA post-apocalyptic anthology, which I hope to finish in the next week or so.  It’s dark, and I’m kind of reluctant about scaring kids, but I believe the theme is a positive one.  Then it’s back to the novel, which is progressing well, if a bit slower than I anticipated.

I had been feeling a bit melancholy as of late, but the convention was the perfect thing for my spirits.  Surrounded by so many smart, talented people, doing what they love, writing things that I love, what’s not to be happy about that?

Rich Horton of Locus says, “The always interesting ‘zine Sybil’s Garage is back with a thicker than usual issue (partly because of a format change).  As ever, it provides a stimulating mix of SF, fantasy, poetry, and slipstream.  This time around my favorite is “The Poincare Sutra” by Anil Menon, a perkily told but rather dark story of a 16-year-old Coptic girl in Israel, who falls in love with a Jewish boy while her father’s past pushes him in a different direction.”

And Jo-Anne Odell of Tangent Online says, “There are some excellent stories contained in this volume.”

And on a personal note, Friends of Wild Iris reviews Steam-Powered: Lesbian Steampunk Stories. Though they don’t mention my story in particular, they say, “Before I started reading, I’d heard of only a handful of the authors – mainly through knowing people who read their blogs. After reading this anthology, I think I’m going to track down as much of their work as possible and read it. And how much more of a recommendation can I give?

You can listen to the podcast here.

I started with photos of Greenpoint, Brooklyn and its industrial landscapes, like these below:

For the backdrop, I used the Tyrell Corporation building from Blade Runner, and and old rusted out metal cargo ship that was docked in Montreal, like so:

…and then over several laborious days I digitally cut up and stitched back together the many images to form the machine-dense collage you see here (click for high res):

It was a lot of work, but nothing worth doing is ever easy.  I think the result was a resounding success, but I’ll let you be the judge of that.

For the more visually (and musically) inclined, I’ve created a short film about the adventure here:

Get Sybil’s Garage No. 7 at Amazon: http://amzn.to/acB5BI
Get it at Senses Five Press: http://bit.ly/dv8sis