Author: stantlitore

I love libraries.

When the pandemic has passed, I am going to spend so much time at the library.

Many moments that have stayed with me from stories I’ve loved are scenes about fictional libraries. There is, for example, the library of Bastian Balthazar Bux in Michael Ende’s The Neverending Story, that the child Bastian visits, where he finds the collected volumes of all the stories and dreams he has ever imagined but hasn’t written down – “and the walls were lined with tiers upon tiers of books.”

And there is Ultan’s Library, in Gene Wolfe’s The Book of the New Sun:

“We have books here bound in the hides of echidnes, krakens, and beasts so long extinct that those whose studies they are, are for the most part of the opinion that no trace of them survives unfossilized. We have books bound wholly in metals of unknown alloy, and books whose bindings are covered with thickset gems. We have books cased in perfumed woods shipped across the inconceivable gulf between creations – books doubly precious because no one on Urth can read them. We have books whose papers are matted of plants from which spring curious alkaloids, so that the reader, in turning their pages, is taken unaware by bizarre fantasies and chimeric dreams. Books whose pages are not paper at all, but delicate wafers of white jade, ivory, and shell; books too whose leaves are the desiccated leaves of unknown plants. Books we have also that are not books at all to the eye: scrolls and tablets and recordings on a hundred different substances. There is a cube of crystal here – though I can no longer tell you where – no larger than the ball of your thumb that contains more books than the library itself does. Though a harlot might dangle it from one ear for an ornament, there are not volumes enough in the world to counterweight the other. All these I came to know, and I made safeguarding them my life’s devotion… In the library is a room reserved for children. In it are kept bright picture books such as children delight in, and a few simple tales of wonder and adventure. Many children come to this room, and as long as they remain within its confines, no interest is taken in them. From time to time, however, a librarian remarks a solitary child, still of tender years, who wanders from the children’s room … and at last deserts it entirely. Such a child eventually discovers, on some low but obscure shelf, The Book of Gold. Unless my memory betrays me, the cover is of black buckram, considerably faded at the spine. Several of the signatures are coming out, and certain of the plates have been taken. But it is a remarkably lovely book. I wish that I might find it again… The child, as I said, in time discovers The Book of Gold. Then the librarians come – like vampires, some say, though others say like fairy godparents at a christening. They speak to the child, and the child joins them. Henceforth he is in the library whenever he may be, and soon his parents know him no more.”

When I wrote Ansible: A Thousand Faces, I resolved to add a library of my own to the list of fictional, imagined archives. So I added the Memory Blossom. It is humanity’s last library, at the end of time, and as humanity is at risk of dying, those who battle for our descendants’ survival battle also to defend the library. Those words – DEFEND THE LIBRARY – are written in Arabic over the entrance. And the reader first encounters the library during a battle just inside the door:

“Two sentinels run up the steps, one passing me on my left, one on the right. One black and one white with a shock of red hair. A woman’s language or continent of origin does not matter to Lucia, only her willingness to defend humanity’s children. They take up positions at either side of the door, Saws ready. I climb to meet them, wiping blood from my brow, a thunder-beat of fury in my heart. Every tome in my library has a digital sister, written invisibly into the archives that live in the walls and cannot be burned or broken, but those books that died behind us in a blaze of bullets were crafted with great labor by human hands, by hands whose owners will never again speak or make, whose names may not even be remembered. And the books are but the smaller part of humanity’s memory. A glance back as I climb, and I see some of the bullets have passed across the rotunda into the Memory Blossom, long, stacked cases of bioglass that—when gazed into from the level above us—together resemble the shape of an unfolding rose, of memory unfolding at the touch of the love of the living, the way a rose unfolds at the touch of sunlight. The cases hold and preserve not books but other artifacts rescued from a dying earth, objects brought here by the wives and husbands and brothers and mothers of the beloved dead because these were objects the dead cherished—the dolls and pocketwatches and earmusic implants and squares of colorful fabric orphaned from lost quilts, thimbles and photographs and crucifixes and scraps of paper with Daoishi spells inked on them, and even a long-dead artificial heart. Bioglass does not shatter, but I can see the perfect circular punctures where the bullets penetrated. Inside one of the cases, a tiny sculpture of blown glass that someone—perhaps the craftsman’s child—carried lovingly across the forests of Persia or the deserts of the Sudan, all the way here, has shattered. Its shape, which was that of an elephant, is fragmented; it can’t ever be put back together. Leaning half against the violated case, a young woman lies dead, her face shattered as completely as the elephant. A death that should not have happened today.”

What is your favorite fictional library?

The Memory Blossom was a concept my readers and I developed together on Patreon, which I often treat as a workshop to cook up and test ideas that then work their way into the stories – because storytelling is a communal act. The idea was how might our descendants, after devastating global crisis and near extinction, preserve the memory and knowledge of their pasts – how might they do this as they grieve? And when one of my readers (the thoughtful and lovely Genevieve Bergman) reminded us that refugees carry memories of the past that are encoded in objects and relics and photographs of the lost, not only in texts, the Memory Blossom was planted. I like how it grew.That is the kind of conversation my readers and I have on Patreon, as each book takes shape. Come join us there – get all the ebooks, fun the books, and help me create a fictional library or a bizarre device or a dangerous new creature. You never know what delicious mischief we might get up to, together. You can join here:

https://www.patreon.com/stantlitore

I hope you will.

Stant Litore

Stant Litore is a novelist. He writes about gladiators on tyrannosaurback, Old Testament prophets battling the hungry dead, geneticists growing biological starships, time-traveling hijabi bisexual defenders of humanity from the future. Explore his fiction here. And here is one of his toolkits for writers, and here’s another book where he nerds out about ancient languages and biblical (mis)translation. Enjoy!

HERE AT LAST: ANSIBLE SEASON 3. I am excited to announce the arrival of my new novel and the thrilling conclusion to the Ansible Saga!

Available today in kindle and epub at my direct store

Or pre-order on Amazon

Or get it in paperback

Audiobook forthcoming

In a future where humanity is a refugee species, can refugees from the past save us?

The pneumavores (“soul eaters”) have taken the earth and have spread to every planet humanity has ever touched. Now a Syrian refugee, a thirteenth-century librarian, and a hijabi shapeshifter from the far future must travel across space and time to defend humanity from this intergalactic and devouring evil.

They’ll find allies: A wheelchair gunslinger from far-future Beijing. A legion of women soldiers wielding Spinning Saws that can slice through predators that only barely exist inside our universe. A strange child-empath who can hear all of humanity’s suffering at every instant in history. A firestarter-goddess from our prehistory. Together, they will face a species that travels across time and feeds on terror itself.

The battle for our future starts today.

Ansible Season Three: https://stantlitore.itch.io/ansible-season-three

Get Season One here: https://stantlitore.itch.io/ansible-season-one

Get Season Two here: https://stantlitore.itch.io/ansible-season-two

Here are a few things I am thankful for right now. Just a few, I can list more later. Because gratitude is the enemy of despair and a curative for fear. And because my faith teaches me to unforget what I have been given, whether my community is experiencing sunlight or hailstorm.

I am grateful for a house full of books.

For this soft bed, when I am fatigued.

For friends who gather around us in a rough season.

For my strong wife, a fierce partner when there’s a crisis. And whose voice is soft and lovely this morning. I am thankful the house is quiet and she could sleep in.

I am grateful for my readers, who love the stories and have amazing and unexpected stories of their own.

I am grateful for my Patreon members, who keep this wild endeavor of mine funded and help keep the children fed and well.

I am grateful for the talent and skill of our local medical community. I am thinking especially of Inara’s doctors and providers.

I am grateful for Inara’s fierceness, Cirdan’s kindness, and River’s laughter.

I am thankful for this very warm blanket right now.

I am thankful for this bookmark, which reminds me where I left off and keeps me from falling into the barbarism of folding down the corners of pages. (Shudder.)

I am grateful we have clean water to drink.

I am grateful I get to tell all of you stories.

Stant

Stant Litore is a novelist. He writes about gladiators on tyrannosaurback, Old Testament prophets battling the hungry dead, geneticists growing biological starships, time-traveling hijabi bisexual defenders of humanity from the future. Explore his fiction here. And here is one of his toolkits for writers, and here’s another book where he nerds out about ancient languages and biblical (mis)translation. Enjoy!

The Queen of Babylon was sharp of wit, full of sass, and had exactly zero patience for the follies of men in power. Upon Nitocris’s death, at her orders her body was placed in a tomb directly over the main gate of the city, with the consequence that many kings chose to go around the back way rather than risk the ill luck of passing in all their panoply beneath a corpse. On the outside of her tomb was an inscription telling the kings that would rule after her time that a great treasure was laid within her tomb: “If any king of Babylon is short of cash, let him open up my tomb and take what he likes, but only at the most dire need. The treasure will do him no good if taken under other circumstances.” For a long time the tomb of Nitocris went undisturbed. At last, Darius had it broken open; he was irritated that he always had to enter the city by the back way like a man of lesser station, and it galled him that there was a treasure there just waiting to be taken. So he violated Nitocris’s tomb. Inside, he found not so much as a single coin. Just a corpse. And an inscription beside it:

If you hadn’t been such a greedy jerk, willing to grab money by any despicable means, you would never have violated the rest of the dead. —Nitocris.

The tale is from Herodotus, so it may or may not have actually happened; it isn’t always easy to corroborate Herodotus, a fact that he himself freely acknowledges. The “father of historians,” he had a way of collecting stories, including contradictory ones, presenting them each to the reader, and inviting the reader to consider which were likely and which were not. The tale of Nitocris is among my many favorites.

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Stant Litore is a novelist. He writes about gladiators on tyrannosaurback, Old Testament prophets battling the hungry dead, geneticists growing biological starships, time-traveling hijabi bisexual defenders of humanity from the future. Explore his fiction here. And here is one of his toolkits for writers, and here’s another book where he nerds out about ancient languages and biblical (mis)translation. Enjoy!

What is a comma splice?

CW: Grammar and Gore

Like the mighty Dickens before me, I will use a comma splice if I judge the time right, if the stars are aligned and it is time to afflict grammarians with madness and woe as they gaze helplessly into the abyss of a cosmos that is uncaring of our punctuation and our futile attempts at order. However, I can never do so without also at that moment remembering the words of an English teacher who cautioned me and my fellow teaching assistants in an effort to prevent our venturing into such unwholesome magic.

This is what she said:

“I need to tell you what a comma splice is like. This is what it’s like. Picture a big ole snow slope and there’s a sled about to plummet down that slope like a greased piglet, and there’s this little child. The sled slips and the child reaches out and grabs hold of that sled and tries to stop it and you know what happens? I will TELL you what happens. That big ole sled just RIPS the child’s arm right off, and the sled careens on down the hill like a politician running from a scandal and the child’s arm is just flapping in the wind and spraying blood all over the snow, blood everywhere, just geysers of blood! Now imagine it had been a grown man on the hill instead and he reached out and grabbed hold of that ole sled and it stopped. It stopped because that man was strong enough to hold it, unlike the poor child bleeding out in the snow while his arm is off down the hill waving at the angels. See, that grown man is a semicolon and he could stop that independent clause dead in its tracks, but that poor child was just a comma. So every time you see a stray comma flapping in the breeze between two independent clauses where it has no earthly business being, you just remember that child’s arm spraying blood. That’s a comma splice. Now go teach your students that. They won’t forget it.”

Between the comma splice child, and the unclosed parenthesis just lurking around like a flasher in a trenchcoat bothering good people who just want to go about their sentences, and the sentence with passive voice that was like a lonely grad student who went camping and was expecting her boyfriend to meet her but a bear came first and ripped off half her face and took out one of her eyes and ate her, and after the mauling they found the body but not the bear, and nobody knew who or what had torn the poor grad student to pieces and cracked her bones for the marrow, because her sentence used the passive voice and only had a direct object and no subject, a body without any visible agent of its demise…

Well, between those things, I did not leave the assistantship unscathed. (My first published fiction was horror.)

The ways of punctuation proved dark and terrifying and fascinating and full of grim and grisly truth, like a Flannery O’Connor story, but for our teacher, proper punctuation was our line of defense, and our students’, against the otherwise inevitable predations of a lawless and hungry universe. I remain, as she predicted, both appalled and unforgetful.

Stant Litore

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Stant Litore is a novelist. He writes about gladiators on tyrannosaurback, Old Testament prophets battling the hungry dead, geneticists growing biological starships, time-traveling hijabi bisexual defenders of humanity from the future. Explore his fiction here. And here is one of his toolkits for writers, and here’s another book where he nerds out about ancient languages and biblical (mis)translation. Enjoy!

tl;dr: Whether we’re comfortable or uncomfortable with “diverse characters” in fiction has everything to do with how we’ve defined our communities. I’m not adding anyone to the fictional world or “forcing” them into the story. I’m just refusing to subtract people who are already in the world we share together.

Let’s talk about “diverse characters” for a moment.

Every once in a while, a reader will object, with a tone of moral indignation, that they don’t like “PC” fiction (I think they mean “politically correct”; I don’t think they’re objecting to thriller novels about desktop computers) or that they don’t think I should be “forcing diversity” or writing “political fiction” or “ramming a message down their throat” or “rubbing a message in their face.” (About nonconsensual throat-ramming: It’s always weird to me when a reader describes a fictional story that contains elements they dislike using metaphors for bodily invasion or assault, but that’s a topic for another time.)

What I have been thinking about is why there is a seemingly fundamental disconnect between these particular readers and other readers (including myself) who I write for. I think it has to do with how we have defined our communities – in religious terms, with who we recognize as our neighbors.

When I tell a science fiction story with Muslim characters, or characters with various ethnicities, genders, sexual orientations, levels of physical ability, etc., these objecting readers think I am “forcing” these elements on them because what they have defined as their community does not include or welcome people who are different from them in these ways, and the presence of people different from them is seen as an invasion or violation.

But I don’t write the characters I write because I have a “message.” Or to be “PC.” Or to ram a character “down someone’s throat.” I write the characters I write because people in my community, people I love, my family and friends and colleagues – they inspire and are reflected in the characters I write. My characters are influenced by people I’ve known.

There is a 150-year-old Chinese gunslinger in a wheelchair in my current work in progress not because I want to rub diversity in a reader’s face, but because my daughter is in a wheelchair and she is as fierce as a gunslinger, and because several of my dearest college friends were from China (Yi and I used to stay up all night playing Starcraft; I usually lost), and because I think in a future scifi novel, people might live to 150.

And I wrote into Ansible: Season Three a love story between two bi women not because I have a “political” message in mind but because some people very dear to me are bi. And they have love stories. When I write science fiction stories about people marooned in alien bodies in which they never felt at home … I know people who live that experience, though their bodies are not literally extraterrestrial. (That’s the scifi part.)

To me, the presence of these fictional characters is not an invasion of the reader or an authorial intrusion that I have jammed into the story; their presence is just a given. These are people. Readers who object often think that I am “adding” people into the fictional world that they don’t want there, and who they think I shouldn’t want there. Unwelcome people. But I’m not adding anyone to the fictional world. I’m just refusing to subtract people who are already in the world we share together.

If I write a hijabi bi superheroine, I didn’t write her because I want us to be “PC.” I wrote her because I wanted to tell her story. It would be utterly exhausting to censor my fiction and shrink my imagined worlds and their casts of characters merely in order to accommodate the bigotries or discomfort of some readers.

If your own world is small, then good stories might make you feel uncomfortable. And maybe they need to. Because good stories make our world bigger.

But if it is truly too uncomfortable, there are so many stories out there that are written with smaller worlds inside them. Readers can go read those stories and inhabit those smaller worlds if that is truly what they want. But I don’t have any obligation to my readers to write them a smaller world. That is not what I do.

I have been told a few times recently that I cannot love God or serve God faithfully without condemning my LGBTQ+ neighbors, or without supporting policies and actions that threaten their rights, their lives, or their wellbeing. A few of my siblings in the faith believe that.

And I answer, “I think you are confusing me with someone who worships a small god. My God is not a small god. My God does not care about outward appearances; my God cares about the heart. My God is less interested in whether you squat or stand when you pee than with whether you love. I say ‘my God’ but he is not ‘my’ anything; I am trying to be his. I would be ashamed of owning a god, especially a small one. The God I love never told me to sit in judgment over my neighbor. He told me to love my neighbor, recklessly and deeply and without conditions, as he does.”

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Stant Litore is a novelist. He writes about gladiators on tyrannosaurback, Old Testament prophets battling the hungry dead, geneticists growing biological starships, time-traveling hijabi bisexual defenders of humanity from the future. Explore his fiction here. And here is one of his toolkits for writers, and here’s another book where he nerds out about ancient languages and biblical (mis)translation. Enjoy!