She dreams of rescue, but doesn’t know what that looks like. Gary, miraculously alive pulling her free, eyes bright with tears, I love you he says, his lips on her eyelids and his kiss his tongue in her mouth inside her hands inside him. But that’s the alien. Gary is dead. He got Out.
Sometimes she thinks that rescue looks like her opening the lifeboat to the deep vacuum, but she cannot figure out the airlock.
Her anger is endless, relentless.
Gary brought her here, and then he went away and left her with this thing that will not speak, or cannot, or does not care enough to, or does not see her as something to talk to.
On their third date, she and Gary went to an empty park: wine, cheese, fresh bread in a basket. Bright sun and cool air, grass and a cloth to lie on. He brought Shakespeare. “You’ll love this,” he said, and read to her.
She stopped him with a kiss. “Let’s talk,” she said, “about anything.”
“But we are talking,” he said.
“No, you’re reading,” she said. “I’m sorry, I don’t really like poetry.”
“That’s because you’ve never had it read to you,” he said.
She stopped him at last by taking the book from his hands and pushing him back, her palms in the grass; and he entered her. Later, he read to her anyway.
If it had just been that.
They were not even his words, and now they mean nothing, are not even sounds in her mind. And now there is this thing that cannot hear her or does not choose to listen, until she gives up trying to reach it and only reaches into it, and bludgeons it and herself, seeking a reaction, any reaction.
“I fucking hate you,” she says. “I hate fucking you.”
The lifeboat decelerates. Metal clashes on metal. Gaskets seal.
The airlock opens overhead. There is light. Her eyes water helplessly and everything becomes glare and indistinct dark shapes. The air is dry and cold. She recoils.
The alien does not react to the light, the hard air. It remains inside her and around her. They are wrapped. They penetrate one another a thousand ways. She is warm here, or at any rate not cold: half-lost in its flesh, wet from her Ins, its Outs. In here it is not too bright.
A dark something stands outlined in the portal. It is bipedal. It makes sounds that are words. Is it human? Is she? Does she still have bones, a voice? She has not used them for so long.
The alien is hers; she is its. Nothing changes.
No. She pulls herself free of its tendrils and climbs. Out.
Kij Johnson is the author of several novels and more than thirty fantasy, science fiction, and slipstream stories; winner of the 2009 World Fantasy Award; and a finalist for the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Awards. She is also the winner of the Theodore Sturgeon Award for best short story of the year, and the IAFA’s Crawford Award, for best new fantasist of the year. She is the vice chairman for the Clarion West Writers Workshop, and an associate director for the Center for the Study of Science Fiction at the University of Kansas, where she teaches an annual summer workshop on the novel. She lives in Seattle.
SFWA AUTHOR EMERITUS — NEAL BARRETT, JR.
SFWA inaugurated the Author Emeritus program in 1995 to recognize and appreciate senior writers in the genres of science fiction and fantasy who have made significant contributions to our field but who are no longer active or whose excellent work is no longer as well known as it once was. SFWA is proud to name Neal Barrett, Jr. this year’s Author Emeritus.
Within the past fifty years, Neal Barrett, Jr. has penned such lauded works as
His early inspirations included the Barsoom books of Edgar Rice Burroughs, as well as the science fiction of such well-known magazines as
NEAL BARRETT, JR.: WRITER OF EXCELLENCE, AND MY BROTHER
Joe R. Lansdale
First off, don’t misspell his name.
It’s Neal, not Neil.
His first name, as well as his last, has been misspelled as much as my last name, and he hates that. I know. Just to get him going I used to write him letters with his name misspelled, and he in turn would write me letters with Lansdale spelled Landsdale, with two Ds. He always told me that the first D was silent.
But back to my purpose for being here with you on the printed page.
It’s hard to express how honored, how excited I am that my good friend, and great writer, Neal Barrett, Jr., is receiving this award.
For years, Neal has been a favorite writer of mine, and I have actually been amazed at the lack of attention his work has received, compared to that of some others.
Don’t misunderstand me. I wish all those others the best. I am not saying they are not deserving of their recognitions.
But Neal Barrett, Jr. is an amazing stylist and creator of some of the most original fiction ever consigned to paper, or computer screen. And to be honest, he has been taken for granted. He has not been without respect or influence. He has taught many a new writer a thing or two with his smooth prose, humorous point of view, and brilliant ideas.
I am one of those influenced by him, and maybe, considering that admission, I should apologize to him and readers everywhere. I may have learned a thing or two from the master, but Neal, he’s still the man.
I met Neal… Oh, my God! I met Neal in the mid-seventies, though he may not remember it. Met him in Houston, Texas, at a science-fiction convention. I brought a few things of his I had, asked him to sign, and he did. I was there not only because I was a fan of his, knew he was going to be there, but because I, too, wanted to write, and my wife insisted I go because she knew how deeply I loved his work and wanted to meet him.
I had already sold a few nonfiction articles, and maybe even a piece of fiction or two, but what I remember was, when I first met him and told him I badly wanted to write full time. He told me “Good luck.”
