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PodCastle 131: Skatouioannis
Nov. 16th, 2010 10:34 amMaybe I'm just looking in the wrong places, but I haven't seen very much speculative fiction about immigrants. Of course, no one is obliged to write about any topic in any genre. The best stories come out of passion, not merely out of obligation, and life's too short for anything but the best stories. For a genre whose stock in trade is people entering new worlds-- I mean, there's even a novel called _Stranger in a Strange Land--, not dealing with immigration from the view point of the immigrants seems an odd lacuna. I mean, there are the stories about people going into the new world to explore it, the stories about people going into the new world to conquer it and the stories about the people dumped into a foreign land trying desperately to go home, but what about the other possibilities?
Again, maybe they're commonplace and because there are so many stories out there these days, I'm not just not getting around to them. Anyway, I don't see many stories that are the outgrowth of people packing up their lives, moving to a new world then struggling to create a new life within the constraints of the society that already exists in that new world. i.e., the world isn't truly new. It's only new for them. Of the stories that ever deal with this, I rarely ever see one that convinces me.
[Yes, every time I go off on one of these rants, a little voice in my head says, "Hey, you know you can do something about that, right? Are you a writer of fiction or not?" Just like every time I read a complaint about how genre is too white or too straight though, my response is "I'm doing the best I can..." Seriously. Of my two most recent attempts, one just received an Honorable Mention at WotF. The story, IMHO, is such a mess though that I'm not going to send it anywhere else unless I can overhaul it. The other should be ready to send out soon, I hope.]
This is just a really long-winded way to say Skatouioannis by Nick Mamatas at this week's Podcastle is unadulterated awesome. He absolutely gets what it's like to be the child of first generation immigrants to the United States. Through the specifics of modern Greek culture, he hits the universal.
I mean, OMG, Nick could have been writing about my parents. Ok, my Dad came to the US with a suitcase of clothes but also with a telephone number that worked, and my Mom, savvy as she was, never did quite figure out she was no longer living in a farm in the south of Taiwan. The details are different but the feel and behavior are dead on. The title character works beautifully as a reification of their desires. (Note: They don't literally create the title character. He is a ghost that commits real world actions who also functions as *gasp* a metaphor. Gotta love genre...)
If it weren't for Podcastle, I'd never have even known of the story. I've never heard of Lenox Avenue, the venue that first published it. That gives me hope that there are more stories that engage with the specifics of having to live in a foreign land that I'd thought even if I never see or hear them. I'm glad I got to hear this one though.
Again, maybe they're commonplace and because there are so many stories out there these days, I'm not just not getting around to them. Anyway, I don't see many stories that are the outgrowth of people packing up their lives, moving to a new world then struggling to create a new life within the constraints of the society that already exists in that new world. i.e., the world isn't truly new. It's only new for them. Of the stories that ever deal with this, I rarely ever see one that convinces me.
[Yes, every time I go off on one of these rants, a little voice in my head says, "Hey, you know you can do something about that, right? Are you a writer of fiction or not?" Just like every time I read a complaint about how genre is too white or too straight though, my response is "I'm doing the best I can..." Seriously. Of my two most recent attempts, one just received an Honorable Mention at WotF. The story, IMHO, is such a mess though that I'm not going to send it anywhere else unless I can overhaul it. The other should be ready to send out soon, I hope.]
This is just a really long-winded way to say Skatouioannis by Nick Mamatas at this week's Podcastle is unadulterated awesome. He absolutely gets what it's like to be the child of first generation immigrants to the United States. Through the specifics of modern Greek culture, he hits the universal.
I mean, OMG, Nick could have been writing about my parents. Ok, my Dad came to the US with a suitcase of clothes but also with a telephone number that worked, and my Mom, savvy as she was, never did quite figure out she was no longer living in a farm in the south of Taiwan. The details are different but the feel and behavior are dead on. The title character works beautifully as a reification of their desires. (Note: They don't literally create the title character. He is a ghost that commits real world actions who also functions as *gasp* a metaphor. Gotta love genre...)
If it weren't for Podcastle, I'd never have even known of the story. I've never heard of Lenox Avenue, the venue that first published it. That gives me hope that there are more stories that engage with the specifics of having to live in a foreign land that I'd thought even if I never see or hear them. I'm glad I got to hear this one though.
