Bankrupting Skybanks by Erik Hofstatter

 

 

 

I'm pleased to announce the release of Erik Hofstatter's Bankrupting Skybanks, in both print and e-book editions, from Aqueduct Press. Bankrupting Skybanks, a novella in dark poetic prose, is the ninety-seventh volume in Aqueduct's Conversation Pieces Series. You can purchase it now at www.aqueductpress.com.

  

 

The disquiet in our heads has started fires again. God tries to smoke us out. We have red hair because our heads are alight. But we resist His interpretation. Red also shows our willingness to bleed.

Everyday more flesh leaves our bones. They all leave. The people we love—only out of habit, for contentment. The people we love—only out of respect, for blood shared. Even our own flesh leaves us when we stress. God leaves us when his sky path goes dark. And he waits for us to die so he can peck away. But we don’t know if there’s holy flavor left in us anymore.

Bankrupting Sky Banks is an introspective work inspired by the infamous Borgia family. A half-burned invitation written to God.

We are the prey that prays.

Advance Praise

“A shocking, scandalous, searing story, made all the more visceral by the fact that it has its roots in true history, Hofstatter’s Bankrupting Sky Banks is an extraordinary foray into the dark and deceptive world of the Borgias.”   —Christa Carmen, Bram Stoker Award-winning & Shirley Jackson Award-nominated author of The Daughters of Block Island

 

L. Timmel Duchamp's Like Shards of Rainbow Frolicking in the Air

 

 I'm pleased to announce the release of a new collection by L. Timmel Duchamp, Like Shards of Rainbow Frolicking in the Air, from Aqueduct Press in both print and e-book editions. You can purchase it now from Aqueduct Press at https://www.aqueductpress.com. 

Like Shards of Rainbow Frolicking in the Air collects three early and one new story by L. Timmel Duchamp. The Tiptree/Otherwise Award Honor list story “Motherhood, Etc.” explores gender issues through a nineteen year-old’s defiant challenge to medical authorities determined to control their body and contain their sexual difference. Another Tiptree/Otherwise Honor List story, “Welcome, Kid, to the Real World,” explores the grip that sexual dimorphism presented as an either/or choice has on a culture offering a seemingly limitless menu of choices to young adults. In “The Last Nostalgia,” Daisy Q seeks to map the City, a territory lying between the Real World and the Excellent World, home to poets and mathematicians. And finally, in “When Joy Came to the World,” a USian graduate student doing archival research in Florence experiences the joys of mass hedonism following a mysterious snowfall in the Arno.

Richard Kadrey writes about “Welcome, Kid, to the Real World”: “I admired its brains and awareness of its subject matter immensely. It’s a wonderfully imagined externalization of all the little decisions we make every day that add up to who we will be as adults. Only in Duchamp’s world, the decisions are entirely self-conscious and deliberate and revolve around the gender role you will carry, like a big digitally-crafted, chrome albatross around your neck for the rest of your life.” 

“Duchamp writes some of the most rewarding science fiction stories you can read today; she is simply and unarguably among the best.”—Samuel R. Delany, author of Dhalgren and Nova

You can read a sample from the book here: https://www.aqueductpress.com/books/samples/978-1-61976-276-3.pdf

And you can read an essay, "What We're Fighting For," about my reasons for publishing this collection now, here:  https://ltimmelduchamp.com/essays/Like-Shards-essay.pdf

The Deep Forest by Sofía Rhei

 

I'm pleased to announce the release of an exquisite, intriguing collection of short fiction, The Deep Forest by Sofía Rhei, translated from the original Spanish by Kendal Simmons, from Aqueduct Press. You can purchase the book now from Aqueduct Press at https://www.aqueductpress.com/books/978-1-61976-274-9.php. You can read a sample from the book at https://www.aqueductpress.com/books/samples/978-1-61976-274-9.pdf. 

 

The Deep Forest offers dark short stories with an uneasy rhythm, dense as the fertile undergrowth that twists into tendrils, wet as the moss on which the dew dwells--tales woven through fragile intuition and legends wrought with the impulses, guilts, and cravings of which we are scarcely aware. 

 Murky mirrors, deceptive will-o’-the-wisps, dryads who know not what they are, wings born from the sting of punishment, keys that bind bodies, the charm of springs that glow with a false fire, girls sharp with thorns, wishes granted and burdened by the weight of death, people who are anything but human and humans who are not quite people--everything has a place in the Deep Forest, a perhaps infinite realm inhabited by all that lives within us without our consent, and where there is nothing more terrifying than a “forever and ever.” 

“From this book spill hundreds of tiny seed-like tales, ready to burrow into the soft soil of your mind. They are strange, sweet, ruthless and profound, each hinting at briar-twisted paths to darker, wilder glades beyond your sight.” —Frances Hardinge, author of Fly by Night and The Lie Tree

“A treasure chest of jeweled miniatures, all new fables and fairy tales from the fabulously rich imagination of Sofia Rhei.” —Lisa Tuttle, , author of The Silver Bough and The Pillow Friend

 Borges comes to mind occasionally with The Deep Forest, especially his later more parable-like work such as Dreamtigers, but there are also occasional echoes of Kafka and of the gnomic stories of poets like W.S. Merwin....The translation here, by Kendal Simmons, convincingly and sometimes hypnotically conveys a very distinctive voice, which (despite a few odd contemporary colloquialisms like ‘‘ginormous’’) evokes the classic rhythms of the old tale-tellers. The Deep Forest may seem a relatively slim collection, but it contains multitudes.  
  —Locus, Gary K. Wolfe, April 2025

 

 

Stone Martyrs by Erik Hofstatter

 

 

 I'm pleased to announce the release, in both print and e-book editions, Stone Martyrs by Erik Hofstatter. Hofstatter tells the dark, dark story of the legendary Mother Shipton and the Rollright Stones through poetic prose. It's available now at www.aqueductpress.com, and you can read a sample from the story at http://www.aqueductpress.com/books/samples/978-1-61976-272-5.pdf. 

 

Have you ever written to ether? When pain was the only ink available to you? When envelopes were made of flesh?

Inspired by the folklore of Mother Shipton & The Rollright Stones, Stone Martyrs presents their unheard confessions, their thoughts addressed, but never answered, when only trees listened, when stones had feelings--a collection of words their hearts never had the courage to say. Until now. 

 If stones could speak, what stories would they tell? We learn the horrific answer to that question in Erik Hofstatter’s intriguing collection of dark prose poetry. Profundity mixes with vulgarity, the sacred with the profane, as the once-human Rollright Stones near the British village of Long Compton come alive to contemplate past conquests and atrocities. Sex and violence, passion and obsession, witchcraft and loss of innocence combine in this powerful, disturbing, yet strangely moving dialogue of forever-earthbound souls.—Anna Taborska, award-winning author of For Those Who Dream Monsters and Bloody Britain

 

“Hofstatter’s Stone Martyrs has the intriguing drama of ancient myth. Poetry and prose marry perfectly to create a dichotomy of dark and light, base coarseness and ephemerality. It’s not to be missed.”–Mercedes M. Yardley, author of The Rack: Stories Inspired by Vintage Horror Paperbacks

 

“The stories and visuals that are conjured up as you read each passage are intense, disturbing, and actually quite moving. It reads like a play, almost, and there is great use of language to really please any lover of wordplay.”—Brendan Fisher, review in Games, Brrraaains and a Head-Banging Life

 

Nisi Shawl's Making Amends

 

Back in 2004, Nisi Shawl's "Deep End" appeared in So Long Been Dreaming, an anthology edited by Nalo Hopkinson. This story, which moved me deepl y, set my imagination racing. I implored Nisi to write a novel set in the world of that story, a novel that I would love to publish. Although Nisi did not immediately sit down and write that novel, what they did instead was write stories that, bit by bit, told the narrative I longed for. And so, just one year ago, Nisi sent me the ms of Making Amends. 

Today I'm mighty pleased to announce the release of Making Amends. It's available in both print and e-book editions from Aqueduct Press (http://www.aqueductpress.com). 

You can read a sample of the book here:  http://www.aqueductpress.com/books/samples/978-1-61976-268-8.pdf

Here's the description we've put on the back cover: 

Starting an interstellar penal colony could be an extremely practical idea, right? It could even provide a sponsoring corporation a good Return on Investment—though of course their initial investment would be massive. Making Amends is a novel-in-stories that tells how a corporate government tries to put this idea into action. Beginning with the selection of the first mission’s “volunteer” crew and culminating with the idea’s lovely and unforeseen consequences, Making Amends immerses readers in strange new worlds, worlds precious to discover, tricky to explore, and beautiful to behold.

*

 "Making Amends is an unsettling, immersive, out-of-body exploration of the future of the prison industrial complex and artificial intelligence that transports readers through sub-light speeds to an unexplored planet. Watching the world of Nisi Shawl’s creation unfold through the voices of intriguing characters – both human and AI – I couldn’t help but think about how our country’s justice system could lead to the terrifyingly disproportionate retribution in these linked stories. By the end of the book, I was left understanding more about how power changes people, and how even in the bleakest of times, love, resistance, and community can blossom." —LaToya Jordan, author of Shirley Jackson award winning To the Woman in the Pink Hat

*

Nalo Hopkinson has, appropriately, written the introduction for the book. They note that in portraying the lives of people surviving in the world-machine and actually thriving, Nis's spin is "inimitable."

"Let’s start with that title: Making Amends. The doubling of meaning that Nisi crafts; a community of people convicted of crimes (I won’t say “criminals,” for reasons Nisi addresses in this collection) who have opted to take the sentence of settling an alien planet, which has been named “Amends.” To save space and make the journey affordable, their original bodies are destroyed, and their consciousnesses stored then loaded at the other end of the journey into bodies cloned from those of their purported victims. The prisoners are given no choice over the race or sex of the bodies they’re given." 

I love the doubleness of that title, its irony. That particular flavor of irony is one that Nisi has made their own. The last stories in the book are precisely about how people, no matter the constraints and handicaps and hardships that have been inflicted on them, make not only a new life (in the metaphorical sense) for themselves, but also a new world, on a planet completely unknown to them. This is the ultimate human drive; mere survival--eating, shitting, reproducing--is not enough, can never be enough. Creativity isn't a bonus, but a necessity. We have always made our world, no matter the odds against us. It's what we humans do. And people making their world is what Making Amends  shows us.

Finally, I want to quote from Nisi's essay, "My Recipe for Making Amends":  

 "The final fillip of whatthefuckery I added to “Deep End’s” premise was to stipulate that the bodies into which the convicts’ consciousness would be downloaded were cloned from the genetic material of their supposed “victims.” Thus a doctor providing abortions could be reborn into a body copied from the DNA of an aborted fetus, or a strike organizer into one copied from a corporation’s CEO....

 "One question I’ve faced from some editors and reviewers when talking about this series and a few other stories I’ve written is: What did my imprisoned characters do wrong, and what justifies their treatment?

"The short answer, the answer I give once I’ve quieted my fury enough to respond coherently is: “Nothing.” Nothing justifies the police persecution experienced by the hero of “Lazzrus” and “Sunshine of Your Love;” nothing excuses the confinement and exile of the involuntary inhabitants of Amends. The longer, more specific answer I give tallies up behaviors recently re-problematized: seeking and providing abortions, presentation as an unassigned gender, non-heteronormative sexual interactions, and so on.

"My home community is the African diaspora in the United States, specifically in Kalamazoo, Michigan. In my neighborhood there was never a need to discuss why someone was incarcerated. Incarceration was axiomatic, a basic condition of our lives. This past is the root of my resistance to the question. And the unfurling bud at the tip of the tree of my resistance is my dawning realization that I and many others—maybe you yourself—could easily be classified as criminals. Indeed, many of us are classified that way already.

"In Making Amends I do my best to describe the steps and ingredients needed for us to break out of that oppressive categorization and into the deliciously wild unknown."

Farewell, CSZ

 For nearly ten years the Cascadia Subduction Zone served to provide thoughtful and insightful work: essays, flash fiction, interviews, poetry, and reviews of fiction and non-fiction for readers seeking innovative analysis, especially showing the work by women as central to the world of arts.  I regret to announce its demise.  

It has been four years now since it went on hiatus, so this formal announcement will probably surprise no one, though it’s taken me a while to face up to the fact that we won’t be resuming publication. I’m grateful to everyone who made the CSZ’s ten years of publication possible, especially Nisi Shawl, Kath Wilham, Lew Gilchrist, Arrate Hidalgo, and Tom Duchamp, and of course to the writers and artists who generously allowed us to use their work for only nominal compensation as well as to our faithful subscribers. 

The entire run of the CSZ’s issues as well as an index will remain available for free download on Aqueduct’s website. You can find them here: http://www.aqueductpress.com/theCSZ/

The Pleasures of Reading, Viewing, and Listening in 2024, pt. 28: Beth Plutchak

 

 

Cassandra at the Ballet

by Beth Plutchak

 

The night of November 5^th, 2024 election night, my wife and I went to the World Ballet Company’s production of Swan Lake. I love Swan Lake, the music, the costumes, the swans dancing in unison, the plot that makes no sense, with a through line that can lead to happiness or tragedy. Which ending will this version be? No spoilers, please. I love Tchaikovsky. I love the Russian composers in particular because I can hear it, you know. I’m not a musician. I have no musical theory. But, I hear the cold and the longing and not angst exactly but something in between. Something between not knowing what one wants and the certainty that if you get what you want it will never work out the way you hoped. The World Ballet’s mission is ballet is for everyone. They want to make ballet universally accessible. World Ballet chose the happy ending. 

So, on November 5^th I put the election out of my mind and watched the ballet. I watched the happy ending. On the way home I checked social media and I was transported to the tragic ending. I can admit it now, but I never had any doubts that Trump would win the election. As I saw my white feminist and queer white friends exhibiting increasing hope after Harris accepted the nomination I learned to keep my mouth shut, because I was constantly in danger of saying “the first time Trump was elected.” I heard my Black and Brown friends try to tell White Women, “Pay attention, what you are afraid of has been happening to us for a long time.” I never expected white women to rally around the abortion issue and “save” us. I remember how white women treated women of color during the women’s rights movement that brought us Roe v Wade. I remember the Combahee River Collective Statement. I remember white feminists’ response.

I have spent the greater part of the last two decades working on various projects involving complexity economics as a tool to understand where we are politically and economically and as a tool for moving forward. Things that are incredibly clear to me have been impossibly difficult to communicate (hence Cassandra). One thing that has remained clear is, to quote World Ballet Company, “Art Changes People. People Change the World.”

Politics operates at multiple levels. In an election year we tend to think politics only happens at the ballot box, but it also happens at the level of who determines what policies can be implemented, and before that it operates at the level of what policies we believe can be implemented and at the level of the future we can imagine. The work before us now is how do we change the message, the story line, and make an equitable future imaginable? It’s the long way round and the only way forward.

Where do we start this long way round work? A. R. Moxon released a book last year called Very Fine People | Confessions of an American Fool. This is the most important political book I have read in a long long time. Well as is often said, the best place to start is at the beginning and the beginning of America is genocide and chattel slavery. I don’t know how we come to terms with that as a nation, but I do know that as white people we can and must come to terms with it individually. Moxon lays out a path forward from acknowledgement, to repair, to redemption.

I spent a good deal of last year reading political and economic non-fiction, trying to find the language I need. Books I recommend in no particular order are The Persuaders, by Anand Giridharadas, Re-Enchanting the World | Feminism and the Politics of the Commons, by Silvia Federici, The Dawn of Everything | A New History of Humanity, by David Graeber, The Feminist Subversion of the Economy | Contributions for Life Against Capital, by Amaia Perez Orozco, translated by Liz Mason-Deese, and The Red Deal | Indigenous Action to Save our Earth, by The Red Nation. I followed the bloggers Heather Cox Richardson, A. R. Moxon at The Reframe, and Framelab which builds on George Lakoff’s work. I reread Don’t Think of an Elephant, by Lakoff, and am trying to learn how to communicate through shared morality rather than cold facts. There was a joke circulating through Facebook last year that went like this.

A: If you just provide people with concrete facts you can change their opinions.

B: Actually, they did a study and 95% of people did not change strongly held beliefs when presented with new facts.

B: Well, I can’t believe that’s true.

If white people are willing to do the work that is before us, we will find our way to the necessary evolution of a just world through community. As long as we make excuses for not doing that work we will fail. Until we do that work we will be unable to listen to what more marginalized people have learned and have been trying to tell us about surviving this chaotic post-capitalism we find ourselves in.  We will continue to circle in chaos.

But, I’m also supposed to be writing about pleasures here and the pleasures I found were a kind of escapism, a kind of catching my breath by streaming shows that brought me comfort and reminded me of the work to be done. My old standby is Foyle’s War available on Acorn. Christopher Foyle is a country policeman who struggles with morality during WWII. As a German spy puts it to him in the episode "Fifty Ships," “You investigate murder, in a time of war?” I am reminded that the world has been horrible before. (Just to be clear, we didn’t all survive then and we won’t all survive now). The important lesson is that just because the work we are able to do seems small, we are not absolved from doing it.

I discovered the series Deadloch streaming on Prime which was the Queer mystery series I didn’t know I needed. It is set in the fictional town of Deadloch on the coast of Tasmania, an intentional Lesbian community. It both follows the formula of so many British mystery shows and also lovingly satirizes them. And it is a lesson in community building.

 

Finally, I watched the first and apparently final season of Kaos streaming on Netflix, starring Jeff Goldblum as Zeus and featuring the brilliant Suzy Izzard as one of the Fates. I started the series because of an interest in Greek Mythology, a love of satire, and long-held crushes on both Izzard and Goldblum. I was unprepared for how Queer affirming and Trans affirming this show would turn out to be. There is such a difference between Queer acceptance and radiant Queer and Trans joy. But, it was Billie Piper’s scattered and resigned Cassandra that provided part of the title for this piece.

In 2024 I have also been trying to understand community building by becoming more active in local queer and sex-positive communities. Our challenge is to make community building expansive rather than closing in on ourselves and perpetuating silos. We must begin with humility, recognition of our own complicity in bringing us to where we are now, and love and joy for the most marginalized among us. While rereading “The Combahee River Collective Statement” it became clear to me that any social justice movement built to combat interlocking systems of oppression must be led by those most impacted, and that white cis women are tasked with making intentional cause against white supremacist patriarchy.  It will only cost us (white women) some unearned comfort and in return we may find collective joy and social justice.

 

Beth Plutchak is an explorer for new worlds, totally dissatisfied with this one. As a young woman she moved to Alaska to live off the land. After the birth of her third child she moved back to Wisconsin in search of some of life’s luxuries like electricity and indoor plumbing. It is in Wisconsin where she works and writes. Her essays on science fiction fandom and intersectional feminism Boundaries, Border Crossings, and Reinventing the Future and her short story collection Liminal Spaces are available through Aqueduct Press. In November 2020 she edited a blog symposium on Complexity. This symposium and  her current work on Complexity Economics and Social Justice can be found at the edge-of-chaos. She also posts about these and other themes at beth.substack.com