We See a Different Frontier: A Postcolonial Speculative Fiction Anthology (2 page)

We See a Different Frontier
will publish new speculative fiction stories in which the viewpoint is that of the colonized, not the invader. We want to see stories that remind us that neither readers nor writers are a homogeneous club of white, male, Christian, hetero, cis, monoglot anglophone, able-bodied Westerners. We want the cultures, languages and literatures of colonized peoples and recombocultural (http://djibrilalayad.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/guest-post-i-didnt-know-i-was-alien-or.html) individuals to be heard, not to show the White Man learning the error of his ways, or Anglos defending the world from colonizing extraterrestrials. We want stories that neither exoticize nor culturally appropriate the non-western settings and characters in them.

We received many wonderful stories in the four months of the submissions period, and even after we had applied the filtering criteria—the story had to be on theme, it had to be beautifully written, and at least one of the editors had to absolutely love it—we had more than twice as many words as we could use. The process of whittling these down to the table of contents you see before you was not a straightforward one. For every story we rejoiced to buy, there was at least one story we wept to let go. There were stories that we both agreed instantly we had to have, but there were also stories that one or other of us hated and had to be talked into: in some cases these are the most interesting stories, the ones that push the boundaries, that tell a story that isn’t obvious, that were uncomfortable to our limited perspectives. For an editor seeking to diversify, to include under-represented voices, especially voices that are not her own, this is one of the most valuable lessons to learn: a story that you start out hating (or even just thinking,
meh
) might be the most exciting story you buy. Your instincts do not serve you well; they need to be tempered with reason, with surprise, and with the opinions of others, especially those who have experienced colonialisms and discriminations that you have not.

The stories that appear in this anthology are all brilliant excoriations of one or another element of colonialism, racism, imperialism, cultural appropriation or exploitation. They range in tone from the cynically satirical, via charmingly fantastic and cheerfully brutal, to violently furious and vengeful. There are stories about repelling the invader from a foreign land, about dealing with the aftermath of abuse and atrocity, about making sure history does not repeat itself. There are protagonists who are rebels, terrorists or freedom fighters; antagonists who are patronising scholars, brutal soldiers, white-guilty children of colonists, businessmen and moguls. There are hard science-fictional pieces, alternative realities, steampunk, dark fantasies, mundane SF, social observation and blistering biopunk adventures. We are reminded that the roles and rights of women, the poor, queer and trans folk intersect inseparably with issues of race and colonialism. That suppression of culture and especially language are common tactics in the repression of a people, and as effective as violence itself. That a colonized people is not necessarily defeated, its culture is not inferior or weaker or more backward or scientifically ignorant than that of the invaders. That our (Western) history need not dictate our future, but there are other narratives, other possibilities, other voices and other stories to tell. These stories need to be heard. These stories need to be read.

The Arrangement of Their Parts

Shweta Narayan

Surat, 1076 AH / 1665 AD

The Englishman’s workshop nestled close to his people’s fortified factory, outside its walls but well within its influence. A night guard watched over it—if keeping to the doorway, eyeing the street from his puddle of lantern light, and turning occasionally to spit
paan
could really be called watching.

The guard had reason for complacency; plastered walls offered no handhold, and the workshop’s windows, set into the sloping roof, were too high and small for human reach. But the Artificer Devi had not worn human form in many years. She cut the wooden trellis out from one window, spread her tailfeathers for balance, and telescoped her neck to peer into the room.

It could as well have been a butchery. The air was rank with stale machine oil. Moonlight spread flat on tile and whitewash, caught on gears laid out in disconnected imitation of their proper form. Inked and labelled diagrams, pinned to walls and tables, recorded the workings of legs, eyes, boilers; and on the main workbench a half-dismembered voicebox stood ready to play one cylinder of its speech. Its other cylinders stood in rows beside it, sorted by size instead of tone. Dead husks shaped the shadows: a soldier’s head pried open; pieces of a half-golden mongoose; the ungeared skeleton of a large cat, frozen before it could pounce.

The trail ended here. Of course. Anything might be found in Surat, greatest port in the world, for a price.

She landed with barely a whirr on the main bench, next to the voicebox, and reached for three heartsprings coiled naked on a sheaf of papers. Paused. The springs’ thin metal had ripped in places; the pattern of dents said they had been flattened out, then rolled back up. Well, that could all be repaired. But―she held one up to the moonlight, then checked the others, shivering. Every graven word was gone. Scratched over, rubbed down to a lifeless blur.

Not even she could bring someone back once their heartspring was destroyed.

A prayer for her dead, then, gone to power that great mechanism marked by stars; and three more notches in her own spring. There was only metal left here. And paper, rubbed over with wax to make imprints of each ruined heartspring.

But remains could, at need, become parts. The hunting cat's skeleton was still fully articulated. The soldier’s head still held his steam boiler, though the ruby lens that heated it was gone. And for the rest―she shredded the paper into a crucible, set the springs gently on their bed of copied words, and turned to build up the fire.

Four brahmins met in a village one day and, in the way of learned men everywhere, got to talking about their learning. Now, each believed his own knowledge to be the most essential; but brahmins value humility and non-attachment, so none were willing to admit it. In consequence each one heaped praises on the rest, and so they all became great friends and decided to travel through the jungle together.

On the way they came across new bones scattered by the side of the road. “My dear friends!” cried the first brahmin. “While my knowledge is a drop to your monsoon clouds, yet I believe it would reveal the mystery of these bones.”

“Do please show us,” said the second, “for we have nothing but awe of your mastery of form, and virtue can only increase when learning is shared.” For he was hoping to overhear his new friend’s mantra and steal its power for himself.

So the first mouthed his sacred words and scattered water from the three holy rivers onto the bones, and they rose from the ground and arranged themselves into the skeleton of a tiger.

The sun was risen when the workshop door squeaked open, letting in the day’s dust on a rush of muggy air. The Englishman glanced in, then turned to give his guard a low-voiced command before stepping inside.

All but one of the windows cast trellis-shadows on the far wall. From that one, the Artificer raised her wings. The Englishman wiped his forehead with a handkerchief, smirked at her shadow, and said in passable Hindustani, “Well, isn't this curious.” Behind him, the door pulled shut. The outer bar dropped with a thump.

She tucked her wings neatly back, keeping her good eye fixed on him. His skin showed red through his light muslin
jama
, and it sat oddly with his English hat and boots, but there was nothing silly about the pistol at his hip. “You seem, Sir James,” she said, “to find a great many things curious.”

“With all Creation so full of wonder, how could I not?” He looked up at her directly, then, shading his face; his eyes gleamed in appreciation. He said, “And I would be loath to damage so lovely a mechanism before even seeing it fly.”

“Am I to be grateful?”

“Another man might choose revenge.” He gestured from the cooling crucible to his disturbed mallets and gravers. His hand drifted down to the gun, jerked away from it again. “Or use this violation to cause trouble for your Emperor. I am a natural philosopher, and prefer understanding.”

By Imperial edict, the British could not be touched. Much the bird cared. “Understand this, then,” she said. “The usurper Aurangzeb is not my Emperor. And you murdered my own.”

“Oh, murdered, is it now?” The Englishman sounded only amused.

“You think your studies justify their deaths?”

“Well said. One would almost think there was meaning to it. But it was Man, after all, whom God made in His image, not clockwork; so clockwork cannot be murdered.”

She rattled her feathers. “Ah? Then mere clockwork could hardly violate your workshop.”

“Argued like a native! And indeed you may be right despite yourself.” He grinned. “For I have discovered that it takes only Descartes’ four principles of inanimate form to explain you.”

“So you need only know—” She shifted into French. “
—the motion, size, shape, and arrangement of my parts.
” Back to Hindustani. “What’s left to understand?”

His mouth opened. Shut. “’s Blood, you’re a saucy one,” he said. “I wish to know
why,
of course.”

“We have our last rites, as you do yours.” Sunlight crept down the far wall, towards the skeletal forms, reaching lower now than the man’s head. “We do not leave our dead unmelted. You’ve had your dismantlement and your diagramming. Trade me for what is left, and I shall take no further action.”

He glanced along the row of windows; then, gaze calculating, back at the bird. “And what is it you offer?”

“A tale of our own natural philosophers, whose understanding might inform yours.”

The second brahmin was impressed, which irritated him because he hadn’t managed to hear the mantra. So he said, “That is very clever!”

Such meager praise drew a thin smile to the first brahmin’s lips. “You are far too kind, my brother,” he said. “But indeed, I don’t aspire to cleverness. Only to knowledge of Truth within the world.”

“As do we all,” said the second, “though we cannot all achieve it.”

The third brahmin said hurriedly, “Still, enlightened company can only add to our learning.”

“That's so,” said the second. “And feeble as my own learning is, such a base does call out to be built upon.”

“Yes, and as you so wisely said, our lives will be richer for sharing,” said the third. And so the second brahmin mumbled over the skeleton, shaking neem and mango leaves as he spoke; and muscles built themselves over bone, each one the perfect size for its place.

“Why,” the third marveled, hiding his own chagrin, “The animal’s bulk is clear now. Even so does philosophy grow around a fundamental knowledge of the Vedas. And as art grows up around philosophy, I shall add my own grains of knowledge to give it shape, if this pleases my dear friends.” Nothing, of course, could please his dear friends more. So he anointed each muscle with clove oil and camphor, spoke into his cupped hands, and clapped twice; and striped skin grew over the whole, its orange glowing like sunrise.

The fourth brahmin said, “Truly, this is a wonder. Perhaps I can add to it a little, though I admit myself surprised that I might know anything my learned friends do not!” So saying, he breathed dust from the four great mountains into the tiger’s mouth and eyes, and he whispered his own words.

The tiger sprang into motion, then, and ate them all.

The Englishman laughed. “If you want someone who takes tales of heathen chanting and anointments seriously,” he said loudly, “find a Papist. This explains nothing―”

A shadow loomed behind the bird, silent on bare feet. She dropped from the window, spread her wings, and settled on the main bench. Above her, rain shutters slammed shut.

The Englishman’s smile was edged, now. “Though it kept you occupied,” he said, drifting closer. The pistol was in his hand, aimed at the floor. “My guard’s a native, after all; too superstitious to see why the fire burned all night, but clever as a monkey on the roof. Now, there’s no need to
damage
you—” She turned, and he recoiled. “What happened to your eye?”

“Eyes break,” she said. “They are mere lenses, and can be replaced.” They could also be pulled out whole and set atop a steam boiler, angled to catch sunlight, to wind a new-forged heartspring. Once that sunlight slanted down far enough into the workshop. “And your guard closed the wrong window.”

“What? No, no, you’ll not make me look away so easily.” He circled around till he could watch the windows without losing sight of her, then glanced warily up.

Behind him, a lens flared. Yellow eyes eased open. Golden claws came out with a click from skeletal tiger paws.

Pancho Villa’s Flying Circus

Ernest Hogan

General Villa tore the bottle from my hands, gulped down some tequila, then slapped my shoulder.

“Look! Look, Sahagún! Alejandro! See how well Tesla’s death ray works!”

Beneath the airship
Cucaracha
, the Chihuahuan Desert was littered with burning, crashed American aeroplanes on both sides of the border between the United States and Mexico. Smoke rose into a sky that turned blood red as the sun set.

“Quite effective, General,” I said.

“Effective?” He tapped the bullet-proof glass. “It’s magnificent! Beautiful! They thought they were invincible, but look at them now!”

The door to the gondola’s cramped observation pod burst open. It was Tesla. He looked paler and more wild-haired than usual.

“Come, Tesla, my friend!” General Villa had not taken his eyes away from the carnage. “Come see what we have done!”

“Yes.” Tesla held up a device like a gun, but also like one of his electrical machines. “What have we done?”