“Going to the woods is going home.” — John Muir
Photo: Eau Claire Dells County Park, near Wausau, Wisconsin. Photo by Sue Burke.
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Going to the woods…
Author: Sue Burke
Sue Burke’s most recent science fiction novel is Usurpation, the conclusion of the trilogy that began with Semiosis and Interference. She began writing professionally as a teenager, working for newspapers and magazines as a reporter and editor, and began writing fiction in 1995. She has published more than 40 short stories, along with essays, poetry, and translations from Spanish into English of short stories, novels, poetry, and historical works. Find out more at https://sueburke.site/
What was it like to write about a fictional pandemic during a real pandemic? I answer that question in an essay published Tuesday at TorForgeBlog.com.
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Meet the Swamp Thing
I recently received this plant as a gift from some neighbors. It had outgrown their apartment, and I had a little space in mine, so I welcomed it into my home.
It’s a Ravenea rivularis, or “majesty palm.” It grows in the understory — that is, in the shade of other trees and plants, so it likes a bright but not sunny space. It grows slowly, but eventually it can reach up to 100 feet tall, so I can’t keep it forever. The palm is a native of Madagascar, where it likes moist soil and grows in wetlands such as riverbanks and swamps.
Because of that, I’ve named it “Swamp Thing.” It lives here in my home office, where its size makes it seem like an extroverted companion.
I’ll be reading a short story live at the Gumbo Fiction Salon on Thursday, May 13, which begins at 6:30 p.m. CDT. My story is about a princess who rescues dragons and battles the ultimate evil.
The show will start at 7 p.m., but it opens a half hour early for socializing and open mic sign-up. You can sign up for a 10-minute reading slot. More information is at the Facebook event page: https://www.facebook.com/events/924025898432787/
It will take place on Zoom: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83277758999, Meeting ID: 832 7775 8999, Passcode: MayGumbo
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Meanwhile, at the Tiny Bookcase, you can hear me read a flash fiction story. The Tiny Bookcase is a short story writing and interview podcast. In each episode, the hosts, Nico and Ben, and the guest write a story using a shared prompt, then read it. The prompt in this episode was “rebooting” and the stories were intense and fun. Mine is about a woman who cursed the sea, so the sea cursed her.
Listen to it here: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1129067/8485183
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If you prefer to do your own reading, here’s some text related to my most recent novel, Immunity Index:
• At Uncanny Magazine, my guest blog post details “Five Reasons Not to Bring Back Woolly Mammoths.”
• Nerds of a Feather, Flock Together interviews me about Immunity Index.
My next novel, Immunity Index, goes on sale May 4. It will have two virtual book launches.
Tuesday, May 4th, 7 to 9 p.m., @ Volumes Bookcafe. With Seanan McGuire!
Yes, award-winning author Seanan McGuire and I will talk about the novel, answer questions, and we’ll all have a lot of fun.
Tickets for this online event are free, but you can purchase a signed copy of Immunity Index as a ticket add-on. Sign up here:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/sue-burke-with-seanan-mcguire-tickets-151551290991
Volumes Bookcafe is a Chicago neighborhood independent bookstore café founded by two sisters who aimed to create a warm and inviting community space for book lovers of all ages.
Wednesday, May 5, @ A Room of One’s Own, 6 to 7 p.m.
Special guest will be Kit Rocha — that is, the author team Donna Herren and Bree Bridges — a three-way conversation. A Room of One’s Own is a local, independent, feminist bookstore in Madison, Wisconsin, where much of Immunity Index takes place. Register here:
Room offers a wide selection of current and classic fiction, nonfiction, graphic novels, local interest titles, gifts, toys, and greeting cards. It also has strong children’s and young adult, women’s studies, and LGBTQ fiction and nonfiction sections.
My flash fiction story, “Magic Rules Zero Through Four” was just published by Daily Science Fiction! Only 475 words. Read it here:
https://dailysciencefiction.com/fantasy/magic-and-wizardry/sue-burke/magic-rules-zero-through-four
In the author story comments, I talk about what led to this story:
“My favorite words are but and what if. One day I thought about the way that the laws of thermodynamics begin with zero. What if magic had rules that started with zero, too? Our understanding of thermodynamics gives us great powers, but what powers would the rules of magic give us? This story offers one answer, but what if there are better answers?”
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My next novel, Immunity Index, goes on sale May 4.
Chapter 3 of Interference contains this paragraph:
“Long ago as a graduate student, I had researched a voyage embarked upon by Spanish conquistadors down the Amazon River in search of El Dorado. The travelers did not know that the purpose of the trip had been to gather together the most undesirable conquistadors — a ghastly lot, most notably Lope de Aguirre — beneath an incompetent captain and ship them off to the unexplored jungle, never to be heard from again. Most succumbed to malnutrition, mutiny, murder, and madness.”
You may have heard of the 1972 movie Aguirre, the Wrath of God by Klaus Kinski. I’ve seen it, and I recommend it. I’ve also read a few accounts of the voyage down the Amazon, including the book Lope de Aguirre: El loco del Amazonas by Manuel Lacarta, a history written with poetic intensity about the disastrous voyage. It started in Peru in September 1560 and ended in Venezuela in October 1561.
If you’ve seen the Kinski movie, you may wonder how much of what the film recounts is true. A lot of it is true. Most of all, it truly captures the madness. But it captures only half the horror. The real voyage went on a lot longer than the film version, suffering disaster after disaster.
Malnutrition: The conquistadors had planned to live off the land and steal from the natives. The people of the Amazon, however, when they heard what was headed their way, fled into the jungle, taking their food with them. The conquistadors couldn’t hunt for food because they would be hunted and killed by jaguars, and they couldn’t fish because piranhas would eat their catch along with anyone who fell overboard.
Mutiny: In January 1561, Aguirre killed the captain of the expedition as part of a mutiny, then in May he stabbed the new leader to death and took over the mutiny.
Murder: Aguirre himself killed or ordered to be killed 72 people. Many other people died of starvation, abuse, and battle.
Madness: In March 1561, Aguirre declared war against the Spanish Empire and had himself proclaimed a prince.
Even worse, the conquistadors didn’t all die in the Amazon jungle. Some of them survived and made it to the coast of Venezuela, plundering and murdering. Spanish troops finally arrived and executed Aguirre. The details are too hideous to recount here.
History teaches that something can always go wrong. Indeed, sometimes things that are meant to go wrong can go much, much worse. It’s a frightening lesson.
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My next novel, Immunity Index, goes on sale May 4. Read an excerpt here. Read a different excerpt here.
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Visit my personal website at https://sueburke.site/
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“Semiosis” ebook only $2.99
My publisher, Tor, has made a few ebooks available at the special price of only $2.99 throughout the entire month of April:
- Semiosis by Sue Burke
- Miranda and Caliban by Jacqueline Carey
- Afterparty by Daryl Gregory
Find out more about the books and get links to your favorite bookseller here:
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My latest novel, Immunity Index, goes on sale May 4. Read an excerpt here. Read a different excerpt here.
(This brief, moralizing rant by Stevland was cut from the original manuscript because the book was getting too long.)
Sadly, I am the only one of my species. In addition to genetic advantages, sexual reproduction provides certain physical pleasures, and thus some hedonistic plants are self-pollinating despite the congenital defects that often occur; self-pollinators must make many seeds to ensure a reasonable number of healthy ones.
More abstemiously, I create asexual, agamospermic inflorescences whose always-healthy seeds result from modified meiotic division of the chromosomes inside the reproductive cells in virgin ovaries, rather than through fertilization by my own pollen. Some genetic crossover occurs, providing a certain amount of variation, although the offspring are very nearly clones. It is the best I can hope for, being alone.
Instead, I use flowers and pollen mostly for other purposes: pollen for communication, and flowers for the sheer beauty.
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My next novel, Immunity Index, goes on sale May 4. Publishers Weekly has a review.
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My writing and personal website is at https://sueburke.site/
I made two mistakes when I started writing the novel Immunity Index.
The first mistake was to try “pantsing” as a writing technique — that is, to write from the seat of my pants rather than from a plan and an outline. While my first drafts are always shit (which does not make me at all like Hemingway in any other sense), this first draft was especially bad and required nine painful complete rewrites.
The second mistake was trying to tell a story set in the near future. Events in the future, like the things seen in a convex mirror, are closer than they appear.
This vision of the future, however, started back in the 1980s. As a newspaper reporter, I was covering news about AIDS, then a terrifying new disease. One evening, before a meeting, I was chatting with the Wisconsin state epidemiologist. He said that as bad as AIDS was, it could have been worse. He was a gay man, and we both knew that AIDS was already a disaster, and the disaster would keep growing.
He said, though, we were lucky that AIDS was only communicable, not actually contagious. Worse would have been a fatal illness that could be spread as easily as a cold.…
In 2018, I imagined a deadly, contagious coronavirus. It was fiction. Until it wasn’t.
My fictional story, though, is better than our shared reality. For one thing, the novel has a happy ending — and it has suspense, intrigue, adventure, and a woolly mammoth.
Immunity Index, goes on sale May 4. Publishers Weekly has a review. Read an excerpt here.
Semiosis 