Alien Contact Anthology -- Story #7

This is week seven in which I reveal the seventh story in my forthcoming Alien Contact anthology (Night Shade Books, November). Nineteen stories (through the next nineteen weeks) remain. If you are new to all of this, you may want to start with my rather loose introduction to the anthology, which was posted seven weeks ago, on April 25.

Recycling Strategies for the Inner City

by Pat Murphy

This story originally appeared in a substantially different, and much shorter, form as "Scavenger," in the April 1989 issue of Omni. However, the version included in Alien Contact was originally published in Pat Murphy's collection Points of Departure, from Bantam Spectra, 1990 -- with wonderful cover art by Mark Harrison. This story is approximately 3,600 words in length.

This past March 12-13, I participated in FOGcon, a new convention (this was its first year) in the San Francisco Bay Area. Pat Murphy was one of the Guests of Honor, along with Jeff and Ann VanderMeer. Pat and I go back aways, and though we only live about 50 miles or so from one another, we probably haven't seen each other for at least a handful of years. The exigencies of life, I guess....

So we chatted for a wee bit late Saturday afternoon, in between panels, and made arrangements to meet for breakfast the following day. My wife Diane and I met Pat in the hotel lobby on Sunday morning and then we walked a short distance to a little joint called the New Village Café on Polk Street. Pat and I did our best to catch up on recent happenings. A very chatty breakfast, with good food and even better friends.

Just prior to that weekend, I had pulled together the entire contents of the Alien Contact anthology, and concluded that I still had room for one more short story. When I mentioned this possibility to Pat, she suggested her story "Exploding, Like Fireworks." This story was originally published in 1997 in a rather obscure, and rare, anthology entitled Future Histories: Award-winning Science Fiction Writers Predict Twenty Tomorrows for Communications, edited by Stephen McClelland. The anthology was sponsored by Nokia Corporation and included both original essays and short stories; the book was given away as a business gift and was not available for sale to the public. A few days after the con I received an email from Pat that included a file of the story. "Exploding" was a great story, with a strong female protagonist, but I was looking for something else, something different, and a bit shorter in length, too. Exactly three days later -- and without any prompting from me -- Pat emailed me again, reminding me of the story "Recycling Strategies" in Points of Departure. There's a whole story about this book -- and the "Spectra Special Editions," of which it was a part -- and I'll get to this in a bit, but bottom line: I had completely forgotten about this story, even though I had read Points of Departure, but that had probably been at least twenty years ago.

So I read the story again. Now, you have to understand that I had just spent the previous weekend at a Holiday Inn on Van Ness in San Francisco. I don't think we got more than an hour or two of sleep, and even that minimal amount was spread out over the entire night. I swear every ten or so minutes a police siren wailed down the street; people were out on the street all night long, too, loud and rowdy; music blared constantly from passing cars. And then I read this story, which nailed the city's ambiance such that I was reliving all those sounds once again. "Recycling Strategies for the Inner City" was the last story I acquired for the anthology.

I asked Pat to share some thoughts on the story with readers:

Early in this story, my protagonist notes that most people "don't really want to see what's around them." Many of my stories deal with people who see the world more clearly than most. They notice things that others ignore, find things that others overlook.

Seeing the world clearly may sound like a good thing – but it's a blessing and a curse. Is it clarity of vision or simply madness? In my world, the distinction can be blurry.

So this is a story about perception and madness and alien contact. But it's also a story about a woman who adopts an abandoned pet.

I'm very fond of this little story. I like it when my stories end happily. And I think this is a very happy ending.