Yoon Ha Lee's Blog, page 12

There is no such thing as conservation of shadows. When light destroys shadows, darkness does not gain in density elsewhere. When shadows steal over earth and across the sky, darkness is not diluted.

Science fantasy. For Sonya Taaffe. Published in Clarkesworld Aug. 2011. Reprinted in The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror 2012, ed. Paula Guran.

It is not true that the dead cannot be folded.

Fantasy in space: origami, ghosts, and atrocities. For Charibdys. Thanks to my betas: Rachel Brown, Yune Kyung Lee, and Daedala. Clarkesworld January 2011; there is also a podcast version read by Kate Baker. Reprinted in The Year’s Best Science Fiction 29, ed. Gardner Dozois, and The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy 2012, ed. Rich Horton.

When General Minkhir returned through the Winged City’s gates, her clay servant Chukash saw the emblem of conquest in her hand. This time it was a bronze crescent, drenched in blood as always. Chukash fell in beside her, holding a basin to catch the blood. The trees to either side of them straightened, the gray-brown limbs flushing to a green-tinged hue, but the street was as dry as it had been before the general’s departure weeks earlier. It was an inauspicious sign when the city’s need for water was still dire.

Epic fantasy in a parched city from the viewpoint of a man of clay with a handprint within him, among other mysteries. Setting loosely inspired by Mesopotamian mythology. Thanks to Aliette de Bodard, Kiz, Mrissa, and the Brawlers. Appeared in Giganotosaurus, Dec. 2010.

The usual fallacy is that, in every universe, many futures splay outward from any given moment. But in some universes, determinism runs backwards: given a universe’s state s at some time t, there are multiple previous states that may have resulted in s. In some universes, all possible pasts funnel toward a single fixed ending, Ω.

A story about fate, an inexplicably deadly gun, and a glass of water two degrees away from freezing. This is what happens when I am thinking about guns and Daniel Dennett’s Freedom Evolves at the same time. Thanks to Rachel Brown, my sister, Geoff Cohen, Iain, and Joseph Betzwieser. Published in Lightspeed Sept. 2010 (Issue 4; podcast version available). Reprinted in The Year’s Best Science Fiction 28, ed. Gardner Dozois, The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy 2011, ed. Rich Horton, Lightspeed Year One, ed. John Joseph Adams, and Other Worlds Than These, ed. John Joseph Adams.