Kevin Anderson - The Mammoth Book of Nebula Awards SF

FROM THE AUTHOR: One of my writing friends once described my writing process as thinking up a bunch of hopefully cool ideas, throwing them up against the wall, and seeing what stuck. I hope that’s not completely accurate, but I do tend to be driven by overt ideas and interesting characters, and underlying themes or resonance tends to develop outside my awareness. In other words, as a writer I’m not terribly self-aware, so writing about my writing can be a struggle.

This same writing friend pointed out that almost all of my fiction to date explores romantic love. It astonished me that I had never noticed. I write love stories — who’d have thought?

“Bridesicle” is a love story. It didn’t start out that way, though. I originally wrote “Bridesicle” from the perspective of Lycan, a man visiting a cryogenic dating center who, unbeknownst to his potential mates, can’t afford to save any of them. In the original story Mira, who is the protagonist in the final version, was one of a number of women Lycan “dated” at the center. I posted the original story for my online writing group to critique, and they politely panned it. Mary Robinette Kowal suggested the story would work better from the perspective of one of the women trapped at the center and, after a few weeks of acclimating to the idea that I should toss the original story in its entirety and start over, I tossed the original story in its entirety and started over. So I have Mary to thank for guiding me toward the story as it was published in Asimov’s .

While I’m not exactly suffering from imposter syndrome, to say I was stunned to learn that “Bridesicle” had been nominated for a Nebula Award would be an understatement. When I began writing at age thirty-nine it never occurred to me that I might turn out to be any good at it. I wrote because I discovered I loved it more than anything I had ever done, and eighty-eight straight rejections to begin my career didn’t deter me, because I just flat-out love to write. I fully expect the day of the Nebula Awards to be the second-best day of my life. The best was my wedding day. Originally I ranked the birth of my twins, Miles and Hannah, second, and the Nebulas third, but my wife Alison reminded me that the day of their birth actually sucked pretty badly.

THE WORDS WERE gentle strokes, drawing her awake.

“Hello. Hello there.”

She felt the light on her eyelids, and knew that if she opened her eyes they would sting, and she would have to shade them with her palm and let the light bleed through a crack.

“Feel like talking?” A man’s soft voice.

And then her mind cleared enough to wonder: where was her mom? She called into the corners of her mind, but there was no answer, and that could not be. Once she’d let mom in, there was no tossing her out. It was not like letting Mom move into her apartment; there was no going back once mom was in her mind, because there was no body for mom to return to.

So where was she?

“Aw, I know you’re awake by now . Come on, sleeping beauty. Talk to me.” The last was a whisper, a lover’s words, and Mira felt that she had to come awake and open her eyes. She tried to sigh, but no breath came. Her eyes flew open in alarm.

An old man was leaning over her, smiling, but Mira barely saw him, because when she opened her mouth to inhale, her jaw squealed like a sea bird’s cry, and no breath came, and she wanted to press her hands to the sides of her face, but her hands wouldn’t come either. Nothing would move except her face.

“Hello, hello. And how are you?” The old man was smiling gently, as if Mira might break if he set his whole smile loose. He was not that old, she saw now. Maybe sixty. The furrows in his forehead and the ones framing his nose only seemed deep because his face was so close to hers, almost close enough for a kiss. “Are you having trouble?” He reached out and stroked her hair. “You have to press down with your back teeth to control the air flow. Didn’t they show you?”

There was an air flow — a gentle breeze, whooshing up her throat and out her mouth and nose. It tickled the tiny hairs in her nostrils. She bit down, and the breeze became a hiss — an exhale strong enough that her chest should drop, but it didn’t, or maybe it did and she just couldn’t tell, because she couldn’t lift her head to look.

“Where—” Mira said, and then she howled in terror, because her voice sounded horrible — deep and hoarse and hollow, the voice of something that had pulled itself from a swamp.

“It takes some getting used to. Am I your first? No one has revived you before? Not even for an orientation?” The notion seemed to please him, that he was her first, whatever that meant. Mira studied him, wondering if she should recognize him. He preened at her attention, as if expecting Mira to be glad to see him. He was not an attractive man — his nose was thick and bumpy, and not in an aristocratic way. His nostrils were like a bull’s; his brow Neanderthal, but his mouth dainty. She didn’t recognize him.

“I can’t move. Why can’t I move?” Mira finally managed. She looked around as best she could.

“It’s okay. Try to relax. Only your face is working.”

“What happened?” Mira finally managed.

“You were in a car accident,” he said, his brow now flexed with concern. He consulted a readout on his palm. “Fairly major damage. Ruptured aorta. Right leg gone.”

Right leg gone ? Her right leg? She couldn’t see anything except the man hanging over her and a gold-colored ceiling, high, high above. “This is a hospital?” she asked.

“No, no. A dating center.”

“What?” For the first time she noticed that there were other voices in the room, speaking in low, earnest, confidential tones. She caught snippets close by:

“ …neutral colors. How could anyone choose violet ?”

“ …last time I was at a Day-Glows concert I was seventeen… ”

“I shouldn’t be the one doing this.” The man turned, looked over his shoulder. “There’s usually an orientation.” He raised his voice. “Hello?” He turned back around to face her, shrugged, looking bemused. “I guess we’re on our own.” He clasped his hands, leaned in toward Mira. “The truth is, you see, you died in the accident…”

Mira didn’t hear the next few things he said. She felt as if she were floating. It was an absurd idea, that she might be dead yet hear someone tell her she was dead. But somehow it rang true. She didn’t remember dying, but she sensed some hard, fast line — some demarcation between now and before. The idea made her want to flee, escape her body, which was a dead body. Her teeth were corpse’s teeth.

“…your insurance covered the deep-freeze preservation, but full revival, especially when it involves extensive injury, is terribly costly. That’s where the dating service comes in—”

“Where is my mother?” Mira interrupted.

The man consulted his palm again. He nodded. “You had a hitcher. Your mother.” He glanced around again, raised his hand as if to wave at someone, then dropped it.

A hitcher. What an apropos term. “Is she gone?” Mira wanted to say, “Is she dead?” but that had become an ambiguous concept.

“Yes. You need consistent brain activity to maintain a hitcher. Once you die, the hitcher is gone.”

Like a phone number you’re trying to remember, Mira thought. You have to hold it with thought, and if you lose it, you never get it back. Mira felt hugely relieved. From the moment she waked, she kept expecting to hear her mother’s voice. Now she knew it wouldn’t come, and she could relax. She felt guilty for feeling relieved that her mother was dead, but who would blame her? Certainly not anyone who’d known her mother. Certainly not Lynn.