Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: So You Want to Be a Robot
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: https://amercrustad.com/
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
Nonbinary; preferred pronoun is “they.” * https://uncannymagazine.com/article/interview-merc-rustad/ * https://www.apex-magazine.com/interview-with-a-merc-rustad/
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Transmasculine.
EDUCATION:Arts Institute International-Minnesota, B.A.Sc., 2016.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer and filmmaker. PSAV Presentation Services (Minneapolis), audiovisual technician, 2016-.
WRITINGS
Contributor of stories to publications, including Fireside, Lightspeed, Shimmer, and Cicada. Contributor of stories to anthologies, including The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy, 2015 and 2017.
SIDELIGHTS
A. Merc Rustad is a transmasculine writer and filmmaker. They have written stories that have appeared in publications, including Fireside, Lightspeed, Shimmer, and Cicada. Rustad is also a contributor of stories to anthologies, including The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy.
In 2017, Rustad released their first collection of short stories, So You Want to Be a Robot: And Other Stories. Among the stories included in this volume is “How to Become a Robot in Twelve Easy Steps,” which features characters that do not fit in with other members of society. In an interview with Julia Rios, contributor to the Uncanny website, Rustad discussed the origins of the story, stating: “I’m not a woman, but growing up I was pressured a lot both in familial context and societally to conform and be seen as a woman. It was awful and left a lot of scars. Much of this story is about trying to conform to something you’re not, and realizing that you don’t have to do it in the end. You can be yourself and be awesome.” Rustad also told Rios: “The genesis of this story came in the opening description, which popped into my head one day, and I was intrigued to figure out what came next. Well, what came next was the entire story just exploded into words, vicious and angry and hurting.”
An evil villain who has retired is one of the protagonists of “Batteries for Your Doombot5000 Are Not Included.” She reaches out to a former lover who had become her nemesis. A trans man with autism becomes a hero for his town in “Iron Aria.” The man has a supernatural power that allows him to manipulate metal. He employs this ability when the dam near his town begins to fail. Another story tells of an accident that leads a person to be reincarnated as a rose, while yet another finds a girl pondering her past friendship with a monster.
Critics offered favorable assessments of So You Want to Be a Robot. A Kirkus Reviews contributor asserted: “There is a strange power in the realms beyond this universe or hidden in plain sight, and Rustad captures it from myriad angles.” The same contributor described the volume as “a sparkling sequence of tales that bends and flips familiar ideas and fantastic visions.” “Each piece in this unmissable collection shimmers with bright explorations of love, loss, and the quest for hope,” asserted a reviewer in Publishers Weekly.
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Kirkus Reviews, May 1, 2017, review of So You Want to Be a Robot: And Other Stories.
Publishers Weekly, April 10, 2017, review of So You Want to Be a Robot, p. 57.
ONLINE
A. Merc Rustad LinkedIn Page, https://www.linkedin.com (January 25, 2018).
A. Merc Rustad Website, https://amercrustad.com/ (January 7, 2018).
Apex, https://www.apex-magazine.com/ (August 3, 2016), Andrea Johnson, author interview.
Lightspeed Online, http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/ (December, 2015), Lee Hallison, author interview.
Smashwords, https://www.smashwords.com/ (January 7, 2018), author profile.
Uncanny, https://uncannymagazine.com/ (January 7, 2018), Julia Rios, author interview.
About the Author
merc_2016
A. Merc Rustad
A. Merc Rustad is a queer non-binary writer who likes dinosaurs, robots, monsters, and cookies. Their fiction has appeared in Lightspeed, Cicada, Uncanny, Escape Pod, Fireside, IGMS, Flash Fiction Online, Apex, Shimmer, and others. “How To Become A Robot In 12 Easy Steps” was included in The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2015 (ed. by Joe Hill and John Joseph Adams). Merc is also a 2016 Nebula Award finalist for their story, “This Is Not A Wardrobe Door,” which has been reprinted in PodCastle (audio), Cicada (2018), and The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2017 (ed. by Charles Wu and John Joseph Adams), along with translations into Chinese and Portuguese.
Merc is mostly found on Twitter @Merc_Rustad and sometimes playing in cardboard boxes.
robot-cover
So You Want To Be A Robot: 21 Stories by A. Merc Rustad
FAQ
How can I refer to you?
Pronoun-wise, you may use gender-neutral pronouns when referring to me in the third person (they/their/them) or masculine pronouns (he/him/his). I don’t like titles, so no prefixes are necessary (if you must, Mx. or Mr. is safe). You can always call me Merc and you’ll be fine.
What does the “A.” in your byline stand for?
Android. 🙂
How can I contact you?
There is a contact page at the top of the site or you may email me directly: contact@amercrustad.com.
Do you have more stories coming out soon?
I do! You can check the Published Fiction page for what’s currently available. If you’d like to be notified as soon as there are brand new stories or updates, feel free to join my newsletter (lovingly delivered to your inbox by tiny robotic raptorbots).
Are you on Patreon?
Yes! I’d be delighted if you took a peek. 🙂
patreonheader1
Merc’s Patreon
A. Merc Rustad is a queer transmasculine non-binary writer and filmmaker who lives in the Midwest United States. Favorite things include: robots, dinosaurs, monsters, and tea--most of which are present in their work to some degree. Their stories have appeared in Lightspeed, Fireside Fiction, Daily Science Fiction, Escape Pod, Mothership Zeta, and InterGalactic Medicine Show, as well as the anthology The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2015. Merc has considered making their tagline “The Robot Who Makes People Cry With Their Stories.” In addition to breaking readers’ hearts, Merc likes to play video games, watch movies, read comics, and wear awesome hats. You can find Merc on Twitter @Merc_Rustad or their website: amercrustad.com.
Author Spotlight: A. Merc Rustad
by Lee Hallison
Published in Dec. 2015 (Issue 67) | 835 words | Related Story: Tomorrow When We See the Sun
Tell us a little about why you are so fascinated with robots and monsters.
For the robots, it’s Star Trek and Beast Wars: Transformers. I watched re-runs of Star Trek: The Original Series and Star Trek: The Next Generation when I was a very Tiny!Merc and I loved Data and the Enterprise and any time there were robots on the screen. I wanted to watch everything that had robots in it after that. I got to see Beast Wars pretty much as it aired, and it was like the show was made for me—dinosaurs and robots and DINOSAUR ROBOTS. (I do remember some of the Transformers: G1 episodes from even earlier in my childhood, and that likely imprinted on me too!)
I’m not sure when I consciously realized the theme that seemed to run through shows or movies about destroying the robots/androids, or how they were an antagonistic force that had to be defeated. It always made me sad or frustrated. The way robots and androids and cyborgs can appear so very human, yet be different, or at least seen as different by the human characters, well . . . that clicked for me on a fundamental level. I’ve always struggled with social interaction and figuring out my own brain and wanting to understand/be understood by other people. (“How to Become a Robot in 12 Easy Steps” [scigentasy.com/how-to-become-a-robot] is very autobiographical.) So I latched on to the AIs and machines emotionally when understanding humans was so hard.
And the monsters? That definitely started when I first read Frankenstein, when I was like ten, after having seen the iconic 1931 film several years earlier and being very freaked out by the scene where the Creature is by the lake with the little girl. I adore Shelley’s novel and this power dynamic that evolves between the various characters. The Creature’s story resonated with me on such a gut-level that I couldn’t see any of the classic monster movies (Wolf Man, King Kong, Creature From the Black Lagoon, The Mummy, Dracula, etc.) without feeling—sometimes almost unbearable—empathy for the monsters.
If all I ever continue to write is about robots and monsters, well, I’m totally okay with that. There’s a lot of room to explore.
What was the initial spark for this particular cyborg story?
It was one of Mere’s descriptions, actually. Several years ago, I had this distinct image of a cyborg cradling someone’s head in a pool, and the tone of that image was so strange to me—intimate, yet sad and chilling. I didn’t know what it belonged to for some time, though. Then at end of 2014 (when this was written), I got these snippets of description and the line “tomorrow when we see the sun” and everything in my storybrain just clicked. I knew where the image of the cyborg belonged, and as I teased out the different threads in the story, it all gelled together. (And then, of course, I had to write a whole bunch of other stories in this universe, because I love shiny things!)
Mere’s emotional development is cleverly crafted and believable. It has human-like feelings but clearly is still an outsider. Yet its morals are recognizable, as is its ultimate sacrifice. Do you believe it is inevitable that a bio-machine consciousness such as Mere’s would have human morals?
I don’t necessarily know if they would correlate with human morals as we see them—I suspect it would depend somewhat on the basis of the programming that bio-machine consciousnesses evolved from. But I do think that with emotional intelligence would come a way to categorize things and likely develop an equivalent to morals or a moral/honor code as a way to decide how to handle life. (I’m not a scientist, though, so the nitty-gritty technical side of the question is rather beyond me.)
Why does Century hide her Sun Lord status until the end?
Sibling rivalry, probably. She’s been the god of death for so long, and at this point in time, all the Sun Lords are starting to decay in different ways—she’s not quite the power she once was, but she doesn’t want the other Suns to know that.
You have created such a rich, complex world in the Principality: Seven Sun Lords, the peace treaty, the creation of cyborgs, eel-ships . . . any plans to revisit this world?
Yes! I have several short stories in various stages of completion, a novelette in revision, and I am working on a novel in this world. I’m very excited with the possibilities and room to explore more—past, present, future—that’s unfolded in the Principality Suns universe.
Lee Hallison
Lee Hallison
Lee Hallison writes fiction in an old Seattle house where she lives with her patient spouse, an impatient teen, two lovable dogs, and the memories of several wonderful cats. She’s held many jobs—among them a bartender, a pastry chef, a tropical plant-waterer, a CPA, and a university lecturer. An East Coast transplant, she simply cannot fathom cherry blossoms in March.
QUOTED: "I’m not a woman, but growing up I was pressured a lot both in familial context and societally to conform and be seen as a woman. It was awful and left a lot of scars. Much of this story is about trying to conform to something you’re not, and realizing that you don’t have to do it in the end. You can be yourself and be awesome."
"The genesis of this story came in the opening description, which popped into my head one day, and I was intrigued to figure out what came next. Well, what came next was the entire story just exploded into words, vicious and angry and hurting."
Interview: A. Merc Rustad
by Julia Rios
A. Merc Rustad is a queer, transmasculine writer and filmmaker. Their stories have appeared in several places including Lightspeed, Fireside, and Escape Pod, and often deal with themes of identity and transformation. “How to Become A Robot in 12 Easy Steps” is one such story, which was included in The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2015 (edited by Joe Hill and John Joseph Adams). “Monster Girls Don’t Cry” takes on these themes from a slightly different angle.
Uncanny Magazine: You explore themes of identity in a lot of your work, and the feeling of being in some way an outcast. This story is certainly an example of that. What made you choose to write about women who are literal monsters?
A. Merc Rustad: I’m not a woman, but growing up I was pressured a lot both in familial context and societally to conform and be seen as a woman. It was awful and left a lot of scars. Much of this story is about trying to conform to something you’re not, and realizing that you don’t have to do it in the end. You can be yourself and be awesome.
The genesis of this story came in the opening description, which popped into my head one day, and I was intrigued to figure out what came next. Well, what came next was the entire story just exploded into words, vicious and angry and hurting. I’ve always loved monsters, and writing about them (in so many forms), so it seemed natural. I often felt, growing up, that there was something deeply and inherently wrong with me (which is a lie, but a lie small!Merc couldn’t see until years later). I chose to take those feelings of being uncomfortable, feeling wrong, and explore them in a literal context. What would it be like if you had wings and horns, but never let them grow?
Uncanny Magazine: It can be easy to read something like monster girls as a metaphor for queerness, but you’ve chosen to go a step further and make your main character queer in a world where queerness is not by default equated with monsters. Did you do this as a deliberate choice to separate identity from orientation here, or was there something else driving the choice?
A. Merc Rustad: The choice was deliberate, yes. I could see the story being taken as metaphor, so I wanted it to be explicitly literal as well. There are monster girls, and some of them are queer. I admit, I’m a little wary of writing something purely as metaphor very often, because I got burned on allegory growing up. I wanted stories with literal magic and monsters that was not coded as real–life elements that some authors didn’t agree with, you know? (It took me a looooong time before I figured out most of Narnia was allegory—and I was super pissed off by it all as a small!Merc.) With “Monster Girls Don’t Cry” I also didn’t want the only implication of queerness to be equated with being monstrous. I like explicit queerness on the page, so it can’t be explained away as metaphor or allegory. 😀 It’s important.
Uncanny Magazine: There’s a lot in this story about violence, oppression, and autonomy, both on a larger scale and in the smaller pattern of the relationship between the protagonist and her sister. Can you talk a little about how those themes developed?
A. Merc Rustad: Autonomy is super important to me. Oppression and violence often seem diametrically opposed (foes) to self–autonomy. Oppression seeks to strip away the idea of self and one’s right to make choices; violence does the same.
Although the story needed to be written fast and fierce, when I had a draft and was fine–tuning on revisions, I noticed that while there was a lot of oppression going on, there was not enough autonomy for the protagonist and her sister. So I looked for instances where that could be strengthened—it appeared most notably in the end, when the monster girls confront the man who wants to ruin their lives.
Uncanny Magazine: You mention being burned by allegory in the past. I think a lot of us have had that experience at one point or another, and I note that you do often write stories with young adult protagonists and/or for young adult readers. Is that partly in answer to being frustrated by stories you read when you were younger?
A. Merc Rustad: Partly! I also have a difficult time understanding age in general, so I often think of myself as inhabiting several different age ranges simultaneously (six, eleven, twenty–two, and thirty–six—the future!—if anyone’s curious). But also, I want to reach out to readers of all ages, and especially young people who are struggling. I’ve been there (often still am), and I feel that, while we all need to see ourselves in fiction, when we’re younger it is much more important. So, positive representation is always one of my goals. It matters, and I hope my work can make a tiny bit of (good) difference.
Uncanny Magazine: You explicitly mentioned The Chronicles of Narnia. What are some other works that affected you for good or ill while you were growing up?
A. Merc Rustad: My answer to Narnia is: “This is Not a Wardrobe Door.” ^_^
Things I really didn’t care for… oh god, so. When I was a small!Merc, a relative gave me and my siblings a VHS copy of Raggedy Anne and Andy: A Musical Adventure. MOST TERRIFYING MOVIE I HAVE EVER SEEN IN MY LIFE. (Followed by Disney’s Pinocchio and The Brave Little Toaster. *shudder*) And let it be known that small!Merc was hardcore for horror movies (staying up late to watch stuff on TV or using the powers of a library card to check out R–rated horror). I also had access to various collections of Chick tracts and that was not fun, especially when church–going people insisted I read them and Learn From The Message. (What message that was, other than human beings are horrible to each other, I wasn’t sure…)
For the good? TV shows like Babylon 5, The A–Team, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and Beast Wars: Transformers; books like The Perilous Gard by Elizabeth Marie Pope, Brian Jacques’ Redwall series, novels by Hilari Bell and Vivian Vande Velde, Frankenstein by Mary Shelley; Deadpool comics, various authors (naturally); movies such as Hellboy, The Iron Giant, Star Wars, Hero, Universal’s monster movies, THEM!, Galaxy Quest, a whole slew of westerns, Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, and… okay, so I won’t list my entire library, but I latched on to a lot of visual storytelling. 😀
Uncanny Magazine: Finally, what else can we look forward to from you in the future, and where can we find your other work?
A. Merc Rustad: My debut short story collection, So You Want to Be a Robot is forthcoming in May 2017 from Lethe Press! *happydance* I also have new stories coming out in Lightspeed (Feb 2017 has my superhero novelette!) and Diabolical Plots, with hopefully more exciting news to come. 😀 I update a bibliography of forthcoming and published stories on my website: amercrustad.com/published–fiction.
Uncanny Magazine: Thanks so much for sharing your thoughts with us, Merc!
© 2017 by Uncanny Magazine
Julia Rios
Julia Rios is a writer, editor, podcaster, and narrator. Her fiction, nonfiction, and poetry have appeared in Daily Science Fiction, Apex Magazine, and Goblin Fruit. Currently the Fiction Editor for Fireside Magazine, she won the Hugo award in 2017 as Poetry and Reprint editor for Uncanny Magazine, and was a Hugo finalist as a Senior Fiction Editor for Strange Horizons. She is a co-host of The Skiffy and Fanty Show, a general SF discussion podcast, and Walkthrough, a discussion of exercise and geekery with Amal El-Mohtar and Layla Al-Bedawi. She has narrated stories for Podcastle, Pseudopod, and Cast of Wonders.
Interview with A. Merc Rustad
by Andrea Johnson on Aug 3, 2016 in Nonfiction | 0 comments
Tags: a. merc rustad, andrea johnson, apex magazine, interview with a. merc rustad, issue 87
We’re just past the halfway point of 2016, and A. Merc Rustad is on track to have more pieces of short fiction published this year than there are months in the calendar. That isn’t bragging, it’s proof this is fiction people have an itch to read. Merc’s fiction is personal, raw, intimate, and powerful, featuring strong characters who are either on a journey to know exactly who they are, or have already reached that point and are waiting for others to catch up. With fiction recently published or forthcoming in Fireside Fiction, Shimmer, Lightspeed, Intergalactic Medicine Show, Daily Science Fiction, Mothership Zeta and the anthologies Dangerous Women, Wilde Stories 2016: The Year’s Best Gay Speculative Fiction, and Transcendent: The Best Transgender Fiction 2016, (and that’s just in 2016!), Merc’s work is everywhere. Isn’t it time you found out why?
At first blush, “The Gentleman of Chaos” reads like a typical epic fantasy story. Alongside lyrical prose that you pulls you right in, you find some familiar epic fantasy trappings — a dead king, a new king, the new king’s bodyguard, mythology, and masking insecurity with control. The titular gentleman is many things — an assassin, a smiling shadow, a sadist, a boogeyman, a savior, and to some, a path to freedom.
The Gentleman of Chaos is the person who comes to you when no one else will. The Gentleman might help you get to where you need to be, or not. The Gentleman listens in the dark, and hears your true voice. The Gentleman is an inescapable mirror, cruel to those who hide from their true selves. What will you say when the Gentleman darkens your doorstep? This is a story about identify, and finding the people in your life who see you for who you are underneath the constrictions of societal expectations. Sometimes people know who we are before we know ourselves.
Have you realized we left “typical” behind a long time ago?
Once you’ve devoured “The Gentleman of Chaos,” I highly recommend heading over Glittership to read Merc’s now famous story “How to Become a Robot in 12 Easy Steps.” Similar to “The Gentleman of Chaos,” “How to Become” is raw and personal, and ends up being something darkly different than what you expect. Something else both of these stories have in common is a final scene that radiates hope and optimism. Merc was kind enough to answer a handful of my questions about writing on themes of identity, how fiction is cathartic, a novel that’s in the works, telling stories through film, and more. I hope once you finish reading this interview that you’ll explore more of Merc’s work.
A. Merc Rustad is a queer transmasculine non-binary writer who lives in the Midwest and enjoys dinosaurs, robots, tea, monsters, playing video games, watching movies, and wearing awesome hats. To learn more, follow Merc on twitter at @Merc_Rustad or visit http://amercrustad.com
APEX MAGAZINE: You use poetic and lyrical prose to tell a dark, dark story. What inspired this story?
A. MERC RUSTAD: “The Gentleman of Chaos” is one of those stories that just clawed its way out of me in one sitting. A lot of it was sparked by frustration at being misgendered myself, and feeling trapped in different life situations. You know when you internalize something enough, you just need to process it somehow? Yeah, well apparently I needed to write about the Gentleman of Chaos and his transformation. It was very cathartic.
AM: Not only does Vessai’s brother take away his freedom, he takes his name, he takes one identity away from him, and forces another upon him. How is Vessai psychologically dealing with what his brother has done?
AMR: Compartmentalizing. Which is a thing I do, too. (I am not, however, a super assassin. Just in case anyone was worried.) It’s a survival instinct; you have to make different spaces to tuck away awful things, sometimes, so you can function.
AM: When you were writing this story, how did the theme of identity (and loss of and/or finding of) work into your writing process?
AMR: I have K.M. Szpara to thank for refining this point — I basically threw it at him and was like ‘please to help WHAT AM I DOING?’ and he pointed out the layers of identity theme in the story. Once he helped point out there were basically three different sets of identity hats Vessai is wearing: his own name, the mantle of the Gentleman, and the idea of being “She” imposed by his brother. It took a lot of work to smooth out the threads and make sure everything connected in the end, and I’m very proud of how that turned out.
AM: Vessai has become accustomed to being treated as someone without identity, but that changes when he meets Vyren, and Vessai is finally accepted for who he is. Can you tell us a little more about Vessai’s struggles with interacting with those around him, in regards to how his brother and many others view him?
AMR: How people perceive Vessai has a lot to do with how he’s labeled in society (and especially by the king). There’s physical appearance to deal with — he may not care about passing as cis, but there will always be people who expect that of him when they know he’s a man. But there are also people, like Vyren, who can recognize gender is not exclusive to what sort of body-shape you have or what’s between your legs.
AM: At the end of the story, Vessai takes on a new … let’s call it a new career. What does the future hold for him?
AMR: I’m pretty sure he goes on to be more epic and awesome, carrying over the folk legends he inherited. Also keeping his daughter safe. He and Vyren get to live long and have a healthy, mature, happy relationship. We need stories like that. I’m giving Vessai his happy ending.
AM: Your fiction has appeared in a wide variety of magazines, including Lightspeed Magazine, Vitality Magazine, Scigentasy, Cicada Magazine, and many others. How do you decide which magazines to submit your work to? Are there particular types of magazines you prefer to be published in?
AMR: I look at a few elements when choosing to submit: do I like it? does it pay well? (I have cookie supplies to maintain) Is it easily available? That last point is why I love online venues that offer content freely, as well as in subscription models. When I was a tiny!Merc just setting out into the realm of short fiction, I was very limited to either what I could read online for free or find at the library. So I’ve always had a deep admiration for magazines that choose to offer stories readily — it’s an accessibility issue as well. I want to reach as many people as I can; I’ve gotten wonderful feedback from readers who find my work, and it makes me so happy and grateful when I can reach someone who might not have been able to read my words otherwise.
AM: You’ve mentioned that your short story “How to Become a Robot in 12 Easy Steps” has autobiographical elements. Was it difficult publishing something so intimately personal? Was it freeing?
AMR: It was the hardest story to send on sub and receive rejections on. But once it was out there (first in Scigentasy, then in GlitterShip podcast, then in BASFF2015, and soon reprinted in Cicada as well!), once I started hearing from people who connected with that story, or who knew people like Tesla, it was worth all the work and fear and struggle. Because yes, it was freeing to be able to share this. And to know that others could find hope in it, that is the greatest praise I could ever imagine.
Merc_otherAM: I hear you are working on a novel that takes place in same world as “Tomorrow When We See the Sun” (Lightspeed, Dec 2015). What can you tell us about the novel, and the world in which it takes place?
AMR: Well! It has a lot of cyborgs. And spaceships! Also the majority of the POV characters are non-binary (three of five). The micro pitch I’m working with is: a disgraced priest joins forces with a resurrected scientist, a semi-immortal mercenary, and a murderous spaceship to prevent the universe from being rebooted and all life wiped out. No pressure.
Writing got a little derailed because the last six months or so have been a whirlwind of finishing college, getting a new job in my field (yaaay!), and moving. Lots of moving. But I’m super excited to be working on the novel again. I hope people will be able to enjoy The Dark of a Billion Suns eventually!
AM: You also tell stories through short films. What does film allow you to do that prose doesn’t? When you come up with a story idea, how do you know if it’s best told through words on a page, or through images and sound on a screen?
AMR: For short films, I tend to think in terms of images: could I describe this in words and have the same impact vs. if I showed it in visuals on screen? It’s hard to figure out sometimes. It’s also, currently, a question of: would I have the budget to make this film? Heh. There are definitely ideas I know need to be movies. The difference for me — what film can do and prose can’t, and vice versa — is a lot about the aesthetic. What is the sound design like? What can the camera show? How much is voice and POV going to bring to this story? For example, I like horror more as a visual/auditory medium, so a lot of the time when I think about horror, I picture it as a movie or short film. Whereas epic space opera, I tend to think in terms of word-aesthetics and prose.
How film and prose effectively show a story is something I think about a lot! If you’ve seen the utterly disturbing horror/thriller, The Invitation (2016), the final image has such impact that I’ve been pondering for months how one could effectively pull off that same effect in prose — I don’t think I could! It’s an example, for me, of a story that needs to be visual to give the full gut-punch at the end. Similarly, a movie like Sinister (2013) is so visually demanding that I don’t think it could work as effectively in prose. (Plus, I mean, the whole conceit is based in Super 8 tape, so there’s that.)
When I think about some of my stories (like “How to Become A Robot in 12 Easy Steps”), I imagine how I could adapt it for screen, and if I could. That story? No. It was so intensely prose with style and format and voice, I don’t think it would function visually.
But there are other stories I think I could — with a budget! Ha — translate into visuals. It’s a very case-by-case basis. Definitely something that has helped my writing has been working with a camera and producing short films. Understanding my limitations with the medium, repeating a scene over and over to get the best takes, juggling a crew and actors, editing … everything about making a short movie gets absorbed into my prose-writing brain. (This summer, I’m crewing on a short film that deals with workplace harassment and supernatural plants. It’s a story I think needs to be visual, and that’s why we’re making it a film vs prose.)
Ultimately, I want to consider what each medium brings to a story and what the final effect is supposed to have on the reader/viewer. How do I see this story? It’s a fascinating process to consider when idea-churning.
AM: Thanks, Merc!
Andrea Johnson lives in Michigan with her husband and too many books. If she’s not walking around her day job with a coffee mug in hand, then she’s at home with a book in one hand and a craft beer in the other. She can be found online at her book review blog Little Red Reviewer and on Twitter, where her handle is @redhead5318. You wouldn’t know it from this bio, but Andrea is a very goofy person.
QUOTED: "There is a strange power in the realms beyond this universe or hidden in plain sight, and Rustad captures it from myriad angles."
"a sparkling sequence of tales that bends and flips familiar ideas and fantastic visions."
Rustad, A. Merc: SO YOU WANT TO BE A ROBOT
Kirkus Reviews.
(May 1, 2017): From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Rustad, A. Merc SO YOU WANT TO BE A ROBOT Lethe Press (Indie Fiction) $None ISBN: 978-1-59021-641-5
Divergent characters find themselves in startling situations in this debut collection of unconventional sci-fi and fantasy stories.There is no guiding principle running through these tales save that they all look beyond the world as readers discern it, challenging--as the best speculative fiction does--a number of preconceived notions. Some might think that the relatable would be difficult to discover in a story about a lonely robot raising orphaned dinosaurs or two friends becoming cut off from each other by the untimely, unexpected closing of doors between worlds, but that dismissal would be premature. While each tale asks readers to forget what they know of the cosmos, identity, gender, or the ordinary, that request comes not in order to fill their minds with convoluted new concepts but rather to twist basic facts into inventive shapes. Someone accidentally cursed to be reborn as a rose sheds light on the symbols readers choose for their affections and how they value them. A non-fairy tale about a girl and a monster she once knew gives readers the ability to overturn the scripts of their own lives and realize who they--and their friends--truly are, however they might be judged. A shadow cast from inside a black hole peels away layers of loss and grief. And "How to Become a Robot in 12 Easy Steps," centered on longing, tells a surprising, touching tale about those who fail to fit in and how they can carve out spaces of their own. There's a tremendous variety in these stories: long and short, happy and sad, taking twists and turns or running in blazing straight lines. But what they all have in common is a sense of wonder ("The moment I knew I could love this robot was when the robot asked what I would like to be called. 'Tesla,' I said, and the blue LED smiley face in the upper corner of the robot's screen flickered in a shy smile"). There is a strange power in the realms beyond this universe or hidden in plain sight, and Rustad captures it from myriad angles. The circumstances may be bizarre, but the characters are blindingly real, and it's only through that combination that these pieces can cut so unflinchingly to the heart. A sparkling sequence of tales that bends and flips familiar ideas and fantastic visions.
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Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Rustad, A. Merc: SO YOU WANT TO BE A ROBOT." Kirkus Reviews, 1 May 2017.
PowerSearch, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A491002705/GPS?u=schlager& sid=GPS&xid=0b04e251. Accessed 25 Dec. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A491002705
QUOTED: "Each piece in this unmissable collection shimmers with bright explorations of love, loss, and the quest for hope."
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So You Want to Be a Robot
Publishers Weekly.
264.15 (Apr. 10, 2017): p57. From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
* So You Want to Be a Robot
A. Merc Rustad. Lethe, $20 trade paper (246p) ISBN 978-1-59021-641-5
Swaying freely between science fiction and fantasy, diverse in setting and tone, this debut collection by prolific short story author Rustad is creative, often whimsical, and deliciously inclusive. An element of queerness enhances many of the stories, always delivered as unobtrusively and naturally as hair color; characters' genders and orientations sometimes guide the plot but are rarely the central focus. In the touching and layered "Iron Aria," a young autistic trans man uses his magical ability to manipulate metal to save his small town from a weak dam. "Batteries for Your Doombot5000 Are Not Included" is, on the surface, a humorous tale of the postretirement life of a supervillain, but is touched with seriousness when she seeks compassionate aid from a former nemesis, hoping to revive the woman who was once her lover. The stories are all crafted with the deft and loving touch of an author who knows firsthand what it is to live in their characters' skins. Each piece in this unmissable collection shimmers with bright explorations of love, loss, and the quest for hope. (May)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"So You Want to Be a Robot." Publishers Weekly, 10 Apr. 2017, p. 57. PowerSearch,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A490319269/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS& xid=9278e3d9. Accessed 25 Dec. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A490319269
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