Featuring a roster of Richmond authors, Chop Suey Books is publishing a “League of Space Pirates” themed short story compilation which will be released this weekend.
Featuring a roster of Richmond authors, Chop Suey Books is publishing a “League of Space Pirates” themed short story compilation which will be released this weekend.
If you follow the Richmond music scene, you may have heard of League of Space Pirates, a musical project spearheaded by Richmond artist Noah Scalin.
Where some groups do concept albums, League is a concept band, performing on RVA stage in various costumes as characters as a motley crew touring across the galaxy in defiance of the all-powerful Übercorp.
The book, “Precognitive Universe of Emergent Desire,” is inspired by 1960s pulp novels and includes 14 short stories written by local Richmond authors and a thematic introduction.
Contributing authors include Dale Brumfield, Noah Scalin, Rebeccah Snow, Jennifer Willis, Andrew Blossom, Bird Cox, Justin Poroszok, Dean Knight, Phil Ford,
Josh Hockensmith, Beth Brown, Alane Miles, Julie Green, Meriah L. Crawford, and Charlie Bonét.
Scalin, who edited the book, told RVA Mag the book way was an interesting and compelling way to start a conversation about pressing issues.
“I love the idea of using science fiction as a means to talk about social issues and to work out what the logical extremes of them are,” he said. “And so something on my mind is that I’m really not a science fiction writer, and so it was like, how do I develop this thing that interests me?”
And this isn’t the first book Scalin has contributed to or produced. He’s also behind the 365 Skull-A-Day Book that was published by Chop Suey as well.
With each of the stories in “Precognitive Universe of Emergent Desire,” based off of an associated song from the League of Space Pirates album of the same name, League of Space Pirates is shifting into a multimedia shared-universe creative project unique to Richmond.
Each of the short stories in the collection features a different locale and set of characters, but they all feature the galaxy spanning mega-corporation, Übercorp, and a nod to the plucky League of Space Pirates working against corporate corruption. Between fifteen authors, “Precognitive Universe” shows off a variety of stories and tones over a space faring sci-fi backdrop.
For contributing author Beth Brown, her tie in song, “Dead Letter Office,” led her to turn over the irony of a dead “letter” office in a galaxy-spanning sci-fi setting. The conflict ended up hugely informing her story, “Vakent-14,” but in an abstract way. “Vakent-14” follows a desperate employee of Übercorp falling into a spiral of paranoia and despair after they notice another worker’s disappearance- and they fear that they might be next.
“I had to sort of reimagine the dead letter office not as a place, but as a division of Übercorp that was not at all dealing with mail, but instead dealing instead with employees that needed to be eliminated or terminated,” Brown said.
Brown recalled being influenced by an article discussing labor conditions in certain countries gathering the raw materials used in cell phones. Workers, she said, lived in dormitory complexes with a high suicide rate, and management would cover up the deaths to maintain morale.
“This is sort of a dig at that very real situation that’s still present in the world today,” she said.
Short story contributor and Movie Club Richmond organizer Andrew Blossom and editor of Ri struck out along his own course. His story, “Mr. Silhouette” follows a teenage boy, Vasily, as he travels around the galaxy with his father, an Übercorp inspector. Blossom embraces the vision of a bleak future controlled by a totalitarian mega-corporation, but he couldn’t imagine a world filled only with cruelty.
Blossom portrays Vasily’s father as a decent guy, trying to do a good job in difficult circumstances.
“Even though the structure may be nefarious, that doesn’t necessarily trickle down to all the people working for it,” said Blossom.
Blossom turned his tie-in song into an element of his story- it appears as the closing credits song of Vasily’s favorite TV show. Early on, he received a sheaf of lyrics and an audio file of the synth score to “Mr. Silhouette.”
“The visual impressions I started to build of the story, even though I knew the lyrics, were motivated mainly by hearing the song without the lyrics,” said Blossom. “When I heard the song just as the instrumental, it made me think two things at once, which was, first off, the credits theme of a great 80s and 90s syndicated TV show, like one of those science fiction shows that would air on TV during the day… but it also reminded me a little bit of the synth score of Italian movies of the 70s and 80s.”
Aside from a tie-in song, each author referenced a document full of world building material while writing their story to create a consistency of atmosphere and setting throughout the compilation.
VCU associate professor and contributing author of “HC 1836 c,” Meriah Crawford has written work in shared universe settings before, such as the “1632” series, which features an alternate history. Shared settings allow different writers to unite and create something bigger than themselves. “It’s interesting, and it’s a powerful thing,” she said. “I think people respond to that very well.”
Crawford used the information she was given about the universe as a jumping off point to establish a little more of the setting in her own story, using existing naming systems in astronomy to identify the planetary backwater her story is set on- it gets a designation, HC 1836 c, rather than a name.
Crawford also called attention to the chapter art included with her story, which was drawn by Meena Khalili. [http://www.meenakhalili.com/] Crawford felt that there was a unity between the themes of her story and the drawing even though she and Khalili hadn’t coordinated. “They work really well together,” she said. “Not just the crack down her abdomen, but the fact that she has no eyes, it sort of indicates a certain blindness, and then that dark sense of aloneness and brokenness as well.”
“Precognitive Universe of Emergent Desire” will be available for purchase at Chop Suey Books in Carytown on November 15th.
