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Charlie Melcher:

Hi, I'm Charlie Melcher, founder and director of the Future of StoryTelling, and I'm delighted to welcome you back to the FoST podcast. Today I'm joined by two authors whose work appears in the new short story collection Take Us To A Better Place. This book was published by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and created in collaboration with FoST's content studio, Melcher Media, which is known for producing award-winning books, videos, and digital media. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has a vision of a national culture of health: one that provides everyone in America with a fair and just opportunity for health and wellbeing. And so they decided to approach a diverse group of 10 fiction writers and ask them to envision what a culture of health might look like and how we as a country can get there. The result is a fantastic group of stories that's meant to spark meaningful conversation and is a great example of how we can use stories as tools to support real-world progress.

Today's guests, Karen Lord and Martha Wells, contributed two of my favorite stories in the collection. Karen is a Barbadian author and sociologist whose work is deeply influenced by her life on a small island. Her debut novel Redemption in Indigo, released in 2010, won five literary awards and was nominated for the World Fantasy Award for best novel. Her latest book, Unraveling, was published in June 2019.

Martha Wells has been a prolific and beloved author of science fiction and fantasy for nearly three decades. A New York Times bestselling author and winner of two Hugo Awards, two Nebula Awards, and a Locus Award, Martha is perhaps best known for her ongoing series, The Murderbot Diaries. I'm so pleased to welcome Karen Lord and Martha Wells to the Future of StoryTelling podcast.

Karen Lord, Martha Wells. It's such a delight to have you on the Future of StoryTelling podcast. Thank you for joining me.

Karen Lord:

Thanks for inviting us.

Martha Wells:

Yes, thanks for inviting us.

Charlie Melcher:

This is such an interesting opportunity to speak to you both based around this anthology that you participated in called Take Us To A Better Place: Stories that was a project initiated by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. So, first of all, let me ask you, do you both normally work in short stories and particularly in anthologies, or is this something kind of novel for you?

Martha Wells:

It's pretty novel for me. I've written a few short stories, but I'm mostly a novelist. I have a short story coming out in Uncanny Magazine next month, and it took me about a year to write. My writing style just doesn't work with it for me.

Charlie Melcher:

And how about you, Karen?

Karen Lord:

Like Martha, I mainly think of myself as a novelist, but I have, for one reason or another, been drawn more and more to short fiction over the past few years. So maybe I'm getting close to a middle ground now, and I can't quite call myself just a novelist.

Charlie Melcher:

It’s such a unique project in that this foundation, which is committed to a culture of health throughout the United States, thought to create an anthology of stories, working with writers who are known for their future fiction, to imagine a world that would have positive health outcomes, a healthier culture, a culture of health. Can you talk a bit about what that's like as a fiction writer who's used to thinking about the future—what it was like to do it here with a goal of trying to imagine a positive impact for our culture of health?

Karen Lord:

I think it was fascinating because you have a sense of, you could say, responsibility, because the story is meant to both educate and inspire. You're really trying to find ways to get your readership to, as you say, empathize with the protagonist, with what's happening. To feel as if it could happen to them, to think about putting themselves in the protagonist’s shoes, and you get all kinds of sort of mini-challenges along the way, structuring a story like that. And sometimes if it's just your own story, you can kind of let it go where you like, but this one had certain goals. So you had to like, reign it in, and I actually enjoyed that challenge. Yes.

Martha Wells:

I'm pretty good at imagining worst case scenarios. So that's actually where I went with my story. I think it's important, so important to try to get people to look at what we have now and see where it could end up, to see how good things could be and to see how bad things could be if we don't intervene at this point.

Charlie Melcher:

And what are some of the techniques that you employ to get people to be able to feel, to connect to the story, to have some sort of empathy to characters?

Martha Wells:

I think that's just the basics of writing, it's really trying to… the point of view. Trying to really get deep into the character's point of view and make people think about how you would feel in that situation that the character’s in.

Karen Lord:

And for me, I kind of try a parallel approach where on the one hand you're talking global stakes in the pandemic, but on the other hand, you're talking personal stakes as well. So it was a question of creating a plot or a milieu where both could be seen and then sort of straddling the middle, which was absolutely fascinating to me—that a doctor has to have both personal and global stakes in mind, and weigh them with a certain amount of ethics.

Charlie Melcher:

So let's talk about that. Karen, your story really deals with a pandemic, and you wrote it well before COVID-19 hit the world. I was amazed, rereading it, to see how many details that you included in the story that seem, now, so prescient—whether that was specific discussion of PPE, personal protective equipment for the medical professionals, or something as subtle as, when in quarantine, a young girl having to study virtually through the internet and socialize. Little things like that, which made it seem so familiar, but also, like, again, the word that comes to mind is prescient. How do you feel now, seeing what's happened in the world, about the story you wrote before the global pandemic?

Karen Lord:

Well, I first, I really do have to shout out so many of my colleagues. People who I admire have been writing this trope for years, and done it amazingly. But for myself, it does give me a feeling of, well, shall I say cautious satisfaction? Because it means I did my research properly, that I did get the pieces together in a way that looked authentic to the point where it looks real now. There's an almost theological kind of flavor to the idea that your words can call reality into being. And there have been a few times when I have hesitated to write things, because I almost feel like it feels too immediate, it feels too real, it's not something I want to come to pass. We speak these words, we write these words and it's a way of trying to call a new reality and to being, and at least I can say that there's a happy ending. That there's a way through, that there's a path to a resolution.

And I think that's the best thing you can try to write, when you're writing about problems, is to at least see the possibilities that are there. Even if the protagonist makes bad choices, but at least the avenues need to be there, and open, that the reader can see what's available.

Excerpt from Karen’s story, The Plague Doctors:

In one long, slow second, Colin's eyes realized the log was not a log, but a body. His blood ran hot, cold, electric—spurring him at top speed to grab the back of his daughter's shirt and shorts, snatching her away from the air that surrounded the corpse. Holding her tightly, he raced into the water and triple-baptized her with mindless instinct, as if contagion could be washed from her skin and flushed from her lungs with a dose of drowning.

Charlie Melcher:

Martha, your story also deals with a topic, even though it's a little further away in the future, it deals very much with a topic that's very current today, which is healthcare and access to healthcare. Obamacare is being challenged again in the courts. And as it is, we see with COVID that there's been a tremendous imbalance in the health outcomes for people in this country, often along racial lines and also socioeconomic lines. Can you tell me a little bit about, or talk a little bit about, why you chose that as a topic for your story?

Martha Wells:

Well, it was coming up very much when I wrote the story, there was the threat of losing Obamacare back then too. The story is about basically a person that their body was altered drastically for a purpose, and then they were abandoned. And the alterations have needed to be upgraded, and they need improvements, and it's causing not only physical distress, but mental distress. And it's pushed this person to a point where they've lost control of themselves and have started to attack other people.

You see so many incidences, I mean, the idea of stopping Obamacare is, so many people are not going to be able to pay for medical treatments that are already in progress. And what that's going to do to people and their families… it's just a really horrifying prospect. So the story is my way of dealing with that a little bit.

Excerpt from Martha’s story, Obsolescence:

Safety. She had to make sure they were secure up here before she command-sealed everything. She called Sully and asked them to take a group to search the module. “Okay, uh, what are we searching for?” Sully replied.

That was a good question. Reluctant to admit what she thought was happening out loud, Jixy said slowly, “Do a rescue search.”

There was a long silence.

Charlie Melcher:

So, you're both considered authors who write what's called speculative fiction. I wondered if you could tell me a little bit about the distinction between speculative fiction, future fiction, science fiction. I think these terms get sometimes interchanged. Which one do you associate with and why, and how are they different?

Karen Lord:

I think from my point of view, speculative, as you say, it's a nice umbrella term, and it's especially useful if you have a work that blends aspects of both say, fantasy and horror, fantasy and science fiction. So if it's not fitting neatly into one subgenre, speculative is a good box to put it in. But for me, coming from my particular region, it really is about the fact that so much of our literature doesn't respect the boundaries of the subgenres. So speculative is the easiest thing to call it.

Charlie Melcher:

And for our listener, when you say “our literature?”

Karen Lord:

Yeah, I am speaking to you from Barbados. My region, my area is the Caribbean. Yes.

Charlie Melcher:

And of course your story also takes place on an island. Can you talk a little bit about how your personal experience influenced your story?

Karen Lord:

This is a very obvious thing, but I do want to mention it. So the island in the story is called Pelican Island. Barbados had an island called Pelican Island, which was the quarantine island. I say “had” because they joined it to the mainland. It was just a small island off Bridgetown, off the capital. So they kind of did some filling in and so forth. So now when people talk about going to Pelican Island, there's nothing to cross, you just drive over, but that was a definite nod to, here's an island with a quarantine history, a quarantine pedigree, as it were.

But then there were other aspects, like considering what it is to be concerned about your supply chains getting disrupted if something happens globally. Then there's this… I guess the positive aspect of living in an island is that some parts of community health become, I don't want to say easier, but in a way more natural, because you can have some of your health professionals embedded in the communities that they're serving. It doesn't translate to the rural setting because rural settings tend to have very large distances between, and can't be covered in the same way. So there are ways in which I already had an optimal setup to demonstrate the kind of community health care that I wanted to write about.

Charlie Melcher:

Do you feel that there is good inspiration from what's happening in Barbados already in terms of a culture of health?

Karen Lord:

I am hoping so, but as I just said to you before, I'm scared of what my words may bring into reality. What we are finding right now is that we have no community spread at the moment. We've been very careful with track and trace and suppressing the clusters that occurred. And of course this is playing havoc with the tourism industry, which was already kind of in deep trouble globally. But it allows us to at least maintain a local economy that's reasonably flourishing, because we don't have to be in lockdown. So I have been spending my time as any good writer would, observing closely, making notes, and just seeing how we handle this economically and still maintain our health.

Charlie Melcher:

I'm very curious where you get inspiration. I mean, the idea of creating stories out of thin air, it seems that there's always some research. Speculative fiction is still grounded in some things that are plausible or in technologies that are emerging. Martha, can you talk a little bit about where you get some of your inspiration?

Martha Wells:

Just from all over. I've been a science fiction and fantasy reader since I was very little, since I could first read, basically. It's really hard for me to pinpoint where an idea comes from or where an influence comes from. I've noticed, especially lately when it seems like there's been a lot of kind of bringing back of old material to be remade into new movies and that kind of thing, it's like, I'll see something and realize, “Well, I saw that when I was a kid, and it was an influence on me. It made me think about things in this way, and it made me kind of construct stuff in this way, but it was so long ago I actually I've actually forgotten it.” So that's always interesting to me, how those inspirations get kind of buried in with everything else, and it's really hard, at least for me, to kind of go back and pinpoint them.

Charlie Melcher:

I mean, I think that goes back to that idea that maybe there is nothing new and that everything is some form of regurgitation of something that was done before. I studied with a professor in college, Harold Bloom, and he wrote a book called The Anxiety of Influence and suggests that all great poets have to struggle with their… the father poets or the mother poets who influenced them, basically whose work is playing through in their subconscious. And in the end, all they can hope for is some small swerve off of the things that came before.

Karen Lord:

The term that someone introduced me to is, your present work is always in conversation with the past canon. And I do like that very much, because you can still push forward, you can still look for something new, but there's a sense in which you are aware of what came before you, qnd you're still continuing a thread of the conversation, a thread of the overarching story, and bringing it forward in the future, ready to toss it to the next generation. And a lot of people are very much influenced by American media and, of course, publications and so forth. So we do sometimes have workshops of young writers where the first thing they're doing is a complete imitation of some fantasy trope—that is, it’s not just the trope they're taking, they've just, like, gathered up everything wholesale. And then you have to stop and say to them, “think about what's influencing you where you are. What about the tales your grandmother told you, what about the urban legends you heard on the school yard?”

And when they begin to understand that it's not just books and movies that give you your ideas, that it's the life you're living, and it's everything you're hearing. And it's waiting at the bus stop and hearing a funny conversation behind you. I think some people just sort of open and go, “Oh, wow. I don't have to write the same thing that's been written before.” Lots of what I've studied kind of makes its way into a story. Lots of thought experiments of what if, take this dry economic theory, take this theological concept, put it into something where it actually begins to affect people or upset people or cause them to have to make decisions. And then you have something completely fresh—or you think it is, until you realize that somebody else wrote about it back in 18-whatever. But it's a good start.

Charlie Melcher:

Do you think today that writing stories, whether they're short or longer form, still have the resonance with people? Do words have the power to change the world, still?

Karen Lord:

Absolutely. And I go further. People, sometimes, when they're talking about literature, they're only thinking about the words on the page. I want people to remember that an audio book is still a book. A game is still a story, a television series is still a story. And to me, a story is two things. It's not just the author who puts the words in place. It's also the reader who takes the words up. And in some ways, a well-trained author is only part of the equation. A well-trained reader is where the magic can really occur. When you begin to acquire a familiarity of certain shapes of story and understand to another level what the author’s playing with, it can open up some amazing things to you. A deeper level of appreciation, perhaps. So I always do encourage people to look at reading, not just as a hobby, but a hobby that can have almost nerd-level layers to it.

Martha Wells:

Yeah, I think that's certainly true. And I also think part of the power of words is also comforting people, and allowing you to kind of just give yourself a place for your brain and your imagination to rest when your reality is so stressful, the way it is now, and the onslaught of social media, and just trying to survive and figure out what you're going to do. And when all these things are happening and things are changing so quickly, having that place of comfort, where you can kind of go into that world and feel safe. I play game over Zoom weekly, an RPG with some friends, and we make a joke about how this RPG, where all these monsters are trying to kill us, this feels so much safer and easier to navigate than the real world sometimes.

Charlie Melcher:

It's like there's been an inversion, where it used to be that life was sort of boring and the games or the stories were the place of excitement. Now, the world is too exciting and stories can be a place to feel some calm. For our listener, we should note that Take Us To A Better Place, this wonderful anthology of stories, is available as an eBook for free as a download. People can get that at Amazon or Barnes & Noble and Apple Books. And there's also a free audio version available on Apple Books and one that's forthcoming from Audible. So I can tell you that I've so enjoyed reading this, and I'm sure that many, many of our listeners will be excited to be able to get a free copy.

And since we're on this, we might also note that if anyone wants to go to rwjf.org/fiction, there is also a reader's guide there. There are questions and interesting provocations for each of the stories, if you wanted to share it with a reading group, for example. So let me ask you about the future of storytelling, in your humble opinions.

Karen Lord:

What I'm finding particularly powerful about story right now is that, we came up in a system which drew some very specific lines between things. When I was at school, I was interested both in stories and in science and I was being told I had to pick one or the other, because you couldn't like, cross the streams, as it were. And I ended up going to University of Toronto, where I found an amazing specialist program called history of science and technology. I was like, “Aha, I cracked the code.” So I was able to straddle it then, but coming up in a system where you separate the two so quickly, I began to realize that some people were becoming very specialized in a very particular field, and not able to see applications or crossover issues that belong to other fields.

One of the powerful things about story is that a story puts it all into a context, a real world context thought experiment that said, “Okay, here's your economic issue, but have you considered, this is what happens when you add in the health data. This is what happens when you add in the psychological approach and sociological response and the technologies that are available.” And then people see a bigger picture and they're like, “Oh, wow.” So if there's one thing I would love to see the future of storytelling do, it’s to open up a different type of education where it says, “Okay fine, you're specializing. This is your lane. This is your box. But now this is the area where you need to become a generalist. And the story is going to show the way for you. This is how you acknowledge all the other specializations happening and what they're producing and fit them into the full picture,” so that you're really able to dictate policy in a way that works, as opposed to being to specialized and not at all applicable. So I do have a lot of different areas that I do overlap, and that's my bias, that's why I think more people can benefit from that kind of approach and education.

Charlie Melcher:

So there's a lovely afterword in Take Us To A Better Place that's written by Michael Painter and Jody Struve from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. And they said in that afterword, and I quote this, “We must urgently work together to build a future where everyone in the United States, regardless of who they are or where they live, has a fair and just opportunity to live their healthiest life possible.” We are just in the middle, still, of this COVID crisis. And it's a time for us to really think about a re-imagining of life we want to come out of from this period of quarantine. And I just wondered if you each could share with me some speculative fictions—hope—author's hope for what some of the seeds that might grow now out of this period, that would lead us to a more healthy culture and a more healthy world.

Martha Wells:

Well, I would hope people would realize how much their individual actions affect other people. I think that would take us forward to positive developments and it would be nice to have positive developments happen, whatever they were. I'll take anything right about now.

Karen Lord:

My view is similar, but slightly cynical in the sense that sometimes I find you need to have two or three reasons for people to do the best possible thing, as opposed to kind of catering to what you hoped were the better feelings or the better angels. And one of the things that I find remarkable is that, as painful as this pandemic has been on an individual basis because of the illnesses and the death, the incapacity and the death and so forth, it's also been deeply, deeply inefficient. And for those people who don't connect emotionally, I would want them to just look at how we are running our countries, how we are running the world and say, “We could be a lot more efficient if we put certain things in place.”

So I would say to people, “Look at how things are being run. Who is it benefiting? How long will it benefit them from, if it's just going to benefit a fraction of a one percent for their lifetimes and not even to their grandchildren's lifetimes. We're doing something very wrong. We need to change course and to find some new approaches.”

Charlie Melcher:

One of the things that is a positive out of this is the conversations about the kind of culture we want to have as a society, as people. Obviously, a lot of that is being discussed, whether it's in areas of racial and social justice, and also just what kind of society we want to live in. But all that being said, I think a collection like the one that you two so beautifully contributed to, Take Us To A Better Place, is exactly the kind of story that would provoke the kind of conversations that we should be having right now. I just want to thank you both so much for joining me today and for your contribution to this beautiful anthology. And I hope that we will get a chance to do and share more stories together.

Martha Wells:

Well, thank you.

Karen Lord:

Thank you.

Charlie Melcher:

I hope that you enjoyed this conversation with Karen Lord and Martha Wells as much as I did. If you'd like to learn more about either of them, or would like to get a free copy of Take Us To A Better Place, I highly recommend that you visit the Robert Wood Johnson foundation website at rwjf.org/fiction, where you can download a copy in English or Spanish or get the audiobook edition. There's also an accompanying conversation guide, which can be a very useful tool if you decide to share the collection with your book club. You can also find the link for your free copy of the book in this episode's description.

Thank you to our ever-talented production partner, Charts & Leisure, and a special thanks to you, our listener. If you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to subscribe to our podcast, give us a review, and share it with a friend. We'll see you in a couple of weeks for another deep dive into the world of storytelling. Until then, stay safe, be strong, and story on.