Lost Among the Stars: Eleven Tales

By Paul Di Filippo and Robert Silverberg

A genre-bending collection of speculative fiction from the acclaimed author of the Steampunk Trilogy—with an introduction by Robert Silverberg.
 
Horror, alternative history, science fiction, and fantasy—nothing is off limits when you possess an imagination as vast as Paul Di Filippo’s. In this collection of stories featuring ancient goddesses, the new social media elite, and hermetic cities, he’ll take you on a wild ride through plausible pasts and far-flung futures.
 
In “Ghostless,” a medium learns that ghosts are drawn to—and can alleviate—sadness, so she becomes a matchmaker to both spirts and mortals in need. Flash fiction published in Nature magazine, “Wavehitcher” shows how surfing goes high-tech—and long-distance—with smartsuits that desalinate water, pulsed magnets to repel sharks, and seines that catch and processes krill into a nutritious paste. An expert in industrial metabolics focuses on blending his superior genepool with that of his fiancée’s to save the human race from idiocracy, until a kidnapping in Colombia shows him the folly of his arrogance in “Adventures in Cognitive Homogamy.”
 
These stories will whet your appetite for more fantastical Di Filippo, and thankfully, Lost Among the Stars delivers.
 
Praise for Paul Di Filippo
 
“Di Filippo is like gourmet potato chips to me. I can never eat just one of his stories.” —Harlan Ellison
 
“Di Filippo is the spin doctor of SF—and it is a powerful medicine he brews.” —Brian Aldiss, Hugo Award–winning author of Hothouse
 
“Vibrant, nervy, and full of gloriously wiggy language, Ribofunk is anything but the same old stuff.” —The Philadelphia Inquirer
 
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Media
• Release date: Mar 12, 2024
• ISBN: 9781504093842

Paul Di Filippo

Paul Di Filippo is a prolific science fiction, fantasy, and horror short story writer with multiple collections to his credit, among them The Emperor of Gondwanaland and Other Stories, Fractal Paisleys, The Steampunk Trilogy, and many more. He has written a number of novels as well, including Joe’s Liver and Spondulix: A Romance of Hoboken.  Di Filippo is also a highly regarded critic and reviewer, appearing regularly in Asimov’s Science Fiction and the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. A recent publication, coedited with Damien Broderick, is Science Fiction: The 101 Best Novels 1985–2010.

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Praise for Lost Among the Stars

Di Filippo is like gourmet potato chips to me. I can never eat just one of his stories.

—Harlan Ellison

Out of a rich impasto of language, a story that is sensual, sexual, and hot takes shape around one of the most engaging heroines since Southern and Hoffenberg’s Candy.

—Samuel Delany on A Mouthful of Tongues

A ruthless fantasy of aggressive sexuality and archaic intentions.

—A. A. Attanasio on A Mouthful of Tongues

Fluid, fantastic, rich with menace and heat, A Mouthful of Tongues is a run amok past the limits of the human, Eros the Jaguar with claws intact.

—Kathe Koja on A Mouthful of Tongues

This collection, Ribofunk, stands as the field’s madcap Dubliners of the biogenetic revolution.

—Michael Bishop on Ribofunk

Ribofunk is great science fiction: wildly inventive, warmly human, culturally relevant, and deeply funny. Paul Di Filippo does dazzling new tricks with English. And then he puts the wonderful language and the wild science together … and the whole fractal exfoliation leads to the utterly wonderful Ribofunk. The book of the year.

—Rudy Rucker on Ribofunk

Fractal Paisleys channel surfs postmodern apocalypse brilliantly.

—Jonathan Lethem

An often genuinely funny mixture of Raymond Carver, Harry Harrison, and Douglas Adams.

—Booklist on Fractal Paisleys

Di Filippo is the spin doctor of SF—and it is a powerful medicine he brews.

—Brian Aldiss

Paul Di Filippo’s The Steampunk Trilogy is the literary equivalent of Max Ernst’s collages of 19th-century steel-engravings, spooky, haunting, hilarious.

—William Gibson

Strange Trades is a splendid collection … witty, thoughtful, accessible … the book’s finest story … has a humanity worthy of Dickens or Hardy.

—Publisher’s Weekly

Vibrant, nervy, and full of gloriously wiggy language, Ribofunk is anything but the same old stuff.

—Philadelphia Inquirer

It’s like Tom Robbins’ classic Even Cowgirls Get the Blues recast in the hands of gonzo mathematician Rudy Rucker as a kind of ontological daytrip.

—Locus on Fuzzy Dice

An author who genuinely comes close to defying all attempts at description. A true original.

—Infinity Plus

In terms of composition, narrative description and voice, Di Filippo is well nigh masterful.

—SF Site on A Year in the Linear City

One absolute knock-out story … that is among the most exciting pieces of fiction I’ve read in years.

—Cory Doctorow on Wikiworld

Even when Di Filippo does make use of more common images or tropes, it’s with a disturbingly original spin.

—Gary Wolfe on Little Doors

Paul Di Filippo’s short fiction has almost always been right there on the edge, pushing at the borders of SF, combining some pretty wild speculation with biting satire, sharply crafted prose, a seriously disturbed sense of humor, and consistently good writing.

—Don D’Ammassa on Babylon Sisters

Lost Among the Stars

Eleven Tales

Paul Di Filippo

Includes an Introduction by Robert Silverberg

To Deborah Newton, as we stand halfway to forever

Introduction

by Robert Silverberg

Anyone who calls a story The Emperor of Gondwanaland, as Paul Di Filippo did some years back, is going to be a hero of mine forever. Gondwanaland is one of my favorite places on this planet—one that I long to visit, but never will, because it hasn’t existed for hundreds of millions of years. It is the name geologists give to the primordial continent that once stretched far across the Southern Hemisphere until vast subterranean forces compelled it to split apart, forming what now are South America, Africa, India, Australia, New Zealand, and Antarctica. I love simplicity, perhaps because there has been so little of it in my own busy life, and I think it would be wondrously simple if we had one great Gondwanaland down there instead of all those messy little continents and sub-continents. So I applauded when I saw the bumper sticker, Reunite Gondwanaland, on a passing car in the very political-minded town where I live, and one of my own stories, set in the extremely unrecent past, was called Christmas in Gondwanaland. That Paul Di Filippo would write a Gondwanaland story, and even make it the title story of a collection of his work, met with my heartiest approval. And here, now, we have the latest Di Filippo story collection, another cause for rejoicing.

Providence-based Paul Di Filippo has been a subtle, shifty, subversive presence in science fiction now since the mid-1980s. (Though the start of his career dates from a story published in 1977.) In a host of short stories and a dozen or so of novels he has toyed with genre conventions, not only standing them on their heads but deftly rotating them through six or seven dimensions, resulting in a body of work that is challenging, stimulating, and vastly entertaining. There’s nobody else like him in the field: Sui generis is the right term for him. Yet for all his subversive habits he has remained, beneath all the playfulness, faithful to the set of concepts and attitudes that constitute true science fiction. He fools around a lot, yes, but he writes the real stuff nevertheless.

Here he is now with a new collection of his work—eleven stories, one of them published here for the first time, the others drawn from a wide assortment of venues. Three of them come from the classic Big Three of science-fiction magazines, Analog, Fantasy & Science Fiction, and Asimov’s Science Fiction. Another appeared in the venerable British scientific magazine, Nature. But the rest saw their first publication in such widely (and wildly) varied sources as The Monkey’s Other Paw, Clockwork Fables, and The College Hill Independent. He does get around. All of them will repay your reading time. But I note three in particular that caught my fancy. Adventures in Cognitive Homogamy: A Love Story, for one, a story that begins with a deliberately overloaded paragraph that is not so much a narrative hook as it is a narrative bludgeon. Of course Di Filippo knows better than to begin a story with a single intricate sentence about a dozen lines long, and that’s the whole point of his doing it. But once the tongue is out of his cheek he goes on to tell a story that does indeed explore the consequences of its extrapolative premise in a way that would satisfy any old-fashioned purist.

He does it again in Chasing the Queen of Sassi, which opens with another of his outrageously overstuffed narrative hooks, and wanders in the most astonishingly discursive directions before finding its way home to the precisely proper place. And then there is Desperadoes of the Badlands, a story of such frenetic inventiveness that it leaves one gasping—and cheering.

Sui generis, I called him, which is my fancy way of saying that he’s one of a kind. He is our ambassador from Gondwanaland. Read him. Honor him. Cherish his work.

—Robert Silverberg

July, 2016

Author’s Note

Let Me Count the Days

By my presumably accurate inventory, this is my thirty-sixth published book. (I am not including different editions of extant titles here, nor such items as Families Are Murder, which collects into an omnibus my two mystery novels written with Michael Bishop and previously published separately.) I think having thirty-six volumes out in the world under one’s name is a fairly impressive accomplishment. (Of course, imagining that those books contain high-quality material could redound even more to one’s credit.)

As writers do when they want to reassure themselves that they have been working hard and not just playing with Facebook all day, I try to parcel out the number of books across my entire career to see just how productive I’ve been. But that’s where the trouble starts.

When did my career begin exactly?

I sold my first story in 1977, when I was still in college. Maybe my career began then.

But I did not focus intensely on my writing with the goal of becoming a professional until 1982. Maybe that was the real start of my career.

But I did not manage to break into print again until 1985, when I sold two stories almost simultaneously to The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and Twilight Zone Magazine. (Thanks, Ed Ferman and Ted Klein!) True career opener?

Hold on though! I did not publish my first book until The Steampunk Trilogy in 1995. Then surely that’s got to be the real start of my career-between-hardcovers.

So depending on which baseline you use—1977, 1982, 1985, or 1995—it took me either 40 or 35 or 32 or 22 years to accumulate my track record of thirty-six volumes, ending with this 2017 instance.

Roughly one book per year at worst, or one-and-three-quarters at best. In either case, this is hardly a patch on such prodigious past masters as Robert Silverberg or Isaac Asimov or the helmsman behind WordFire Press, Kevin J. Anderson. On the other hand, it’s a much more sizable career than those of many other authors I could name, including some true geniuses such as David Bunch, T. J. Bass and E. R. Eddison.

I guess what really counts beyond all these statistics is having something to say, saying it well, and enjoying the creation of the stories that contain your dreams and thoughts and hopes and fears. So long as a writer can summon up those qualities and pleasures, the speed at which he or she produces work hardly matters. I hope that these stories illustrate my own possession of such virtues, and provide plenty of entertainment for any reader kind enough to purchase this collection.

Nonetheless, I want everyone to know that I already have another volume of tales awaiting publication. Number thirty-seven, and beyond!

—Paul Di Filippo

One change in my writing habits these days is that more often than not, I only commence a story when one is requested of me. Getting invited to contribute to various anthologies or magazines is a nice perk of having been around for a while. Editors and peers know your name, know your work, and believe—some of them, anyhow—that you might be able to enhance a project. Of course, the writer has to feel simpatico with the nature of the project, but generally there are very few themes or approaches in science fiction, fantasy, or horror that I cannot get behind.

Judith Dial and Tom Easton conceived of a great gimmick for their Impossible Futures book. If I may quote their invitation:

Remember the science and technology you thought we’d have by 2010? Personal jet packs, trans-dimensional travel, workable FTL travel, living clothing, etc. Not just the stuff in Popular Mechanics and Popular Science magazines, but the ideas that made the old science fiction so much fun. Some of those ideas came to be—e.g., communicators (as cell phones) and instant visual communication (as the Internet)—but many have not.

They suggested some classic tropes, and I chose the city as enclosed structure or homogenous entity. But what central principle could I use to organize my polity that had not been used before? What about the aesthetics of the human form?

City of Beauty, City of Scars

Our city of Aesthetica takes the form of a tetrahedron, the simplest of all the perfect or Platonic solids, and hence the most noble and beautiful in the eyes of Aglaia. The shining triangular pyramid that is Aesthetica, sited neatly in the middle of a wide green landscaped valley, houses nearly half a million citizens. The three sides of its base measure each twelve miles long—twice six, the perfect number, or teleioi—and its apex looms twelve hundred feet above the base: again, a multiple of the teleioi. The luxurious apartment that occupies the uppermost level—a domicile which, by its tapering shape, is naturally a miniature of the whole city—is home to the male and female Prime Allures.

But because this is my story, and I was born on the lowest level, that’s where I’ll really begin.

I could not of course bear intelligent witness to the events immediately attendant upon my birth. But my mother, Libet, recounted the story many, many times, during our supervised visits. So often in fact that I, at an impressionable young age, developed false memories of actually seeing her actions unfold, memories as vivid as any I subsequently laid down on my own.

My birth was of course by Caesarean procedure. All births are conducted so in Aesthethica, for we can not risk the archaic animal process of vaginal delivery inflicting any kind of harm whatsoever on the infant. Each child must emerge from the womb with its Aglaia-given genetic inheritance—all its unique possibilities for developmental expression of postnatal beauty—uncompromised by mere accident.

My mother was of course sedated for this procedure. But the ineptitude of the technician allowed her to awaken while still recovering in the operating theater. (He was later severely disciplined, being subjected to a third-degree scarification and exiled from Aesthethica, there being no lower level to which he could be demoted.) At the moment when she regained a hazy, pained consciousness, the doctor and all the nurses and assistants were busy fussing over me, checking my vital signs and annotating my aglaiacal indices. This inattention allowed my mother to hastily fumble for a scalpel, which she palmed and concealed under her gown.

Not long thereafter, in the large, noisy, clean, but impoverished maternity ward where my mother lay abed, recuperating and grimly fondling her concealed weapon, stoking her heart to the task she had determined to perform, a nurse trundled a bassinet down the aisle and delivered me to Libet.

Under a clattering wall fan, part of Aesthetica’s complex system of ducts and vents, my mother cradled me tenderly, examining all my young parts with an eye for any congenital defects. But there were none.

My mother addressed the nurse. He’s perfect, isn’t he?

Yes, I’d say so.

And his beauty indices?

They can be projected outward to a very high plateau of allure, Aglaia willing. You’re a very lucky mother. He doesn’t resemble you at all!

My mother’s voice was dull and sad. Yes, so very lucky. I will have my child by my side for at least five years. And then he will receive high marks in all his beauty examinations and ascend to another level, while I remain here for the rest of my life.

With this remark, my mother ran her free hand, the one not cradling me, over her rough-hewn homely face, pausing to finger her minor but significant harelip, a feature of hers I still recall with fond affection, despite its betrayal of all that Aglaia held dear.

Don’t dwell on such future events, advised the nurse. Enjoy your child while he is with you. Have you and the father picked out a name?

His father is banished from the city. He made the mistake of acquiring a critical mass of radiation scars in the mines. Too ugly even for us bottom dwellers. But we spoke of the boy’s name before he left. He will be called Tono.

Very nice, said the nurse, and turned her back.

My mother saw her only opportunity to bind me to her forever. Tono, forgive me! she yelled, then flashed out the scalpel.

Her intent was to slice off one of my littlest fingers. Such a mutilation would have ensured that I remained on this level of my birth, without crippling me unduly.

But the nurse, alerted by my mother’s cry, spun about and charged. This physician’s handmaiden had seen too many such attempts not to react quickly. The two women wrestled for control of the blade, sending me tumbling and squalling to the tile floor.

Eventually my mother was subdued, with the aid of other converging staff members, and I was rescued from the tiles, miraculously unharmed.

Libet sobbed pitifully as I was taken away. Having revealed her intentions to spite the universal and revered aglaiacal system of advancement by beauty, the basis of Aesthetica’s whole society, she had qualified as an unfit parent. I was mandated to the crèche on the lowest level, where I could be reared in safety.

So I never shared my mother’s humble apartment, the rooms where I had been conceived by her and my exiled father. But, as I said, I grew to know her fine though absolutist maternal nature, and to hear again and again of my own origins, through the thrice-weekly supervised visits which she was allowed with me. In my fifth and last year on the lowest level of the city, in particular, she drummed into me the basis for her actions.

It’s not right, Tono, that people should be graded and separated based on mere appearance. Especially when it means dividing mother and child. Do you think I was selfish, to want to keep you by my side, especially after your father was exiled? I love you so!

I love you too, Mama, I would always reply.

Then give your mother a hug and a kiss, dear!

I always complied, though often I was reluctant to put down the hand mirror into which I was gazing, already practicing the codified rites of Aglaia.

At age five I underwent the standard public examinations, standing naked on a stage with the probing authorities. Libet watched from a far-off corner of the viewers’ gallery, stifling her sniffling for fear of being ejected from the proceedings. The judges measured and compared, prognosticated and argued, while I complied proudly but demurely with all their posing instructions, trying to live up to the teaching of the crèche staff, insofar as my childish mind could grasp the aglaiacal precepts. After a suitable time, they rendered their verdict.

This boy, Tono, will ascend two levels, and be reevaluated on his eighth birthday.

A single dry and coarse rasping sound burst from my mother, and then I was led away, never to see her again. Gone from the dull, boiled-cabbage-redolent warrens of the lowest level of Aesthetica to a better life, worthy of my endowments.

The first thing I noticed when making the guardian-accompanied ascent through the stairwells of Aesthetica was the gradient of beauty—not that I could have phrased it so succinctly as a child. Nonetheless, the changing spectrum of beauty still registered on my honed perceptions. (And I should mention now that two levels of advancement did not correspond to a mere two stories within the pyramid, for each classification of beauty occupied several floors out of the hundred stories, according to the variable population of each category. Sometimes one category would lose significant population due to deaths (or demotions and advancements), while another would gain, due to births (or demotions or advancements), and the ratio of floors would change by official edict. However, the lowest level, being the largest in surface area, was always more than big enough to accommodate all the least beautiful citizens.)

As I and my temporary wardens climbed the thronging stairs, I was able to employ what was already, even at such a tender age, a finely calibrated sensibility toward degrees of beauty. Faces, forms, carriage, personal styles—all these instantly conveyed to me a person’s relative and absolute status in the hierarchy of beauty. I saw that it would be impossible for any individual to masquerade as someone of higher status; a thousand tells would give them away. And although it was conceivable that someone of high beauty could disguise their attainments and endowments so as to appear less beautiful on quick inspection, there was no reason I could then imagine why a person would do such a senseless thing. I had not yet learned of certain perversions.…

Eventually we reached my designated level—what sweet air, what shapely bodies and handsome faces!—and I was conducted not to a crèche, but to a foster home where my next six years—not three—would be spent. In retrospect, it was a generally uneventful time, though there was much novelty. First off, I had to fit myself into a strange domestic routine. I started school, made friends, and deepened my aglaiacal studies. But it was the subsequent stages of my life, as an adolescent, that would truly release my full potential, and so I will devote more detail to that period.

As for my first transition: Boone and Frasca, husband and wife, my new foster parents, had two children of their own, both older than I: Dunkel, a boy, and Mazurine, a girl. Introduced to them, I was outwardly shy. But inside, I had already assessed their aglaiacal potential as less than mine. They had maxed out their innate capacity for becoming beautiful, and would never blossom into anything greater than what they already showed. Consequently, I found myself inwardly disdainful of them. Still, we all got along fine, in a distant manner.

At first, the biggest revelation to me during those five years was that the greater beauty of the citizens at this level entitled them to nicer work and more copious and finer material comforts. The clothes, the food, my mattress, the available entertainments, even the toilet paper! All so much better than those of my birth level. And yet, I knew, so much cruder than what awaited me above.

Only at this juncture did I realize how our city of Aesthetica worked. Until now, I had simply possessed no basis for comparison. The meager, shabby goods and paucity of services available to the dwellers of the lowest level, the backbreaking jobs—waste disposal, uranium mining, power plant maintenance, hydroponic farming, goods assembly lines—these were not conditions shared by all! The insight burst inside me like a bombshell. I resolved then and there that I would do all I could to