My Superpower: E.L. Tettensor (Master of Plagues)
My Superpower is a regular guest column on the Skiffy and Fanty blog where authors and creators tell us about one weird skill, neat trick, highly specialized cybernetic upgrade, or other superpower they have, and how it helped (or hindered!) their creative process as they built their project. Today we welcome E.L. Tettensor to talk about how the power of teleportation relates to Master of Plagues. My superpower is teleportation. Cool, right? In the blink of an eye – bamf! – I’m somewhere completely different. Not physically, of course. That wouldn’t work. I get motion sickness. Mentally, though, I can transport myself anywhere, anytime. Even better, I can be in two places at once. One version of me might be sitting across from you at brunch, listening politely as you recount your latest misadventures with Tinder, while another me – the one enjoying herself – is planning an epic battle, deciding whether that flanking manoeuvre is going to be enough to save our heroes, or whether they’ll need more siege engines.
Book Review: Karen Memory by Elizabeth Bear
In the late 19th century, Rapid City is *the* port in the Pacific Northwest. Much of the foundations are now below ground level, in the muck and mire of the poor soil for buildings and the other things being filled in to raise things. Places like Madame Damnable’s Sewing Circle, whose entrance is 32 feet below the current level of the street, a real old part of the city, then. But to climb down that ladder and go in isn’t to get your clothes mended. Even if there are two sewing machines in the parlor. No, the usual people who climb down and visit the Sewing Circle are men coming from or going to the gold field, looking for a little action, spend a little money. Karen Memery, along with the other women, practices sewing, to help mend her clothes, see, but she mainly practices a more horizontal trade. And she is the center of Karen Memory, a new steampunk novel from Elizabeth Bear.
