The open doorway to the Jade Tortoise Room loomed before me,
and I wanted to be anywhere but here. A State Security checkpoint was
set up immediately to the left of the doorway, so I presented my
passport for the third time since registering at the hotel desk the
previous evening. Inside, a huge banner on
the wall behind the small elevated stage proclaimed what everyone here
knew already: “WorldCon 100: LunaCon I.”
Naturally enough, the event had been dubbed “LoonieCon” as soon as
the location had been announced. I’d referred to it as such myself in an
editorial—one in which I criticized the WSFS for locating its
convention at so exclusive a destination, no matter how appropriate—long
before I had any notion that I would attend.
The meeting room was half-full at half an hour before the panel
discussion was to begin. I headed to the stage, wending my way around
banquet tables, shuffling my feet carefully to prevent bouncing in the
unfamiliar gravity, and smiling and nodding at writers, artists,
scholars, and fans—most of whom did not know me nor I them. More than
once I felt for the name badge that was pinned to my lapel. The badge
read “Eric Renshaw, Editor, Circumlocutions.” Once on the
stage—after hopping gently up to its elevated surface without flailing
or, worse, overshooting—I found a place card that matched my name badge
and sat to watch the room fill.
The Chinese government had bid furiously against several other
municipal and national governments to host this special one-hundredth
WorldCon: the convention of the World Science Fiction Society. The
United States had aggressively sought the contract for New York since
the inaugural 1939 convention had been held there; the city wanted to
make of it a centennial celebration. The Chinese, of course, had the
better carrot: a convention hotel in the first lunar colony. My fellow
science fiction enthusiasts couldn’t refuse such a romantic locale, and I
hoped that sightseeing would make attendance at this panel discussion
unattractive. I was tempted to forego the discussion myself,
Gedanken-like, but had neither the nerve nor the personal clout to pull
it off.
I was invited to the convention and specifically to this panel discussion because in last December’s issue of Circumlocutions
I had published a controversial story by the pseudonymous Ruprecht J.
Moore entitled “The Insufferable Triteness of Beings.” Since that
publication, the story has been the subject of at least three critical
essays and dozens of reviews in the literary journals and blogs. Because
of the author’s anonymity, the WSFS had invited me as editor and
stand-in on this panel, “Polemics of R. J. Moore’s ‘The Insufferable
Triteness of Beings.’” I did not expect a pleasant experience.
With fifteen minutes until the discussion was to begin, the room was
filling quickly. I could see no completely empty banquet tables, and the
scowls directed at me from some of those I presumed to be academics
were becoming worrisome. Did they think I was Moore? I tried to focus on
the crowd as a whole, avoiding eye contact with individuals, and
noticed several young, suspiciously fit hotel employees circulating
among the tables and setting out pitchers of water for the attendees.
Dr. Alfred Milliard, a professor of Cultural Studies at King’s
College, Cambridge, stepped onto the stage and extended his hand. “Thank
you for coming, Mr. Renshaw. The society appreciates your willingness
to make the trip.” Cultured British accent with a trace—imagined?—of
condescension.
“It was my pleasure, Professor Milliard. I’m not sure I’ll be able to
contribute much to the discussion, but the chance to see Selena-Beijing
was something I couldn’t pass up. Thank you again for the invitation.”
“I hope you’ve reconsidered your position on the author’s anonymity?”
“I’m afraid not,” I said. “As I indicated, the author has been
explicit about that. I’m contractually obliged to maintain
confidentiality.”
“I see,” Milliard said. “You understand, of course, that we’re on
Chinese territory here. Your confidentiality agreement has no basis in
local law.”
“That’s really beside the point,” I said, feeling uncomfortable.
“Well, I hope that it remains so,” he said, adding, “for your sake.”
The lights then flickered once, the three other panelists converged
on the table, and Dr. Milliard stood to welcome the attendees and
introduce the panelists: me; Regina McGill, a writer whose fiction was
highly regarded; Dr. David Rozhenko, Professor of Literature and
Semiotics at UC Berkley; and Edith Hartwell, a professional literary
critic who had written a blistering review of the “The Insufferable
Triteness of Beings” that hit the Internet like a supernova and ramped
up my circulation by nearly twenty percent, at least for the December
issue.
Milliard said, “Welcome all. This is the panel discussion titled
‘Polemics of R. J. Moore’s “The Insufferable Triteness of Beings.”’
Those of you in the wrong room may now go find the session you wanted.”
The crowd laughed politely.
“I know this story has evoked a great deal of discussion already,”
Milliard went on, “but before we begin in earnest, I want to invite Mr.
Renshaw to provide a little background—how he came by the story, why he
happened to publish it, that sort of thing. Mr. Renshaw?”
And just that quickly, I was on the proverbial hot seat.
“The story came to the magazine through the usual electronic
submission service,” I began, “submitted I think sometime in the late
summer of last year. I remember that it was early Fall when I read it. I
read it twice at that time and passed it to my assistant editor,
Juanita Sanchez, for her opinion.”
From the audience, “Excuse me, Mr. Renshaw, but why did you want Ms
Sanchez’s opinion? Don’t you make all decisions on what you buy?”
“I do make all final decisions, but it’s a team effort—not exactly
consensus driven—but we work together to publish the stories we think
are important. Anyway, she agreed that the story was unusual and that it
probably should be published. Once the December issue was available,
our editorial email in-boxes were inundated with inquiries about the
story—more email than for any other story we’ve ever published, in
fact.”
“But who is Ruprecht Moore?” Another voice from the audience.
“I can’t say,” I said. “Anyway, I contacted the author…”
“You can’t say, or you won’t say?” This voice was accusatory.
“Either. Both,” I said. “I contacted the author about the unusual correspondence and…”
“Mr. Renshaw,” called a new voice from the crowd, a woman’s voice,
though I couldn’t locate her, “you must divulge the identity…”
Milliard cut in. “Please allow Mr. Renshaw to conclude his
introductory remarks. We shall have opportunity for questions afterward.
Thank you. Please go on, Mr. Renshaw.”
“I asked the author if he had any standard reply that I should make
to the correspondents since they seemed greatly moved. He said, ‘No.
It’s just a story.’ We began forwarding those emails to the author’s
R.J. Moore email address…”
“But that address simply generates an automated response!” It was the
woman’s voice again. She was now standing in the middle of the hall,
four banquet tables back from the stage. She wore her iron gray hair in
twin buns, in the fashion of a Star Wars character from more than sixty years ago.
“Really?” I asked, addressing her directly. “What is the automatic response?”
“It just thanks me for inquiring about the story and assures me that
it means whatever I think it means. That’s infuriating.” She sat down,
exasperated. “I want to know what he meant by it.”
There was a rumble of agreement from the audience. Angry agreement.
“Mr. Moore assures me,” I said, “that like Shirley Jackson’s ‘The
Lottery,’ it’s just a story. What you bring to the story dictates its
meaning for you.”
“Come now,” said Edith Hartwell. “‘Just a story’ is no response at
all when the story is clearly an attack on the egalitarian status quo, a
subversive manifesto promoting capitalist-individualist philosophies.”
I nodded as sagely as I could. “It very well could be, Ms Hartwell. I’m not sure.”
“What led you to think it should be published?” This from Regina
McGill, beside me at the table. She winked at me, barely concealing
mirth.
“It disturbed me,” I said. “It disturbed the whole staff. Anything that disturbing ought to be published.”
“Why?”
I shrugged. “I’ve made no secret of favoring open discourse,” I said.
“Anything as unsettling as that story deserved to be published because
of its ability to elicit such strong emotional responses—to make us
think, to question. No matter what its politics.”
Milliard said, “I find the story racist and elitist, Mr. Renshaw. If
it is such, then publishing it could be considered a violation of the
Jorgensen Act of 2022, as it encourages social disharmony.”
This caused me to bristle. “I don’t concede your second suggestion. I
think the story would encourage reasoned discourse even if it were racist and elitist—which I don’t think it is. What makes you think the story is, first of all, racist?”
“What? Why, it’s obvious, Mr. Renshaw. All the immoral characters are black.” I noticed some murmurs from the crowd at that.
“Really? How do you know that?”
“They’re not black,” an angry voice shouted from the audience. “They’re Jews!”
I squinted in the direction from which the voice seemed to have come. “What makes you think so?”
The room quieted. Milliard looked perplexed as he paged quickly through the story on his tablet. “Jews?” he muttered.
“They are not Jews,” Rozhenko said authoritatively. “They’re Slavs. It’s obvious.”
The audience erupted in a babble of dissension. I wanted to get out
of there and take the surface tour, to see the Armstrong Footprint and
to stare up at the big blue wonder that was the Earth. I wanted to take
the low-orbit shuttle to see the lunar surface sliding by, 7,000 miles
of desert landscape with perfect contrast of sunlight and shadow.
“Why the zombies?” a loud-voiced man in the audience demanded. “Why zombies on Mars? And what about the shape of the Martians themselves? They’re described as walking cucumbers, for Christ’s sake!”
This raised the volume and tempo of the discussions at the tables. It
was a cacophony. Rozhenko, Milliard, and Hartwell were heavily
engrossed in a three-way argument that was being piped through the PA
system, adding to the din. A man in the back of the hall shouted, “Why
does Jane seduce the Martian? Why all those minutely detailed
interspecies sex scenes?”
Rozhenko raised his voice. With the amplification, he was
uncomfortably loud, momentarily drowning out the babble of the room.
“The zombies obviously represent the entropy inherent in any complex
political system, and the death of Jane at the hands of the Martians
symbolizes the corruption of powerful people.”
“No,” said a woman at a table in front. “Jane’s body is used to
fertilize the Martian crèche-fields. It alludes to mythological
metaphors for the fertility cycle!”
Edith Hartwell, scowling, shouted back, “Then how do you account for
the rape and bondage of Donald McDowell? It’s clearly anti-feminist
satire.”
Regina McGill leaned over and switched off my microphone. She was
smiling. “This is likely to go on for some time. Would you like to get
some dinner?”
We stood together and shuffled all but unnoticed toward the doors in
the back of the room. At every table in the hall, people were shouting
their pet theories at each other, red-faced and sweating. Opening the
doors and stepping into the corridor, I saw two Chinese State Security
officers walking toward us from the main hotel lobby.
“Can you believe all that?” McGill asked.
“I wouldn’t have believed had I not seen.”
“One day, I want to write a story like…”
“Halt!”
We halted. The Chinese officers had stopped before us. “You are Eric Renshaw,” one of them said in near-perfect English, “of Circumlocutions Science Fiction Magazine.”
It was not a question. I began sincerely to regret the invitation.
________________________
Christopher Allenby lives in North Carolina within
sight of the Appalachians where he teaches college literature and
composition. During the summer months, he dabbles in satire and other
less insidious literary vices.
