writing and reading sci-fi, fantasy, and nonfiction
Author: Liz Busby
Liz Busby is a writer of creative non-fiction, technical writing, and speculative fiction. She loves reading science fiction, fantasy, history, science writing, and self help, as well as pretty much anything that holds still for long enough.
I’ve been binge-listening to Cal Newport’s Deep Work podcast lately, and it’s caused me to rethink my engagement online. There’s no need for me to rehash the Emergency over on Twitter, or the ways that Facebook’s algorithm has continued to deteriorate into a string of ads over time. Cal’s podcast has reminded me of how great the era of Web 2.0 (blogs and RSS feeds) really was. So I’m making a conscious decision to start moving more in that direction, though I’m not jumping ship entirely. I believe the internet is starting to figure out what we’ve lost by committing to social media and will be heading in that direction anyway.
What does this mean for you, my faithful readers? I’ll be doing more posting here, for certain. My plan is to write a short blog post most weeks, probably on Thursdays, maybe with a collection of the most interesting reads of the week at the bottom (eg the things I shared on social media that week). Behind the scenes, I am also moving things I follow on social media over to my RSS reader, Inoreader.
I won’t be engaging in back-and-forth conversation on general social media. That side of my internet presence has really mostly been over on Discord for a while now, and I think it’s time to make that official. There are lots of advantages to participating in a closed community that’s dedicated to a specific topic, but one disadvantage is that they are harder to stumble across. So if you’re interested in chatting with me about LDS literature or other things, reach out via email or comment on a post here.
I’m sure I’ll eventually need to update this policy, but I intend to follow these guidelines for the next year at least. Here’s an overview of the other places you can find me online and what to expect:
July has been a good break month. My kids have gone to several fun camps, we’ve celebrated some holidays and family gatherings, and I’ve taken time to rest and recharge (and read lots of nonfiction, apparently, as you’ll see from my reviews below). Near the end of July, we took off on the big trip of the summer which I like to call the Church History Mega Road Trip. We drove from Utah to New York and back, over 5000 miles in total. It was my first time visiting Palmyra and Kirtland, and my kids’ first time at any of the sights. We’re back now and were thrown straight into back-to-school prep, so I’m glad I got in some restful days early.
As for writing, I did finish one short piece of creative nonfiction that I sent in to Exponent II for their fall issue. I also sent in a couple of class proposals to some local writing conferences. In general, I’ve been less productive than I wish I had been, but I’m trying to accept that I have the opposite cycle from many writers: where most people have less work in the summer, as a mom I actually have more work in the summer than during the school year. It’s always difficult to be happy in the season that you’re in, but I’m trying.
Summer has been a mix of lazy days with massive productivity. At home, I’ve been letting myself indulge in hours of Tears of the Kingdom gameplay with my kids and also reading the first Harry Potter book aloud to my two youngest ones (their first time!). We’ve also been teaching my daughter how to ride a bike: both exhilarating and heartbreaking knowing that she’s the last one! On the weeks that my older kids are going to camps at BYU, I have spent the whole day on campus, practicing for the fall and putting my head down to get through edits while my husband watches the younger ones at home. I’m also prepping for our big family road trip for the summer–we’re driving all the way to New York on a self-guided church history tour, so there’s a lot of planning to be done if we’re to survive with our relationships intact. I hope you’re all finding time to relax and staying cool in the heat!
The biggest writing news from June was the publication of “Reclaiming the Desert” at Wayfare Magazine. They paired my story with amazing artwork of the Utah landscape by Brekke Sjoblom. Her geometric landscapes really fit the futuristic yet natural solar punk feeling I was going for. I’m thinking I have to buy one of her works for my wall now. Anyway, the story is free to read, and once you’re finished, you can take a look at my author’s note to find out about some of the real-world science behind the setting.
I was also invited to present my paper on Mormons writing about aliens to the Mormon Transhumanist Association at their June gathering. (Reading list from the paper here.) Turns out, the MTA has a lot of speculative fiction fans, which in hindsight should have been obvious. They had some great discussion points for me to consider which will influence my future work on the history of LDS speculative fiction.
And if you’re reading this when it’s posted, we’re at the beginning of week two of the “Around the World in Mormon Literature” contest by the Mormon Lit Lab. I’m on the Lit Lab board and it’s been exciting and exhausting to see all the work that goes into producing a multi-language contest. Please read along with me and vote for your favorites! (Not to bias you, but I’m loving the invented folklore of “The Five Angels of Eden” by Claudio Oliveria.)
This story started off like many of my stories do, in response to a prompt: a short fiction magazine was looking for pieces for a solar punk collection. In case you haven’t heard of it (I hadn’t!), solar punk is a new-ish genre of speculative fiction that focuses on an optimistic future where humanity has harnessed technology along with traditional techniques to create a future where the planet is brought into a sustainable balance. When I was casting about for an idea to fill this prompt, I turned to the news story that was happening around me: Utah’s 20-year-long megadrought. In 2022 we were finally confronting the impending doom that the drying of the Great Salt Lake would bring upon the Salt Lake Valley, especially the risk of toxic chemicals from the lakebed being dispersed into the air. I combined these two elements by researching what sustainable, high-tech living might look like in the desert.
Over the course of my research, I was struck by how different it looked to live sustainably in the desert than in other environments portrayed in typical solar punk stories. The things that work in a more temperate area don’t make sense in Utah’s unique climate, yet there’s so much that’s still possible. This reminded me of the misunderstandings between Mormons and nonmembers. Both ways of life can work well in their own way, but there’s a tendency from both sides to condemn the other because they don’t understand why they do things differently.
In the story, I posit that a highly-organized community like the Latter-day Saint community is well-positioned to enact ecological change in the west because the division of water in a dry climate requires sacrifices that aren’t naturally going to happen without outside intervention by some kind of authority. (Witness the way the federal government had to step in and impose top-down reforms after Western states were unable to make the numbers add up for sharing decreased water from the Colorado River.) Most solar punk stories favor a more anarchic or libertarian form of government where there’s so much abundance that everyone can basically just do whatever they want. (Though of course, those decisions never seem to lead to overconsumption, which might be too optimistic . . . .) From there, I decided the main conflict of the story would be from an outsider visiting New Zion and trying to understand a system that was counter-intuitive to their vision of the world.
Often, Mormon lit stories are from Mormon families looking at the one who left or the one who left looking back in their Mormon community. I decided to flip these roles a bit by having the Mormon be the one who left her family and feels misunderstood. Initially I thought Martea’s whole family would be coming to visit her, but that ended up being too many characters for the size of the story, so I reduced it to just her sister.
The theme of reconciliation without conversion is one that feels very important to me right now. Every day, it seems, I hear stories of people cutting each other out of their lives because they don’t agree on politics or religion. But we need each other. We all need love and support and community, and trying to build those only with people who agree on everything is unnecessarily limiting. If we can’t bridge the divide over these issues with our closest family and friends, what chance does the world have to do the same? The key is not to convince others that we are right, but to learn to live together and love each other even while we live and believe in different ways.
The short fiction magazine I’d written the story for didn’t end up taking it. I’m so thankful that Jeanine Bee, Wayfare’s fiction editor, reached out to me for this story, and for the effort that she and the whole Wayfare editorial team put into helping me revise this story into the best possible version of itself. I hope it inspires you to make sustainable changes in your life and to reach out to those who may see things differently than you do.
School officially ended and summer officially begins! We had a successful camping and kayaking trip at Deer Creek Reservoir to kick off the summer. The lake is so much fuller than it was last year. The rocks I remembered being halfway up the beach were almost completely underwater! A testament to Utah’s insane water year.
Kid-sized kayaks are amazing
Playing Phase 10 is an important part of our family camping culture
Some really good writing news this month: I sold a story! “Birthright” will appear in an anthology of speculative fiction detective stories by Inklings Press! This story features a very costly magic system that twists the relationships in a family to the breaking point. I’m sure it will be a while before the anthology will be available, but I’ll keep you up to date on it. I also turned in my edits on “Reclaiming the Desert” to Wayfare, so hopefully you’ll see that one sooner.
On the other side of the writing desk, I’ve finished the developmental edits for my portion of Irreantum‘s genre fiction issue. I should be diving into copy edits soon. The stories we received for the issue are truly amazing and only getting better with every draft. I’m excited to share them with you.
For Mother’s Day, we released an episode of Pop Culture on the Apricot Tree about the portrayal of Mothers in the Media. Our other episode was one of my kids’ favorites for me to prep for, an episode of the Australian sensation that is Bluey.
This month was a bit light on the reading with all the end of school activities, but I’m hoping to get back on track with the summer months before grad school takes over my reading list in the fall. That is, if I don’t spend all my spare time exploring Hyrule in Tears of the Kingdom. I cannot believe they made a game this good with a reused map. Every minute of the seven year wait was worth it.
