Today I'm excited to feature an anthology that takes a different look at a very serious issue that touches so many lives: cancer.
Walk with us as we explore the world of cancer as seen through a speculative lens. Hold our hands while we venture into the world of what ifs. Take a journey at our side as we experience the full spectrum of what cancer has to offer. The light, the darkness.
Within these pages you'll meet a woman who adores her cancer as a lover, another who sees it as her ticket to immortality. We'll meet a boy willing to do anything to save his mother and another with superpowers. There's a witch who uses magic to fight against the beast ravaging her friend's body, a cat whose capacity for love is unparalleled, a damaged musician, aliens, a goddess butterfly and so much more.
These are not easy stories to read. This is not a comforting collection that will wipe your fears away and make everything all right. It's not that kind of book. These stories will make you cry, but they'll also make you laugh. They'll touch you and stir emotions, some of which you might not like, but that's okay. It really is. These stories aren't all fun, but they are important. All of them.
62% of the proceeds of this anthology are being donated to help benefit Cancer research.
Kobo
ePub – $6.95
ePub – $6.95
I was lucky enough be able to ask some questions to Rhonda, the editor, and some of the contributing authors.
Editor Rhonda Parrish:
What was the inspiration for putting together an anthology like Metastasis? Why did you choose to include stories viewing cancer through a speculative fiction lens?
I'm not sure where the initial idea for Metastasis came from. In part it was influenced by the fact I write mostly speculative fiction and publish Niteblade, a speculative fiction magazine. I think partly it was also inspired by the fact that for a while it seemed like every month I was hearing about a writer being diagnosed with, or dying from cancer as well as Jay Lake's very public battle with metastatic colon cancer. The kick in the ass I needed to actually take it from an idea to a reality, however, was when my mother was diagnosed with lung cancer in the fall of 2012 and died about two weeks later.
In addition to the obvious grief I felt, I also felt completely impotent so I decided to make Metastasis happen in honor of my mom and also as my little way of striking back at the disease that has taken so much from so many.
What should readers prepare for going into Metastasis?
I think it's different for all of us, but for me it was an emotional ride. It's not all death and sadness (though that's in there too, of course) though, there is also hope, love and laughter, so you don't need to gird your heart for battle or anything like that.
What is the goal of Metastasis? To inspire people? To educate people? To give hope? To make people view cancer differently? Some combination of these or none of the above?
To entertain. Of course the book is also meant to raise funds for the American Cancer Society, but the stories within it exist mostly to entertain.
I think when I started out I really wanted to have the anthology leave the reader with a strong sense of hope, because in reality I believe there is hope, but as this project progressed it kind of took on a life of its own and I realised that in the end, hope was not going to be the umbrella which encompassed all the stories between these covers. I could try to wrestle it into the shape I wanted, or let it breathe and see what it became. I chose the latter, and what it became was something special, something that shines. Something that entertains.
I know some of the proceeds from Metastasis will be going to cancer research. Can you speak a little more to that?
I'd love to. I'm so proud of the fact we are donating the majority of the proceeds from this book to benefit cancer research. The publisher set aside a percentage of royalties right off the top which would be donated to the American Cancer Society (25%), I am donating all of my royalties (another 25%) and all our authors were offered the chance to donate as much or as little of their royalties as they wanted as well. Many took advantage of that offer and so, in the end we are able to donate 62.5% of all proceeds from this book to the American Cancer Society.
Being Canadian that sounds a little weird each time I say it, LOL The American Cancer Society, but we knew most of our contributors would be from the United States and so is our publisher, Wolfsinger Publications, so it seemed like the right cause to champion.
Author Bill Ratner:
What was the inspiration behind your contribution to Metastasis?
As an author I found the idea of writing about an actual incident in my life in a fictional form very liberating, and the challenge pulled out of me a more creative and powerful story than if the call had been for a personal essay.
Twitter time! Describe your contribution in 140 characters or less.
Faced with his mother's deteriorating condition a young boy employs extreme measures to try and change the course of his mother’s health.
Reading stories about cancer just sounds depressing. What will readers get out of Metastasis besides a good cry?
Fiction has always concerned itself with the big questions of the universe, and the stories in Metastasis are no exception. Liberating writers from personal memoir and letting us loose to consider cancer in a fantasy/scifi context has produced some uplifting, mysterious, and very powerful writing in this book.
Did you write this story from personal experience?
Yes, my mother died of cancer when I was seven years old. And I've resisted writing much about it, since the actual experience was so serious and sobering, and I didn't want to depress readers. But to take a fictional approach allowed me to lighten up what might otherwise have been an unremittingly tragic tale.
Author Beth Cato:
What was the inspiration behind your contribution to Metastasis?
For my poem "Hunter," I wanted to honor my cat, Palom, who succumbed to cancer in 2012. I miss him every day.
Twitter time! Describe your contribution in 140 characters or less.
Cat uses 9 lives to consume owner's grief and fear; no regrets.
Reading stories about cancer just sounds depressing. What will readers get out of Metastasis besides a good cry?
It's about more than grief. It's the full emotional spectrumrage, mourning, and hope. Ugliness contrasted with beauty.
Author David Sklar:
What was the inspiration behind your contribution to Metastasis?
I was watching a TV show about string theory, and I wondered What is the realworld application of this? So I invented one.
Twitter time! Describe your contribution in 140 characters or less.
After successful treatment, a brain cancer survivor has visions and dreams of what might have been.
Reading stories about cancer just sounds depressing. What will readers get out of your story besides a good cry?
If it was just that depressing, I wouldn’t have finished writing it. I mean, once I had the idea for this story, it sat there for months, maybe years, not being written, because it just seemed so depressing, and I kept passing it up for ideas that seemed more fun to write. But I loved the idea and I wanted to write it, so finally I thought, What can I do to make it fun for me?
So there are still parts that might make you cry, but there’s a lot of whimsy there, too, and I hope the touches that made it fun for me to write will also make it fun for you to read.
So, tell me more about these whimsical touches.
Well, it’s a nearfuture setting, which is something I don’t write very often. But a lot of science fiction seems to think the future is going in just one direction—so either everything is chrome and progress, or it’s all gone to Hell in a handbasket that no one remembers how to make. And I haven’t seen that much that’s in between.
Ursula LeGuin does inbetween very well. In Lathe of Heaven, there’s a bit about parking structures that have been converted into office space, so there are these buildings all over Downtown Portland with oddly slanting floors. You know, that’s not The Hunger Games, but it doesn’t quite feel like progress either. The world just keeps on moving along, and people adapt.
In my story, “Quantum Therapy,” there’s a part of Manhattan that’s permanently flooded. But, you know, somebody had the idea to open a kayak rental. It’s New York City, after all, so somebody would do that. And there’s a ferryman there who sings really well as he rows you across, because he used to work at the Met, before it got defunded.
None of that has anything to do with the cancer; it’s just what’s going on in the meantime. People screw things up, but then people adapt. They can’t always fix it, but they find a way to make the best of the things they can’t fix, because that’s what human beings do, given half a chance.
Author Brenda Stokes Barron:
What was the inspiration behind your contribution to Metastasis?
I came across a science article about gynandromorph butterflies and found them fascinating. Then, in an unrelated Internet search, I ran across an MRI of a brain. The wheels started turning. Then I found out a girl I knew in high school was terminally ill with brain cancer. She was only about 24 at the time and the idea of it—even thinking about it—made my stomach sink. The line, “The Part of the Brain That Looks Like a Butterfly,” popped into my mind shortly after that and the rest of the story wrote itself.
Twitter time! Describe your contribution in 140 characters or less.
As Sylvia tries to cope with a terminal brain cancer diagnosis, a force is awakened within her that speaks of magic and untold power.
Reading stories about cancer just sounds depressing. What will readers get out of Metastasis besides a good cry?
Cancer is depressing, yes, but these stories aren’t. Readers are certain to enjoy the multitude of lenses through which this disease is viewed. The creativity here is impressive. As for my contribution, I can only say this: Sylvia discovers something about herself she didn’t know before.
And when faced with something as horrid as this, she finds the beauty in the scraps of her remaining life. And that's worth celebrating.
Did you learn anything about yourself when writing this story?
Yes. I realized that nothing in life is black or white. We all fall in the gray area. And that includes tragedy and disease. Though we all may be dying, there is beauty enough left even in awful things. Or humor. There’s humor in awful things, too.
Author Gabrielle Harbowy:
What was the inspiration behind your contribution to Metastasis?
"Arpeggio" was the convergence of several inspirations. When I had read The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee, one of the things which had struck me the most was that in the early days of mastectomies, they often took far more of the body than they needed to, and they often were performed without anesthesia. In fact, there are a handful of existing firstperson accounts (in the form of letters and diaries) written by women who were awake during their procedures. They make for very difficult reading.
I was inspired by Jay Lake, a science fiction writer and close friend, who blogs very openly about his cancer. He often remarks about the things that cancer takes away from him, and fears the time when it will leave him unable to write. His vocation is such a huge part of who he is, that he's not sure what will be left of him without it.
And I was inspired by a close friend who lost a finger to a tumor, and continues to cope with nerve damage and the oddities of the phantom limb.
I ended up with a historical dark fantasy story about a musician who has very little agency, and feels that cancer has taken away everything she's ever valued in life. She learns that her soul her intrinsic being is more than her music, and is something that cancer can't take away from her.
Twitter time! Describe your contribution in 140 characters or less.
A harpist loses an arm to cancer, but can still play in her dreams...but stealing dreamstrings back to the real world has a price.
Reading stories about cancer just sounds depressing. What will readers get out of your story besides a good cry?
Ultimately, "Arpeggio" is about agency and empowerment, and it's about hope. It's about redefining ourselves and transforming into something new, rather than letting our losses define us. Hope is dangerous because it sets us up for disappointment, but it's essential because it gives us the strength to thrive under the worst of conditions. It's my hope that readers find "Arpeggio" inspiring, even motivating.
How historically/medically accurate are the events in your story?
As accurate as possible. The radical mastectomy was invented two years before the story begins, but the xray had not yet come into medical usage; all the dates and places and procedures are accurate representations of the time. Even the lack of anesthesia, as noted above. (Ether was sometimes used as anesthetic, but it was up to the individual doctor's discretion.)
I want to give a huge thank you to Rhonda and all the authors for answering my questions. I can't wait to read their stories and be able to view cancer a little differently.
If you're interested in Metastasis, you can find it in these places:
Kobo
ePub – $6.95
ePub – $6.95
And remember that 62.5% of the proceeds go to cancer research!
This sounds powerful, emotional and inspirational. I love that such a large portion is being donated towards cancer research. Lovely review and interview
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