ARKDUST scifi book from Alex Smith
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ARK DUST
In 2011 I wrote a horror story that featured a heavyset bisexual Mexican protagonist that I titled “These Are the Things That Bad Men Hear at Night”. A few days later, I read that story in front of an audience at an anarchist community center. A few months after that, inspired by the horror reading, I sent an inquiry to a radical listserv asking if any LGBT/queer folks wanted to read at a sci-fi reading. The event was called Laser Life. There, I would discover the writing of Ras Mashramani, Rasheedah Phillips and Magus Monk (the first responder to that email sent on the listserv). After cultivating a following, the four of us formed a collective of artists, activists, witches, cyborgs, aliens, mythmakers, superheroes, replicants and time-travelers: Metropolarity. We put out zines, gave lectures, organized in our community, and created art, music and culture in various forms.
In the midst of all of this universe expanding beauty, I put out a zine called A R K D U S T. It featured my short stories and collages, stories and art that featured undervalued, underrepresented, marginalized folks in lead roles, empowered and powerful-- but also worried, shy, afraid, unsure, but always capable, strong, and fully realized. See, the idea behind Laser Life was that we, the marginalized (people of color, Black folks, LGBT folks) would step in from the margins, would not be just background dressing as the cishet hero walked through the bazaar in his trench coat scowling at his ethnic surroundings cribbed from Asian, African and Latin American real world settings. No, we would be the ones time traveling, fighting super-villians, creating new worlds. ARKDUST was an extension of that feeling made tangible.
Science Fiction is as powerful a tool for social change as it is entertaining. Science Fiction is as much a realm for exercising our uppermost fantasies as it is a vessel for creating lasting emotional, psychological and spiritual change from within. With ARKDUST, that is what I have endeavored to do. Like, yes, I'm really out here trying to change shit for ya'll! These stories are the culmination of 8 years of creating, developing, growing universes on 8x11” of white space. They've been edited and selected from both the ARKDUST zine and my Afterverse tumblr where I posted short stories about queer Black superheroes. These are those stories leaping off of the xeroxed page, bursting out of FedEx/Kinkos late night cut-n-paste sessions, teeming out of community centers, college lecture halls, SEPTA bus stations, and mystic forests. I don't have much, but I can offer stories.
I'm asking my friends to help turn these stories into a book! As many of you know, my partner Shane and I have been beset with drastic life changes and difficult medical issues. Without going into detail, I've had to work multiple jobs and help Shane navigate the healthcare system. This book becoming real, becoming tangible, becoming a thing we can hold in our hands-- all of us-- as a symbol of defiant representation would mean the world to us. But we can't do it without you. So, here's our gofundme page. We hope that you'll share it, donate if you can, get others to donate, and support us as we take off into the stratosphere.
Special thanks to Oskar Castro and Steven Arnold for artwork and layout, respectively.
Alex Smith
Metropolarity/Laser Life/Chrome City
alexoteric.com
metropolarity.net
excerpt from "In the Grips of the Star, Shining" from ARKDUST
Jamar closes his eyes. A warm, elegiac sun, a cold, windy beach, the ocean licking at his feet in graceful layers. A blue man and a green woman with painted silver faces appear over the horizon, riding a flying unicorn with rainbow colored wings, the sun at their backs as if they were bursting out of it. They are naked, scattering petals about the beach. They hover above him for a second. The woman smiles enormously, the man tilts his head bashfully away from him. They dismount and push closer towards Jamar, firmly grabbing him by the arm and the leg and holding him tightly into their bosom. He is submerged there amidst their petite frames. The blue man whispers something into his ear, lightly licking his lobe. It is the sound of bells in a soft, shimmering cascade. In the dark of the blue man’s chest, with the warmth of the sun and the cool of the breeze on Jamar’s naked skin, he can see bursts of light.
When he opens his eyes, he’s already outside, his clothes on. A slouchy pair of jeans, beat up Tims, a black tee and a Phillies cap. He’s on the block. Rom is hunched over a stack of bills, shaking his right hand. The light from Rom’s gold chain almost blinds him. Jamar walks over steadily, shuffling, his heart beating.
“Yo,” Rom extends his free hand, grabs him and pulls him into a tight hug. Rom smells of lemons and incense, of whiskey and pine trees. “Yo, Jamar, bless this shit man.” Rom holds out the dice towards him.
“What, you want me to blow on ‘em?”
“What, you want me to blow on them. Yeah mufucka, dam.” The other young men around them laugh lightly in between 40 sips. “I knew this would happen.”
Jamar blows on the dice. Rom throws them. Seven.
“Yeah, pay up, bitch ass niggas.” Rom collects his money, coolly at first, but then guys start hovering. They want to throw more dice, try to win their cash back. Rom snatches up the money and the dice. “Yo, chill.” Rom puts his hand at his waist where there’s an outline of a gun tucked into his pants.
Rom turns to him. “Man, you…changed? Or something?”
“Seems like you haven’t.”
“You still my nigga though.”
The night before, he danced on an Electric Ladder, the spiraling, sparkling strand of cosmic DNA residue from a dying god; it hovered there in space, like a monument, twisting its coil dance in and out of nebula. They were only on a routine check of the Z-1 Galaxy of the T/Rum/2 quadrant when a distress signal burst out of the rock clouds and nearly melted The White Eagle’s instruments. It was a sound so bright, so synergistically bright, that it was hot.
“I am the T/Remulant. I am d/ying.” They extracted the residual noise, filtered out the echo and compressed it. Ran it backwards. EQ’d it. After Nitro Simian figured out that one of the collections of low, rumbling sounds was an article, a “the” or an “an”, they put it through a modulator, then ran that through a translator. Normally, it would take days to descramble a message like this, more days to find the coordinating parts and programs to do it. With Whir Woman on board, this all took eleven seconds.
“Found it.”
“What? What have you found?” Ink was, as usual, incredulous. His tentacles raced all over the controls as his molluskian body slithered throughout the bridge of the ship.
“I found the sound that’s making the universe shake to its core. I have found the voice of god.”
“Enough hyperbole.” Aerobrite was an amazing leader. His long mane of shimmering yellow hair was made of actual gold, hair that could find any light in the galaxy and hit the atmosphere so that it glinted. “What are we looking at here?”
And so, Nitro Simian opened his Enspaciopedia, a large text he carried with him, that somehow, inexplicably, had everything he’d ever need to know written in it. It was a beautiful book, leather-bound and decaying, its fragile pages sometimes turning to dust at every touch. Still, as he gently flipped through it with a fur covered paw, pushing the strange, rusting metal frames of goggles down over his eyes, the book seemed infinite. “We are looking at the dawn of a universe.”
“Now which is it?” Cackling Jack sat in the corner, finally aroused from sleep. He lit a cigar. Took a pull. “We talking about the sound’a god, or the dawn o’ the universe? Seems to me they’re two different things.”
“Au contraire, my willingly uneducated friend,” the Nitro Simian replied, plucking the cigar out of Jack’s mouth. “They are, indeed the same.” And before Jack could retort, he was bounding through the sliding doors, down the corridor to his lab.
“If what I’m picking up is correct,” Whir Woman continue, “We are witnessing the creation of a new universe. A being of immense power, a god perhaps, is out there somewhere, sending out—I don’t know—some divine command.”
“A modified version of “Let there be light” for the New Age set,” Jack cut in, casually glancing at the monitors with disdain and confusion.
“Sure,” Whir Woman continued, “But right now, there are only sounds. Signals. No visual confirmation that any of what we’re theorizing is happening.”
“That burnt out communi-pad is confirmation enough,” Aerobrite said, his radiant locks softly cutting through the air. “Let’s mobilize people. Get ready for anything. Looks like we’re not going home.”
In 2011 I wrote a horror story that featured a heavyset bisexual Mexican protagonist that I titled “These Are the Things That Bad Men Hear at Night”. A few days later, I read that story in front of an audience at an anarchist community center. A few months after that, inspired by the horror reading, I sent an inquiry to a radical listserv asking if any LGBT/queer folks wanted to read at a sci-fi reading. The event was called Laser Life. There, I would discover the writing of Ras Mashramani, Rasheedah Phillips and Magus Monk (the first responder to that email sent on the listserv). After cultivating a following, the four of us formed a collective of artists, activists, witches, cyborgs, aliens, mythmakers, superheroes, replicants and time-travelers: Metropolarity. We put out zines, gave lectures, organized in our community, and created art, music and culture in various forms.
In the midst of all of this universe expanding beauty, I put out a zine called A R K D U S T. It featured my short stories and collages, stories and art that featured undervalued, underrepresented, marginalized folks in lead roles, empowered and powerful-- but also worried, shy, afraid, unsure, but always capable, strong, and fully realized. See, the idea behind Laser Life was that we, the marginalized (people of color, Black folks, LGBT folks) would step in from the margins, would not be just background dressing as the cishet hero walked through the bazaar in his trench coat scowling at his ethnic surroundings cribbed from Asian, African and Latin American real world settings. No, we would be the ones time traveling, fighting super-villians, creating new worlds. ARKDUST was an extension of that feeling made tangible.
Science Fiction is as powerful a tool for social change as it is entertaining. Science Fiction is as much a realm for exercising our uppermost fantasies as it is a vessel for creating lasting emotional, psychological and spiritual change from within. With ARKDUST, that is what I have endeavored to do. Like, yes, I'm really out here trying to change shit for ya'll! These stories are the culmination of 8 years of creating, developing, growing universes on 8x11” of white space. They've been edited and selected from both the ARKDUST zine and my Afterverse tumblr where I posted short stories about queer Black superheroes. These are those stories leaping off of the xeroxed page, bursting out of FedEx/Kinkos late night cut-n-paste sessions, teeming out of community centers, college lecture halls, SEPTA bus stations, and mystic forests. I don't have much, but I can offer stories.
I'm asking my friends to help turn these stories into a book! As many of you know, my partner Shane and I have been beset with drastic life changes and difficult medical issues. Without going into detail, I've had to work multiple jobs and help Shane navigate the healthcare system. This book becoming real, becoming tangible, becoming a thing we can hold in our hands-- all of us-- as a symbol of defiant representation would mean the world to us. But we can't do it without you. So, here's our gofundme page. We hope that you'll share it, donate if you can, get others to donate, and support us as we take off into the stratosphere.
Special thanks to Oskar Castro and Steven Arnold for artwork and layout, respectively.
Alex Smith
Metropolarity/Laser Life/Chrome City
alexoteric.com
metropolarity.net
excerpt from "In the Grips of the Star, Shining" from ARKDUST
Jamar closes his eyes. A warm, elegiac sun, a cold, windy beach, the ocean licking at his feet in graceful layers. A blue man and a green woman with painted silver faces appear over the horizon, riding a flying unicorn with rainbow colored wings, the sun at their backs as if they were bursting out of it. They are naked, scattering petals about the beach. They hover above him for a second. The woman smiles enormously, the man tilts his head bashfully away from him. They dismount and push closer towards Jamar, firmly grabbing him by the arm and the leg and holding him tightly into their bosom. He is submerged there amidst their petite frames. The blue man whispers something into his ear, lightly licking his lobe. It is the sound of bells in a soft, shimmering cascade. In the dark of the blue man’s chest, with the warmth of the sun and the cool of the breeze on Jamar’s naked skin, he can see bursts of light.
When he opens his eyes, he’s already outside, his clothes on. A slouchy pair of jeans, beat up Tims, a black tee and a Phillies cap. He’s on the block. Rom is hunched over a stack of bills, shaking his right hand. The light from Rom’s gold chain almost blinds him. Jamar walks over steadily, shuffling, his heart beating.
“Yo,” Rom extends his free hand, grabs him and pulls him into a tight hug. Rom smells of lemons and incense, of whiskey and pine trees. “Yo, Jamar, bless this shit man.” Rom holds out the dice towards him.
“What, you want me to blow on ‘em?”
“What, you want me to blow on them. Yeah mufucka, dam.” The other young men around them laugh lightly in between 40 sips. “I knew this would happen.”
Jamar blows on the dice. Rom throws them. Seven.
“Yeah, pay up, bitch ass niggas.” Rom collects his money, coolly at first, but then guys start hovering. They want to throw more dice, try to win their cash back. Rom snatches up the money and the dice. “Yo, chill.” Rom puts his hand at his waist where there’s an outline of a gun tucked into his pants.
Rom turns to him. “Man, you…changed? Or something?”
“Seems like you haven’t.”
“You still my nigga though.”
The night before, he danced on an Electric Ladder, the spiraling, sparkling strand of cosmic DNA residue from a dying god; it hovered there in space, like a monument, twisting its coil dance in and out of nebula. They were only on a routine check of the Z-1 Galaxy of the T/Rum/2 quadrant when a distress signal burst out of the rock clouds and nearly melted The White Eagle’s instruments. It was a sound so bright, so synergistically bright, that it was hot.
“I am the T/Remulant. I am d/ying.” They extracted the residual noise, filtered out the echo and compressed it. Ran it backwards. EQ’d it. After Nitro Simian figured out that one of the collections of low, rumbling sounds was an article, a “the” or an “an”, they put it through a modulator, then ran that through a translator. Normally, it would take days to descramble a message like this, more days to find the coordinating parts and programs to do it. With Whir Woman on board, this all took eleven seconds.
“Found it.”
“What? What have you found?” Ink was, as usual, incredulous. His tentacles raced all over the controls as his molluskian body slithered throughout the bridge of the ship.
“I found the sound that’s making the universe shake to its core. I have found the voice of god.”
“Enough hyperbole.” Aerobrite was an amazing leader. His long mane of shimmering yellow hair was made of actual gold, hair that could find any light in the galaxy and hit the atmosphere so that it glinted. “What are we looking at here?”
And so, Nitro Simian opened his Enspaciopedia, a large text he carried with him, that somehow, inexplicably, had everything he’d ever need to know written in it. It was a beautiful book, leather-bound and decaying, its fragile pages sometimes turning to dust at every touch. Still, as he gently flipped through it with a fur covered paw, pushing the strange, rusting metal frames of goggles down over his eyes, the book seemed infinite. “We are looking at the dawn of a universe.”
“Now which is it?” Cackling Jack sat in the corner, finally aroused from sleep. He lit a cigar. Took a pull. “We talking about the sound’a god, or the dawn o’ the universe? Seems to me they’re two different things.”
“Au contraire, my willingly uneducated friend,” the Nitro Simian replied, plucking the cigar out of Jack’s mouth. “They are, indeed the same.” And before Jack could retort, he was bounding through the sliding doors, down the corridor to his lab.
“If what I’m picking up is correct,” Whir Woman continue, “We are witnessing the creation of a new universe. A being of immense power, a god perhaps, is out there somewhere, sending out—I don’t know—some divine command.”
“A modified version of “Let there be light” for the New Age set,” Jack cut in, casually glancing at the monitors with disdain and confusion.
“Sure,” Whir Woman continued, “But right now, there are only sounds. Signals. No visual confirmation that any of what we’re theorizing is happening.”
“That burnt out communi-pad is confirmation enough,” Aerobrite said, his radiant locks softly cutting through the air. “Let’s mobilize people. Get ready for anything. Looks like we’re not going home.”
Organiser
Alex Smith
Organiser
Philadelphia, PA
