My sci-fi short story "Vigil" is now out from The Sunday Morning Transport, and you can read it for free! What happens to a society when centuries of hopeful, creative progress are undone by those who prefer the cruel "natural order"? The Midwife and Gamon Malisorn are about to find out. 1/ - ThreadSky

davidbowles.us • 28 days ago

My sci-fi short story "Vigil" is now out from The Sunday Morning Transport, and you can read it for free!

What happens to a society when centuries of hopeful, creative progress are undone by those who prefer the cruel "natural order"?

The Midwife and Gamon Malisorn are about to find out.

1/

Comments

davidbowles.us•28 days ago

This is the third of my stories featuring the Midwife, possibly the best character I've ever created, an Indigenous hope-punk enactor of change, part Mrs. Whatsit, part Doctor Who, part Cihuacoatl.

The other two—"Relocation" and "Dismantling"—are also available at The Sunday Morning Transport.

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davidbowles.us•28 days ago

If you want to read them—and many other speculative stories from some of the best in the business—here's a link to a 60-day trial membership:

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ckohwrites.bsky.social•28 days ago

Can confirm this was an exciting story! The rich word choice was beautiful, the conflict with the adversary was tense, happy to find out about The Midwife ^^

davidbowles.us•27 days ago

Thanks so much!!!

ckohwrites.bsky.social•28 days ago

That was a beautiful story. I read the first parts of the previous two, but didn't want to support Substack for its values sorry.
Thank you so very much for sharing that. It was my first time reading about the Midwife 🙂

davidbowles.us•28 days ago

Thanks! I appreciate the kind words, Christina. 🙏🏼🤘🏼

ckohwrites.bsky.social•28 days ago

The way you use language to incorporate local words in a way you can still understand what it means, is inspiring! Like how I've been using malay and mandarin words into my own Malayan stories ^^

davidbowles.us•28 days ago

Ah, excellent! Those of us who speak two, three or even more languages have a different perspective on incorporating words from our various tongues into writing. I've noticed that monolingual English speakers call 'way too much attention to "foreign" words, italicizing and glossing them.

davidbowles.us•28 days ago

Since it's so natural for me to drop Spanish or Nahuatl into English or vice versa, without ever stopping to explain to my interlocutors (who usually know those languages, too) what I'm doing ... well, I think my stories should do the same.

There's no need to explain, for example, "Phi Mon" here.

davidbowles.us•28 days ago

People who don't know Thai relationship terms and so forth won't understand why Kris says that to his older sister, but I'm not going to waste any space explaining it and thereby exoticizing the practice.

ckohwrites.bsky.social•28 days ago

For example, godowns actually came from the word gadong, which is how I spelled it in Caretaker. And It would have been really weird to say 'Chinese junks' when the local word for those ships would have been jong or jung, so I changed that accordingly

ckohwrites.bsky.social•28 days ago

Interesting. I had this problem when I used words where I had to decide whether to italicise or not. Then I decided to keep certain popular words as normal, like sarong, diwali and mandala. But decided to italicise others or use the versions that the local people of that time would know them as-Cont

cabridges.bsky.social•28 days ago

Just for clarification: this is a *fictional* piece, yes?

davidbowles.us•28 days ago

Ahem. 😜

Yes? But if it’s seen as a parable, well…

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