Flux Read Free

hogwash. Within the genre of science fiction, I could shuck off the shackles of realism and make up worlds in which the issues I cared about were clear and powerful. The tale could be told direct. It could be about something .
    Since then I have learned ways to make more realistic fiction be about something as well—but not the ways my literature professors tried to teach me. The oblique methods used by contemporary American literateurs are bankrupt because they have forsaken the audience. But there are writers doing outside of science fiction the things that I thought, at the age of twenty-three, could only be done within it. I think of Olive Ann Burns’s Cold Sassy Tree as the marker that informed me that all the so-called Mysteries could still be reached through stories that told of love and sex and death; the need to belong, the hungers of the body, and the search for individual worth; Community, Carnality, Identity. Ultimately, that triad is what all stories are about. The great stories are simply the ones that do it better for a particular audience at a particular place and time. So I’m gradually reaching out to write other stories, outside of both the Mormon and the science fiction communities. But the fact remains that it was in science fiction that I first found it possible to speak to non-Mormons about the things that mattered most to me. That’s why I wrote science fiction, and write science fiction, and will write it for many years to come.

A T HOUSAND D EATHS
    â€œY OU WILL MAKE no speeches,” said the prosecutor.
    â€œI didn’t expect they’d let me,” Jerry Crove answered, affecting a confidence he didn’t feel. The prosecutor was not hostile; he seemed more like a high school drama coach than a man who was seeking Jerry’s death.
    â€œThey not only won’t let you,” the prosecutor said, “but if you try anything, it will go much worse for you. We have you cold, you know. We don’t need anywhere near as much proof as we have.”
    â€œYou haven’t proved anything.”
    â€œWe’ve proved you knew about it,” the prosecutor insisted mildly. “No point arguing now. Knowing about treason and not reporting it is exactly equal to committing treason.”
    Jerry shrugged and looked away.
    The cell was bare concrete. The door was solid steel. The bed was a hammock hung from hooks on the wall. The toilet was a can with a removable plastic seat. There was no conceivable way to escape. Indeed, there was nothing that could conceivably occupy an intelligent person’s mind for more than five minutes. In the three weeks he had been here, he had memorized every crack in the concrete, every bolt in the door. He had nothing to look at, except the prosecutor. Jerry reluctantly met the man’s gaze.
    â€œWhat do you say when the judge asks you how you plead to the charges?”
    â€œNolo contendere.”
    â€œVery good. It would be much nicer if you’d consent to say ‘guilty’,” the prosecutor said.
    â€œI don’t like the word.”
    â€œJust remember. Three cameras will be pointing at you. The trial will be broadcast live. To America, you represent all Americans. You must comport yourself with dignity, quietly accepting the fact that your complicity in the assassination of Peter Anderson—”
    â€œAndreyevitch—”
    â€œ Anderson has brought you to the point of death, where all depends on the mercy of the court. And now I’ll go have lunch. Tonight we’ll see each other again. And remember. No speeches. Nothing embarrassing.”
    Jerry nodded. This was not the time to argue. He spent the afternoon practicing conjugations of Portuguese irregular verbs, wishing that somehow he could go back and undo the moment when he agreed to speak to the old man who had unfolded all the plans to assassinate Andreyevitch. “Now I must trust you,” said the old man. “ Temos que