Knee deep in grit twors.., p.1
Knee-Deep in Grit: Two Bloody Years of Grimdark Fiction, page 1
Acknowledgements
ADRIAN COLLINS
For the Grimdark Magazine team past and present, whose selflessness and passion has created something wonderful.
For the Grimdark Fiction Readers and Writers Facebook group, who have backed us for nearly four years now.
For our Patreon supporters, who put their hard-earned cash down each quarter to make sure we can keep putting out content.
For Victor. An imagination and ability gone too soon from this world.
Grimdark Magazine has chosen to maintain the Australian language and publishing standards used in the original publication of these stories.
Foreword
MARK LAWRENCE
Knee-Deep in Grit is Grimdark Magazine’s first print collection and brings you 25 short stories, one of them mine!
I’m reliably informed (*) that subsequent collections will sink further into grit, progressing from hip- and neck-deep to 2022’s Floating Face-Down in Grit.
I’m not at all sure what introductions should have in them. I’m kinda hoping you’ll all do what I do and skip this one like all the others! I Googled “an introduction to introductions” but it was less helpful than anticipated. Anyway, I was invited to write an introduction and by the old gods and the new I will do so.
First a word about the magazine. Two years! Tempus fuckit! It seems barely more than twenty-three months ago that Adrian asked if I could contribute a story to issue one. A big round of applause to Adrian and the team for keeping a magazine going in such a tough market and for maintaining such high standards. I’ve been particularly impressed by the covers too and this print collection is no exception. Stellar work by artist Jason Deem and designer Shawn King.
Short fiction is a hard sell these days … which given the rapidly reducing attention spans out there, and the rising tempo of everyday life, is a surprise. So well done you for being here and supporting it! Actually it’s a smart move because much, maybe most, of the innovation in the world of fiction takes place in short stories. Short stories are a much smaller investment of the writer’s time, the audience is smart and open-minded, and also small in number, all of which means that it’s a format in which it is safe to experiment, and one in which you can fail. By which I mean not that anyone aims to fail, but that you can. Write a book that tanks and in the current world of publishing it probably means your career is over. That’s basically it. Write a duff book and you’re out. This encourages playing safe, sticking to what you know sells etc. But in a short story you can gamble, and if you lose you get to fight another day. For the reader this means there will be some lows, but some of the highs will be unparalleled!
Anyway, in lieu of a proper introduction I’ve opted for a stream of consciousness ramble. Enjoy!
I guess the question of the moment is how deep in grit do we need to be? Is knee-deep too much or too little?
Whilst grit in the sense it’s used here is more than simply the inclusion of graphic violence and the depiction of bleak worlds to house such acts, I’m going to focus on the violence. The wider picture of grit is of course painted in fifty shades of moral grey and as much about the feel or vibe of the tale as about the checklist of its contents.
This brings me to consider the often brought up notion that violence needs to ‘justify itself’, that ‘shock value’ is somehow an oxymoron, and that failure to justify the former and avoid the latter are ‘lazy writing’.
When people say, "That
But if they say that something was added in for comedy value ... that’s rarely a criticism. Take it another step … how about, "You only added that in for interest value," or "Come on, you only wrote that bit to make me feel a sense of wonder and awe." I can't remember ever seeing that.
So what is wrong with shock value?
A story generally comprises highs and lows. Few readers consume books hoping for a constant feel-good tale. The darkness in a book allows the bright spots to shine more brightly. There's less joy in a victory if you haven't come face to face with the consequences of failure first.
So is the accusation of shock value only made by those upset at being more shocked than they wanted to be?
Let’s look at the idea violence needs to justify itself. That its consequences need to be explored. That the victim’s side of the story needs to be shown and we should be left in no doubt it’s a bad thing. No! No again! And no! Stories are not moral instruction for idiots. Every part of writing needs to justify itself and the justification it needs for occupying valuable page space is that it achieves the aim of the story, which is often primarily to keep the reader reading, to keep them invested, emotional engaged, and at the end of the story both satisfied and wanting more. Rather like sex.
Is grit lazy writing? I hope so! Optimal laziness is essentially efficiency. Writing strives to be efficient. Good writing hits the chords in the reader necessary for them to do the heavy lifting for the story. The emotions you want the reader to feel, the things you want the reader to see … almost all of it is already inside that person and the aim of good writing is to hook it out of them with as few words as possible. When one line, out of context, can give someone chills … that’s good writing, that’s efficient writing … it’s lazy writing and it isn’t an insult.
When you show that someone is ‘bad’ by having them do a bad thing … you can call it lazy … but it isn’t an insult. When you show someone is greedy by having them eat all the pies … call it lazy but it’s not an insult.
The thing is that when ‘lazy writing’ is levelled as an insult it’s done primarily when what the person throwing the term around really wants is for you not to write about the thing you have written about. It’s misdirection.
So, returning to grit and how much is enough. It’s a meaningless question. How much spice is enough? It’s entirely down to the individual tastes of the reader. Everyone finds their own level and it’s context-driven. You open a tub of yoghurt and chances are you won’t find it’s jalapeno flavour. You order a vindaloo and it’s going to be hot. Knee-Deep in Grit is a curry house of stories, they’re all going to be spicy and if you like your reading bland … you’ve come to the wrong place. If not, dig in, bon appetite.
(*) this is a lie.
Mark Lawrence
September, 2017
Introduction
MIKE MYERS
Does everything begin with Mark Lawrence? I hope so. A few years ago, I had a mid-life crisis. I had been rereading some pretty grim Hemingway and Saul Bellow, like I’m supposed to (and love), and I said to myself, “I’m getting old, and what I really love to read most of all is fantasy. I want great contemporary fantasy.” So I scoured Amazon for just the right book that wouldn’t let me down. It had to be a great story, well written, and grim, without any knights on white horses, much less dwarves and elves and other Tolkien rip offs. I finally decided on a novel called Prince of Thorns. I read it and thought, Yeah, that’s pretty good. So I bought King of Thorns, and I thought, Wow. That’s fucking amazing. Grim and ruthless and exciting, with a real bastard for a hero, and beautiful, understated writing. I was hooked. So I decided to Google Mark Lawrence, which eventually led me to the website of a brand new e-magazine that had just published its first issue, featuring ... wait for it ... Mark Lawrence! I gobbled it up. Grimdark Magazine, hmm ... that’s pretty cool. Wouldn’t it be cool to work for them, to help publish this lovely, brutal fiction? Lo and behold, the website said they needed a volunteer copyeditor. I’m not usually the type of guy that reaches out to people I don’t know, but I just loved the idea of this new e-magazine publishing dark, violent, fantasy and sci-fi—the kind that makes you think. I applied (at the time I don’t think many people were visiting the GdM website yet) and got the gig!
We got rolling immediately on issue #2. Adrian Collins, our Head Honcho, sent me a couple of stories to edit, and I was immediately blown away: This Bakker dude is a genius. This story by T. R. Napper is brutal. The characters and worlds these guys come up with are grim and dark and painful and smelly and ... beautiful. The sweat and the fights, the technology and magic, the deep world-building, the grimy sex—it’s all so fascinating and riveting. While waiting for issue #3, I filled the void with Emperor of Thorns; then Daniel Polansky’s brilliant Low Town trilogy, Abercrombie, Anthony Ryan, GRRM, and I just continued reading grimdark novels, helping edit Grimdark Magazine, and loving every merciless minute of it. And evidently, you, our readers, loved it, too. More and more issues sold—we almost broke even once!—and our submission queue runneth over with great stories from writers known and unknown, experienced and novice, all wanting to take part in this thing called “grimdark.”
Along the way there have been kerfuffles and outright bloody skirmishes: what is grimdark? Is grimdark even a thing? Seems like everyone wanted to have a say on it. Numerous bloggers, too many to mention, have written about the very existence of a thing called grimdark. C.T. Phipps and James Schmidt of @themightythorjrs held a round table to try to figure out what the hell this thing is. Is grimdark a genre? A subgenre? A sentiment? A form
To which I say, who cares? Grimdark, to me, is something you feel in your bones. You read it and feel, Something bad is happening here, and this guy/gal is going to try anything, good or bad, to get out of it alive. If they make it, hooray! If they don’t, hooray! It’s the feeling that counts. The feeling that desperate times call for desperate measures, and there are no right choices—except the choice to read on.
So here we are, bringing you all the stories from the first two years of Grimdark Magazine, including the one that kicked off our first issue, the first publication of Mark Lawrence’s Bad Seed. Just thinking about Alann Oak’s bloody evolution gives me chills, but it’s the ghost of Darin Reed looking over Oak’s shoulder that makes the story fantastic in every sense of the word. Between the covers of this first-ever Grimdark Magazine print collection, you’ll find top notch grimdark fantasy from well-known authors like Mark Lawrence, Locus Award winner R. Scott Bakker, Nebula Award winner Aliette de Bodard, Arthur C. Clark Award winner Adrian Tchaikovsky, Reddit Fantasy Stabby Award winner Michael R. Fletcher, Bram Stoker nominee James A. Moore, Tara Calaby, Richard Ford, Peter Orullian, Victor Milan, Peter Fugazzotto (whose story The King Beneath the Waves knocked me out), and lots more. On the other side of the SFF spectrum we have grimdark science fiction from Writers of the Future winner T. R. Napper, Matthew Ward, Aaron Fox-Lerner, Mike Brooks, and several others that stunningly capture the brutality of our techno-future. We hope you will enjoy reading these stories again if you’ve read them in our e-magazine editions, or if you’re really lucky maybe you’re reading them for the first time. Either way, we strive to bring you grimdark SFF you’ll love.
Three years after those first nervous days waiting for a reply from Adrian, I’m still here, still nervous that all the authors hate me. Still working with Adrian and the GdM team to publish the best in grimdark fantasy and science fiction. Though we live all over the world, grimdark fiction brings us together. We love to explore the dark and dirty worlds, meet grim and hopelessly striving characters who fight not for the archaic ideal of good versus evil but for survival, for existence, to live to fight another day, and face the challenges of a world that can’t be easily separated into moral dichotomies. It’s speculative fiction, but it’s real. You can feel it in your bones, and it hurts. And we love it.
We are delighted to bring you this print edition of our first two years, beginning, of course, with a foreword by Mark Lawrence because, yes, all things do start with Mark Lawrence. I am happy to still be here at GdM, and I am even happier that you, our readers, are still here, stronger and more supportive than ever. Thank you for keeping Grimdark Magazine alive in this brutal world of words. We hope to continue to bring you the best in grimdark fiction. Now read on and get Knee-Deep in Grit.
Cheers,
Mike Myers
December, 2017
The King Beneath the Waves
PETER FUGAZZOTTO
Werting could not break free.
The frigid sea held the boy, his feet churning, tired arms paddling. The rocky shore, so close, taunted him with every swell. His lame foot felt heavy as a stone.
Just as he was ready to give up, a wave lifted him. The water folded and he tumbled head over heels against sand and stone, grey sky replaced by a veil of bubbles and froth.
His hands dug at broken shells and shiny weed and he crawled out of the embrace of the sea. The water pulled at him but it could no longer drag him back. He would not join Hreoth and the long ship in the depths.
Blood and seawater dripped into a tide pool, disturbing the reflection of his emaciated face, his pale hair, the gash across his forehead.
“Look, the little shit got spit out from the sea. Can’t escape us that easy.” Oslaf, the only one Werting wished would have drowned, shuffled across the sand. Behind the old man, six others that survived were stripping off sodden furs and breaches, hanging them from branches, and slapping bare skin. One of them gathered salvaged axes and shields in a pile.
“Get wood, Oslaf. You and the waif,” said Roogar, his wet, greying beard clinging to the old scars on his chest. “We need fire or we'll die.”
***
By the time the sun slashed orange across the horizon, Werting was finally dry enough that he no longer shook uncontrollably. Fat Henging had found a few mussels and they boiled them in Emod's shiny helmet. The young clan warrior grumbled that the helmet was a gift and it would be ruined.
Werting was still hungry but he knew better than to say anything.
“Hreoth was an idiot,” said Emod, glancing in a small shard of mirror and smoothing his blonde beard. “Any fool could have seen the storm brewing. He should have stepped aside for someone whose eyes hadn't failed.”
“Someone wearing a shiny helmet?” said Roogar. He sat with his sword on his lap, his whetstone singing.
“Why the fuck not?” Emod kicked the pile of discarded shells. “Three miserable months, village after village, and what? Copper coins and rusted axes.”
“Don't forget Maeve.” Fat Henging hid his snickering behind a fist. His red hair curled like flames.
“His fucking pet crow. Maybe it’s better the fool sunk the ship. We go raiding and we return with a bird.”
“No bird now,” said Fat Henging.
Roogar shook his head. “Leave it. The man made a mistake. Elders should be respected.”
Emod burst out laughing.
***
Dawn brought dark swirling skies and the eight survivors began plodding north on the shingle.
At first, the clansmen bunched together, laughing and telling stories, but as the day dragged and the rain returned in sudden squalls, they stretched along the beach.
Black clouds, piled thick, ate the sun.
The boy Werting with his lame foot brought up the rear. Ahead of him walking side-by-side were Roogar, Yrm, and Wulf, who had managed to swim to shore with his prized axe. Farther ahead shuffled old Oslaf, his mouth moving in silent curses. At the front marched Emod, his helmet shiny in the gloom, and at his heels Fat Henging and the baby-faced giant, Hrolf.
They were a four-day trudge from the river mouth. Then another two days to the clan village.
Werting wondered how far they were from his own village. If he ran south, would they come after him?
Werting's gaze drifted between the ragged sea and the dark wall of trees beyond the dunes.
Hreoth, the drowned captain, had been the one who kidnapped him. A seven-year old boy dragged from his house. His mother's screams piercing the laughter of the raiders. His last memory of the village, black smoke against a bright blue sky.
Werting stopped walking.
The other men stopped a quarter of a mile ahead when they noticed he was no longer with them. They shouted. They waved. They cursed.
Eventually, they sent Oslaf.
“You stupid little shit!”
Werting turned his head just enough that the blow caught him on the skull rather than his ear.
“Making me walk back to get you.”
The sea slid around the boy's ankles. The tide had pulled back exposing writhing sand crabs.
“I should break your other foot.”
Werting remembered that day. He had thought that they would not come after him. He was no prize—a malnourished, undersized boy. But his captors had sent Oslaf. When the old man caught up with him in the pines, he smashed Werting's foot with a stone to keep him from running. Returning to the village, Oslaf said the boy had fallen, and was lucky that trusty Oslaf had found him.
Werting and Oslaf were almost caught up to the others when Werting stopped and pointed. From beneath the waves, a ring-whorled prow jutted out of the black waters. A once-golden banner sloughed from the mast.
