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The Law & the Heart: Stories to Bend the Mind and Soul
The Law & the Heart: Stories to Bend the Mind and Soul
The Law & the Heart: Stories to Bend the Mind and Soul
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The Law & the Heart: Stories to Bend the Mind and Soul

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Exploring the seams where humanity and technology, society and individuality intersect, Nebula- and Sturgeon-nominated author Kenneth Schneyer presents thirteen mind-bending, thought-provoking tales of near and far futures that will amuse, amaze, and unsettle. The law will change, and the heart will change, and the heart will change the law. These stories confront the question of just what makes and keeps us human.
LanguageEnglish
PublisherBookBaby
Release dateMay 16, 2014
ISBN9781938808234
The Law & the Heart: Stories to Bend the Mind and Soul

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  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This collection of fourteen short stories is divided into three section.. The Law (8), the Heart(4), and The Law & The Heart(2). I enjoyed these stories... but the first section - over half the total stories - felt like an inside joke to me. I am an attorney, but as I read the first eight stories, I found that I kept wondering if non-attorneys would appreciate them.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    received a gratis copy of the book from the publisher; this does not impact my review.I've been a fan of Ken Schneyer's work for several years. Indeed, I had previously read about half of the stories in this compilation. They were even better the second reading--and even more, I can see how his skill has deepened over time. It's not a surprise that one of his recent stories "Selected Program Notes from the Retrospective Exhibition of Theresa Rosenberg Latimer" (not in this collection) is up for the Sturgeon Award and was shortlisted for the Nebula. Schneyer's background is in the legal field. This expertise incorporates very well with science fiction, and the first portion of the book focuses on THE LAW. It's very easy to write about whimsical technological improvements, but Schneyer adds intense realism by showing how something may be viewed--or even abused--within the law. "Life of the Author Plus Seventy" plays with the idea of cryogenics and debt, whereas "The Whole Truth Witness" shows how cases can be manipulated even when a witness cannot lie.I think my two favorites, though, were in the section on THE HEART. "Liza's Home" brings an entirely fresh perspective to the complications of time travel and parallel worlds. Then there's the story that devastated me--"The Orpheus Fountain." I hadn't read this one before. It's pure science fiction, but the situation it created is, for me personally, the stuff of horror. I typically don't like experimental stories. Often, they strike me as gimmicky and somewhat arrogant. Schneyer's writing is the exception for me. His story "Tenure Track" reminded me a great deal of "Selected Program Notes" (again, not in this book, but you can find it in Clockwork Phoenix 4 or the full story online for free) in how it uses letters to indirectly tell a deep story. In the case of "Tenure Track," it follows the relationship of a college professor and his wife as they endure treatments to extend their lives--but it's all done through letters, forms, and most heart-breakingly of all, a list of charitable donations for tax write-off.Schneyer created a strong collection. The title may be The Law & The Heart, but in truth, these stories are all about heart.

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The Law & the Heart - Kenneth Schneyer

Kenneth Schneyer

The Law & the Heart

Foreword by Liz Argall

Stillpoint/Prometheus

Stillpoint Digital Press

Mill Valley, California

StillpointDigitalPress.com

This volume copyright © 2014, Kenneth Scheyer

All rights reserved.

This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means — electronic, mechanical, or other — without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. For more

information, contact the publisher at

rights@stillpointdigitalpress.com

FIRST EDITION

For the publication history and copyright information of individual stories, see Publication History.

Book & cover design by David Kudler, StillpointDigitalPress.com

v. 1.0.2

Print ISBN 978-1-938808-22-7

Ebook ISBN 978-1-938808-23-4

For Janice,

without whom none of it

would have happened

Contents

Acknowledgments

I - The Law

Conflagration

I Have Read the Terms of Use

Grapple with Thee by Kenneth Schneyer & Gareth D. Jones

Half a Degree

The Whole Truth Witness

Exceptionalism

Life of the Author Plus Seventy

II - The Heart

Liza’s Home

The Orpheus Fountain

Keeping Tabs

Hear the Enemy, My Daughter

III - The Law & the Heart

The Tortoise Parliament

Tenure Track

About the Author

Stillpoint Digital Press

Foreword

Liz Argall

Dear friend, I want you to buy this book because it is tender, thoughtful, funny, you’ll make friends with some beautiful new characters, and it might change the way you view contracts and seemingly bland paperwork forever. Go ahead and buy it, we’ll be here when you get back.

When you do, you will be entertained by stories that explore the definitions of humanity, time travel, the construction of identity, intellectual property, artificial intelligence, library fines, paying to hang out in someone else’s body (whether they like visitors or not), domestic violence, linguistics, parenting, intergalactic multilateral agreements in a relativistic universe, aging, memory, and just how sweet sex can be when you been learning each other’s preferences for over twenty years.

Dear friend, thank you for buying Ken’s book. I know a story and its creator are not the same thing, but you might enjoy knowing that Ken is one of the nicest people I know, while being fiercely intelligent and passionately eloquent about the things he cares about. I love that he is so able to put together strong (perhaps even lawyerly) arguments, but that when you challenge his thinking, he will immediately stop and really think about it. I mean really think about it, and possibly chuckle with delight and clap his hands as he pursues new lines of thinking.

Dear friend who has bought the book and is just about to read it. . . I mean why else would you be hanging out in the introduction for this long? I like your style; I’m one of those people that reads introductions too (sometimes when I’ve finished the book, sometimes before). Virtual high five! We know we’re kinda awesome. I hope you will have been going to enjoy the heck out of this book. It made me so happy reading this collection. Some of these stories I’d seen as early drafts, and it’s so marvelous to see how Ken is always honing his craft and tuning his stories so that we can’t help but be drawn to his characters and fall in love.

This book that you are going to be reading is divided into three sections: The Law, The Heart, and The Law and the Heart. Within all you will see a reflective tenderness towards humanity, and you will see a light cast towards the processes and structures with which we make sense of the world. Every story engages with two of the central themes of science fiction: How do we construct and make sense of societies? And how do we construct and make sense of ourselves as individuals?

The final story in the collection, Tenure Track, is one of the first I ever read by Ken and continues to be one of my favorites. Wherever we go in this data-dense world of ours we leave fingerprints, we show preferences, and tell stories in the online groceries we order, the calls to action we respond to, in hospital release forms and donation receipts. Through the simple seeming lens of application forms and seminar registrations, we see a society struggling to deal with the outcomes of extended-life treatments that don’t work for everyone. By looking at these fingerprints, we see love, societal upheaval, death, grief, longing and a rebirth. We are future historians, projecting ourselves into implied lives. We empathically extend ourselves into this space and it is a moving experience.

These stories do not provide simple answers, but show wide-ranging adaptive techniques that are seldom perfect as the structures of government, legislation and individuals try to bring their best selves forward in a quickly changing world.

I hope you enjoy this collection as much as I do.

— Liz Argall, May 7, 2014

Acknowledgments

My friend and publisher David Kudler had the idea to assemble this collection in the first place, and has been endlessly patient with my peculiarities along the way. I’m grateful to the editors of the markets in which these stories originally appeared, both for their belief in the work and for their helpful corrections and suggestions: Michele-Lee Barasso, Kaolin Fire, Jessi Hoffman, Kathryn Kulpa, Jonathan Laden, Trevor Quachri, An Owomoyela, Stanley Schmidt, Cat Sparks, and Wendy Dalmeter Theiss, as well as their sundry co-editors and collaborators. Gareth D. Jones, co-author of Grapple with Thee, graciously consented to its appearance in this collection.

It is astonishing how many people read drafts of these thirteen stories over a period of six years, making crucial comments and suggestions. Primarily these were the members of three critique groups: the Writers’ Crucible (Jessica Brockmole, Mary Carroll, Ros Clarke, J. P. Davis, Paula Dooley, Annette Genova); the Clarion Class of 2009 (Heather Albano, Tiffani Angus, Liz Argall, Mishell Baker, Paul Boccaccio, Katie (Nate) Crumpton, Edward Gauvin, Grady Hendrix, Tanner Jupin, Nina Kuruvilla, Matt London, Val Nolan, Leonard Pung, Shauna Roberts, Eric Schultz, Nicholas Bede Stenner, Nicole Taylor) and our teachers (Holly Black, Robert Crais, Elizabeth Hand, Larissa Lai, Paul Park, Kim Stanley Robinson, Donald Wesling); and the Cambridge Science Fiction Workshop (Heather Albano, James L. Cambias, F. Brett Cox, Elaine Isaak, Alexander Jablokov, James Patrick Kelly, Steven Popkes, Sarah Smith). Others helped out of pure generosity: Rayna Alsberg, Julie Amberg, Steven Bacher, Sherry Baisden, Guy Bissonnette, Christopher Chien, Meredith Condit Lilea Duran, Marian Gagnon, Gail Kahan, Jeanne Kramer-Smythe, David Kudler, Colleen Less, Dan Less, Ken Liu, Madderbrad, Mary Ann Marcinkiewicz, Ernest Mayo, Thisbe Nissen, Janice Okoomian, Chris Powers, Rachel Schapiro, Carolyn Schneyer, Cinthea Stahl, Geraldine Wagner, David White, and James Boyd White.

Two of these stories were written as part of my 2010 Kickstarter project, Are You the Agent or the Controller? Without the backers of that project, they might never have existed.

My father, Jerome J. Schneyer, introduced me to science fiction as soon as I could read, fed my enthusiasm, and praised all my early attempts. He died more than fifteen years before my first story was published, but everything I write grows from that beginning.

And all gratitude ultimately goes to my wife, Janice Okoomian, and our children Phoebe Okoomian and Arek Schneyer, whose patience, forbearance, love and support have been the making of all this work.

Publication History

Conflagration: copyright © 2010 by Kenneth Schneyer. This story originally appeared in the Newport Review (Summer, 2010).

I Have Read the Terms of Use: copyright © 2013 by Kenneth Schneyer. This story originally appeared in Daily Science Fiction (December 3, 2013).

Grapple with Thee: copyright 2014 by Kenneth Schneyer and Gareth D. Jones. This story appears for the first time in this collection.

Half a Degree: copyright © 2014 by Kenneth Schneyer. This story appears for the first time in this collection.

The Whole Truth Witness: copyright © 2010 by Kenneth Schneyer. This story originally appeared in Analog Science Fiction & Fact (October, 2010).

Exceptionalism: copyright © 2014 by Kenneth Schneyer. This story appears for the first time in this collection.

Life of the Author Plus Seventy: copyright © 2013 by Kenneth Schneyer. This story originally appeared in Analog Science Fiction & Fact (September, 2013).

Liza’s Home: copyright © 2009 by Kenneth Schneyer. This story originally published in GUD: Greatest Uncommon Denominator (Winter, 2009).

The Orpheus Fountain: copyright © 2014 by Kenneth Schneyer. This story appears for the first time in this collection.

Keeping Tabs: copyright © 2011 by Kenneth Schneyer. This story originally appeared in Abyss & Apex (4th quarter, 2011). It has also appeared on the podcast Escape Pod (episode 389, March 28, 2013).

Hear the Enemy, My Daughter: copyright © 2013 by Kenneth Schneyer. This story originally appeared in Strange Horizons (May 6, 2013).

The Tortoise Parliament: copyright © 2010 by Kenneth Schneyer. This story originally appeared in First Contact: Digital Science Fiction Anthology 1, edited by Jessi Hoffman (2011).

Tenure Track: copyright © 2010 by Kenneth Schneyer. This story originally appeared in Cosmos Online (November 23, 2010).

I

The Law

Conflagration

The old man set down the pen and rubbed his wrist. Five letters was a miserable evening’s work, but the rheumatism and failing light thwarted him. Only ten years ago, fifteen letters at a sitting would have been an easy chore, even by candlelight. Sometimes Roger imagined that the quenching of his powers was temporary, that tomorrow all would be restored. But such deception never lasted long.

He sealed the letter, pushed his chair away from the writing desk and stood up carefully, feeling fire in every joint. Valetudinarian I’ve been all my life, discovering a new ailment every week, thought Roger. I might have waited for the real trouble.

The house was mute; he could hear late hoof falls and carriage wheels on Indiana Avenue. Ellen must have gone to bed. Most nights she stayed up until her father retired, but she’d been exhausted this week. It worried him, though it shouldn’t. Fatigue in his daughter — fatigue, a chill, an ache in the entrails, in Ellen, Sophie, any of them — tormented Roger with memories of error, disaster and the searing pain of loss.

Again he heard Alice beg to visit her sister in Newport instead of accompanying her parents on holiday. Again he heard his own pig-headed insistence that she oblige him. Again he saw the reports of yellow fever, saw the fear in Alice’s eyes, and heard himself reassuring her, reassuring her mother, reassuring all of them — It is the filth in Norfolk and Portsmouth that lets in the pestilence; here in Old Point Comfort, with good sea air, clean streets and clean rooms, we are protected from it. Again he saw Anne and Alice collapse, practically in the same moment, wasting away from the fever in barely a day, as if mother and daughter chose to depart together instead of staying with the prideful, guilty father. Careless, careless man. By now Alice might have been married; by now she might even have a child —

He pushed the thought from him, looking up at the portraits of Alice and Anne on the wall. The souls of the faithfully departed need your prayers, not your breastbeating; it is you, Roger Taney, who suffer, and that for a reason. Offer up your burden, and think of the daughters you have.

Not that Ellen stood much risk of a cold in this house. Biting and damp as it was in the street, here it was stifling. A furnace in a dwelling house, who’d have thought of such a thing? He still did not trust it. One day, he thought, it will ignite the whole row, despite what the landlord says. We’ll burn to death, like Peter Daniel’s poor wife, and there will be an end to my worrying. A fine end — nearly eighty careful years, cosseted and pampered and protecting my health like a newborn babe, to end in sacrificial holocaust, taking my family with me.

Roger grimaced. It was wrong to dwell on such fantasies, or on grief, or on guilt, but it was hard not to be swallowed by thoughts of defeat and black despair. To his friends and colleagues he presented the face of one whose faith sustained him in tragedy, but it was a façade; his heart was being slowly consumed, like a coal in that ominous furnace.

Perhaps things would be different next week, after the decision was announced, after this interminable case was over. It had haunted him for over a year, arriving from the clerk on the very heels of Anne and Alice’s deaths. One hearing hadn’t been enough, and after two oral arguments he’d seen his Brothers shouting at each other like stevedores across the conference table. In twenty years, this was the first time he’d had to remind them of who they were and what they were doing. It was as if the souls of his wife and daughter, to punish him for his selfishness and pride, had burst the boundaries of Purgatory to torment even the Court, keeping alive this reminder of their agony, visiting a yellow fever of the spirit upon him and those who survived with him. Never to let him rest; he would burn, as their flesh had burned with the fever.

Roger shook his head, coughed, and began to look in the cabinet for a cigar, chiding himself for being ridiculous. God did not permit the souls of the departed to return to earth, and even were He to do so, Anne was the last person who would torment him, no matter how much he deserved it. The case was just a case — a long, complex, politically deadly case, but still a case, one more decision in a string of so many. After it was over, perhaps he could rest for a while.

He found the cigar, cut off the end, and lit it in the candle, watching the flames blossom as he puffed. The smoke in his mouth calmed him as always, and he sat down again.

After a quarter-hour’s rumination, he was interrupted by an unfamiliar sound in the hallway beyond the thick door of his study. Something like the hiss of a steam engine and the roar of a bonfire, but with a rapidly descending note like a child’s whistle, then followed by a strange echo, as if the sound had been made in a grand rotunda. Roger leaned forward in his chair, listening.

Someone took a step in the hallway. Roger stood up again, cigar in hand.

Ellen? But that was not her footstep.

The door of his study opened, and a stranger passed over the threshold.

He was tall, six feet at the least, and clean-shaven, although Taney had never seen side-whiskers quite like these. About thirty-five or forty, with hair clipped short, like a criminal’s. His clothes were faintly wrong — Taney couldn’t quite place it, but the trousers didn’t fall properly, the coat wasn’t the right length or even the right weight, and the waistcoat fastened oddly. It was as if this man had just dressed himself for the first time, after seeing others do it, but without quite the knack. He carried the sort of leather bag a lawyer might take to court.

When this interloper entered the room he betrayed surprise, even shock, as if Taney were the last thing he’d expect to find in Taney’s own house.

Mister Chief Justice? he asked.

Few people addressed Taney in precisely that way, and he was put on his guard immediately.

Do I know you, sir?

No, sir, you don’t. My name is Weaver, Henry Weaver. The stranger spoke in an odd, mongrel accent; some of his vowels sounded as if they came from Baltimore, others from Boston, others from the territories.

There was an uncomfortable pause, and Taney cleared his throat. Mr. Weaver, I hope you will not think me inhospitable, but how do you come to be in my home at this late hour?

Weaver knitted his brows together and chewed on his lip. Mister Chief Justice —

Taney gestured with the cigar. I think ‘Mister Taney’ is sufficient for the moment.

Mr. Taney, explaining how I came to be here is the most difficult thing you could have asked me to do.

Taney tilted his head to one side. Indeed? How singular. I hope that you have not forced the lock, injured a servant, or entered with the intent to commit a felony?

No, sir.

I am glad to hear it. Well then, if I should not ask you how you came to be here, perhaps you will tell me the purpose of your visit.

A flicker of fear seemed to pass across Weaver’s face; then he took a breath and said, "I’ve come to ask you to reconsider the opinion you are about to issue in the case of Dred Scott v Sandford."

Taney felt the heat come to his own face; he took a puff from his cigar to steady himself.

You are a newspaper reporter, he said.

No, sir, I’m not.

"Then you have been reading the newspapers. How the New York Herald obtained what it claims to be the ‘opinions’ of the Justices is something about which I do not care to speculate, but I assure you that neither you nor Mr. Greeley knows what opinion I am ‘about’ to issue in the Scott case."

No, sir, I know he doesn’t.

Furthermore, young man, it would be inappropriate in the extreme for me to relate any part of what I plan to decide in a pending case, and it is similarly inappropriate for you to raise the subject.

Yes, sir, and I apologize. But I know the full text of the opinion you are planning to release.

Taney waved his free hand impatiently. Nonsense, sir. How could you know it?

I’ve read it.

"But not in the Herald?"

No, sir.

Pointing at Weaver with the cigar, Taney asked, Then how can you have done so? Has some other broadsheet beaten Mr. Greeley to his prize?

Weaver opened his bag, pulling out a sheaf of papers, the whitest Taney had ever seen, and

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