Terra Nova: An Anthology of Contemporary Spanish Science Fiction

TERRA NOVA

AN ANTHOLOGY OF CONTEMPORARY SPANISH SCIENCE
FICTION

Edited by Mariano Villarreal

© 2013 by Sportula

Originally published in
Spanish in 2012 as
Terra Nova.
Antología de Ciencia Ficción
Contemporánea

“The Texture of Words”: © 2012 by Felicidad
Martínez

“Deirdre”: © 2012 by Lola Robles

“Greetings from a Zombie Nation”: © 2012 by
Erick J. Mota

“Light a Lone Candle”: © 2012 by Víctor
Conde

“Bodies”: © 2012 by Juanfran Jiménez

“Memory”: © 2012 by Teresa P. Mira de
Echeverría

“Science Fiction from Spain”: © 2013 by
Mariano Villarreal

Translation of “Light a Lone Candle”, “The
Texture of Words”, “Bodies”, “Science Fiction from Spain”, the
Introductions and the Who Is Who: © 2013 by Sue Burke

Translation of “Deirdre”, “Greetings from a
Zombie Nation”, “Memory”: © 2013 Lawrence Schimel

Cover Illustration: © 2012 by Ángel Benito
Gastañaga

Cover Design: Sportula

Smashwords Edition

All rights reserved. No part of this
publication may be reproduced without the permission of the
copyright owners.

The Texture of
Words
, Felicidad
Martínez

Deirdre
,
Lola Robles

Greetings from a Zombie
Nation
, Erick J.
Mota

Light a Lone
Candle
, Víctor Conde

Bodies
, Juanfran
Jiménez

Memory
, Teresa P.
Mira de Echeverría

Science Fiction from
Spain
, Mariano
Villarreal

Who is Who

Sportula

1

To all those who supported this project
since its beginning and let our dreams soar higher: Kaesar, Joseba
B., Luis Alfonso, Andoni, Joseba S., Lola, Luisa María, Nacho,
Ricardo, José Manuel, Pedro, Luis and the rest of the friends from
the Bilbao science fiction club, TerBi. Thank you, thank you very
much.

Special
thanks to
Elías F. Combarro (@odo), our
collaborator
for
international
promotion
,
for helping
us
to publicize
this book
and its contents
to
some
of the most
important
people involved
in
science fiction
from around the world.

Also thanks
to Luis Pestarini, co-selector of the Spanish original anthology,
part of which has been used in this volume.

And to all the writers,
translators, artists, collaborators and other friends who have
accompanied us on this long journey and given their best. We’re
still going to need you —we hope for a long time.

1

Felicidad Martínez is a
technical engineer in industrial design, and she combines her
professional work as an illustrator and design teacher with
writing, principally science fiction. She has published stories in
the Argentinean online magazine
Axxon
and the anthology
Visiones 2007,
published
by the Spanish Association for Fantasy, Science Fiction and Horror,
among other publications.

“The Texture of Words” was
published in 2012 as part of the tribute anthology to the greatest
and most far-reaching space opera universe ever created in Spanish
science fiction: the Akasa-Puspa saga written by Juan Miguel
Aguilera and Javier Redal. This hard science fiction epic located
in the remote future and created with strict scientific rigor has
been compared to classics like
The Mote in
God’s Eye
and
Ringworld
. In this case, Martínez’s
story transcends the setting of the saga to offer a self-contained
story that shows special sensitivity.

Both terrible and
extraordinarily emotional, this story’s depth comes from the
introspection of magnificently drawn characters within the society
where they live: a cry for freedom and a critique of the role
assigned to women in oppressive totalitarian societies. This
amazing story can be compared to others as notable as
The Handmaid’s Tale
by
Margaret Atwood or the best works by the brilliant Ursula K. Le
Guin. We believe it will interest not just science fiction fans but
any minimally engaged reader.

For Charni, at first the world was noise.
Mostly noise.

Sometimes it came from
anywhere, sometimes from her —or so it seemed.

Even hunger and pain were
noise. And little by little, she began understanding that she could
make her own noise at will to satisfy both, although she didn’t
always get an immediate response.

There were also flavors and smells that,
combined with noise, allowed her to get a faster response to her
needs. Still, what finally helped her to be aware of the space she
occupied in that strange world without limits was touch.

It was not easy at first.

Feeling and texture surrounded her
existence. Soft, rough, cold, wet … Instinctively she made one
sound for agreeable textures and another for disagreeable ones, but
at times that was not enough.

There were two points in her existence, two
independent collectors of information, that let her feel and
perceive what was close to her, and, otherwise, to relieve
disagreeable sensations in certain parts of her being. They were
incredible sources of information.

When another presence, another being, placed
an agreeable pressure on her, surrounding her, making relaxing
sounds instead of noise, she only had to think of reaching the
source of these sensations and instantly felt closeness. A strange
sensation of protection and care.

At times something made those two sensitive
collectors perceive textures and, more disconcertingly, sounds.
Vibrations, really, that came from a focused noisemaker very much
like the one she had in a place within her being and with which
until then she had been able to express hunger, pain, sleep,
discomfort, pleasure … and little by little her noisemaker was able
to imitate the sounds emitted by the external source.

Still, the most incredible thing was to
discover through those points for absorbing information that more
things existed and they were finite. They had … contours. She
understood the concepts as large, small, same, larger, smaller. …
And there were more beings with textures! Beings independent from
each other. Even she had limits. Limits! And the most incredible:
her limits expanded. The longer she waited between checking and
checking again, the more she noticed it.

This way, over the course of her own
expansion, she learned the difference between noise and sound,
sound and vibrations, vibrations and repetitions, repetitions and
concepts, and concept and words. And what made her an isolated
entity the other beings was the word Charni.

Little by little, she was able to
differentiate the beings that surrounded her own with sufficient
precision and to associate a word, a concept transformed into
sound, to designate them.

There were two main kinds: inert and
living.

It took practice to recognize and
differentiate the inert ones because although they possessed
textures, smells and flavors, in general they did not make sounds
unless they were forced to. Yet, the characteristics that defined
them tended to be invariable, so once they were learned and
memorized, it was hard to mistake them.

Living beings, on the other hand, were more
complex. It was true that they continually produced sounds and
noises that characterized them, although the differences could be
subtle. Still, their features could be variable. Their textures,
smells, and even sounds could change, at times slightly and at
other times markedly.

Charni always had to concentrate as hard as
she could with all her senses to recognize them and differentiate
them satisfactorily. But she discovered that the key lay, above
all, in the living beings whose limits did not expand. And once she
had memorized the curves of their upper contour and compared them
with her own, even in spite of the small changes they could suffer,
the margin of error for identifying them was minimal.