Crystal Huff

I’m publishing text-based interviews with authors from my science fiction and fantasy anthology Recognize Fascism, which was published in October 2020 by World Weaver Press. I thought it might be nice to highlight their work again, and remind folks that this book is still a resource (and sometimes prescient!), and it was honestly lovely to touch base with the authors again. Doing these interviews has also reminded me of how proud I am to have done this work. 🙂

TODAY: Luna Corbden, whose story in Recognize Fascism is “That Time I Got Demon Doxxed While Smuggling Contraband to the Red States.” You can also see Luna read a snippet from the story on YouTube here!

Crystal: First off, let’s talk about your story in RECOGNIZE FASCISM! What drew you to the topic of your story?

Luna: After the 2016 election, I started gaming out how things might go. I thought through the implications of a second American Civil War, and what that would mean for the internet. I worked at an ISP in the early 00s, so have a little understanding of how the internet backbone works. There’s a lot about the free and open internet that we take for granted, that is not necessarily built into the infrastructure if a bad actor gained physical control of certain devices. We see this in countries with internet censorship. 

So I asked myself, if fascists in Red States gained military control over the data centers where internet traffic flows into and out of those geographic regions, how would our world change? How would that affect supply chains and the movement of information? I created an antifa smuggler at the edge of that physical border who could straddle both internets across physical and digital realities. Then, just to make it fun, I added a little magic.

I presently live firmly on the Red side of the state I wrote about, and that’s a regular worry.

Crystal: For sure, understandable. What was your favorite part of writing this story?

Luna: Worldbuilding is always my favorite part. I tend to start there. It’s the what-ifs that intrigue me the most.

Crystal: Why did you steer the story in the direction that it went, and did anything about that direction surprise you along the way?

Luna: At the time, doxxing was a huge concern. (It still is, but bigger concerns came along.) What if, instead of riot cops, 4chan trolls could send demons? I’ve always been fascinated with the metaphorical parallels between digitally-virtual worlds and magical-virtual worlds. If a spirit world did exist, how would that interplay with the astral planes that we’ve created out of 1’s and 0’s? What if the internet could be used to teleport demons for a physical attack? Would hacker networks form that are just as focused on magic as they are on information security?

After I set up the world, this became an action story, so the work became focused on the beats of the struggle itself. 

Crystal: What did you learn during the process of writing and/or editing this story?

Luna: If you are at high risk of demons or icy sidewalks, always keep a bag of rock salt handy.

Crystal: LOL! What work did you do in order to authentically present the voice of your narrator?

Luna: At the time (and still) I was feeling a little helpless and ineffectual in the anti-fascism fight. I think a lot of people are. Yet everyone is needed, every role is important, even if we can’t see it. I worked that out through my character West, who, like me at the time of writing, was feeling isolated and selfish and unhelpful. There’s a bit of an unreliable narrator going on in the story, where, through her actions, we see that West is not always aware of herself. She is doing a great deal of work, at significant risk to herself. She’s also nonbinary but can’t be bothered with what that means. She’s got the heart of a rural person and the values of an interconnected urbanite. I let herself be who she was on paper without trying to define her in ways that she herself could not be bothered to do. After all, there’s goats need feeding.

Crystal: Heh. I feel that one, as someone who does a lot of gardening to feed people. 🙂 Okay, let’s talk specifically about the editing process we underwent together. When you started the editing process with me, what were your hopes and fears? 

Luna: I’m always worried that an editor might change the heart of my story. But I agreed with most of the corrections, which were reasonable text-level changes. The couple of changes I disagreed with, I was able to express my perspective and we worked it out.

Crystal: If you could advocate that a reader (or editor!) go to one Wikipedia page for more context on your story, what page would that be?

Luna: The internet isn’t forever, and it’s built on physical infrastructure entirely dependent on our trust in the entities that maintain it.

Crystal: What do you wish people would ask you about this story or about the larger RECOGNIZE FASCISM project?

Luna: How do we stop this fascism thing? But then, I think people are already asking that.

Crystal: What’re you working on lately? Share! 🙂 

Luna: I haven’t had the spoons lately to write much fiction, because I’ve been focused on nonfiction projects. 

I’ve got a ghostwriting client, Natasha Helfer, who is a sex therapist. (She’s given me permission to talk openly about the project.) We’re writing the story of how she was excommunicated from the LDS (Mormon) Church for her scientifically-based public views on masturbation, marriage equality, LGBT+ rights, and use of pornography. I’ve done considerable work writing about recovery from religious trauma within the Mormon experience, and this is a continuation of that work. 

Fascism starts at home. I don’t believe fascism is anything new, just a continuation of human history where the most ruthless rise in power to control those who would rather live in freedom and peace. Religion has been a spiritual bludgeon when swinging a sword gets too tiresome. Christianity has been an instrument in genocide and colonization. The LDS Church has not been innocent, with anti-indigenous genocidal activities occurring within my lifetime. Their namesake scripture the Book of Mormon fully justifies the 19th Century doctrine of Manifest Destiny (without naming it such) – that is, the idea that the “Promised Land” is theirs for the taking. And they believe that one day, everyone will be LDS, and thus they continue to colonize around the world through their missionary programs. 

That’s how, like West in my story, I do my best to fight fascism in my own way, by helping former Mormons deconstruct their belief system and build something new that is centered around self-actualization, egalitarian community, and a thoughtful value system. Once freed of their own burdens, former Mormons often become fierce advocates for social justice.

Crystal: Wow, thank you. I see a lot of this work in your posts on Mastodon, too. Super appreciated. 🙂

Luna Corbden (who also writes as Luna Lindsey) lives in Washington State. They are autistic and genderfluid. Their stories have appeared in the Journal of Unlikely Entomology, Zooscapes, and Crossed Genres. They tweet like a bird @corbden and can be found on Mastodon here. Their novel, Emerald City Dreamer, is about faeries in Seattle and the women who hunt them.