The Uncanny Aftereffects of 5 Uncanny Stories

A Story Becomes a Chinese Car Commercial
Hao JingFang’s “Folding Beijing” from Uncanny Magazine Issue 2 is the gorgeous and powerful story of a future version of Beijing in which the city literally folds to keep three classes of residents in their own zones at different times of day, and a garbage processor who takes on a dangerous opportunity in order to give his daughter a better life. After winning the 2016 Hugo Award for Best Novelette, the story and Hao JingFang received a great deal of Chinese media attention, which prompted her to respond with her essay “I Want to Write A History of Inequality” in Uncanny Magazine Issue 13. The uncanniest result of this attention, though, is that Hao JingFang became a spokeswoman for Audi, which released a TV commercial featuring her in 2017, using many of the themes and science fictional elements described in “Folding Beijing.”

A Story about Fanfiction Inspires Fanficton
Vina Jie-Min Prasad’s “Fandom for Robots” from Uncanny Magazine Issue 18 is a lovely story about an older robot named Computron who discovers an anime with a character who greatly resembles him, and falls into the world of online fandom. Computron eventually starts writing fanfic with his new friends, set in the world of the show. The story was a finalist for Nebula and Locus Awards and is currently a finalist for Hugo and Sturgeon Awards. Delightfully, if you search a certain well-known online Archive of fanfiction, someone has already written a fic about the story. (To the best of our knowledge the writer was not Computron.)

A Story Inspires a Tattoo.
Brooke Bolander’s story “Our Talons Can Crush Galaxies” from Uncanny Magazine Issue 13 is powerful statement about centering narratives away from toxic male murderers while also showing empowerment by skipping straight to the revenge of the victim, who happens to be a harpy. The story was a finalist for Nebula, Hugo, Locus, and World Fantasy Awards, and received a ton of wonderful feedback from people who felt inspired by its power—none more so than Richaundra Thursday, who got a back tattoo of the story’s title alongside some harpy wings. Uncanny gave Richaundra a lifetime subscription to the magazine, which is something we will do for anyone who receives a tattoo inspired by the magazine or one of its pieces.

An Uncanny Author Is Nominated for an Award for a Story That Uses Said Award as a Murder Weapon
The winding tale of the creation of Sarah Pinsker’s novella “And Then There Were (N-One)” from Uncanny Magazine Issue 15 is one of the uncanniest. We first asked Sarah to be a solicited author for Uncanny Year 3 the morning after she won her first Nebula Award for “Our Lady of the Open Road.” She started her novella “And Then There Were (N-One)” at the Uncanny Cabin retreat (a Backer reward for that Year 3 Kickstarter), and found herself inspired by a group Twitter fiction mash-up of Hamilton, Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, and marshmallow peeps (as detailed in her Uncanny Magazine Issue 15 and Locus Magazine interviews).

An Uncanny Author Creates Fanart of His Own Story
Uncanny Magazine Issue 23 is our fantastic dinosaur-themed shared-world issue. Starting as a Twitter conversation between authors Brooke Bolander, Sam J. Miller, Mari Ness, Nicasio Andres Reed, A. Merc Rustad, Elsa Sjunneson-Henry, K.M. Szpara, and JY Yang, it evolved into a full-blown shared-world concept of the evil Owen Corporation recreating dinosaurs through numerous Super Science means, including the creation of space-time portals. Sam J. Miller wrote “Red Lizard Brigade,” the prequel story for this world. It’s a tragic love story between gay Soviet soldiers working on the early stages of a weaponized dinosaur program who must make hard choices as their world unravels. So excited was Sam about his tale and the entire issue, he provided fanart for his own story!