by Rich Larson
Rich Larson’s novella, Barbarians, appears in our [May/June issue, on sale now!] In this blog post, Larson discusses how a vivid dream, as well as the animated film Treasure Planet, led to this latest work.
As is the case for about a third of my work, this novella was inspired by a vivid dream. I woke up one morning in Ottawa recalling a dark cavern, an ancient technology activated by blood, and a single disparaging remark: barbarians. Mechanized human sacrifice has haunted my subconscious for some time; in this case I decided a hidden treasure had been genecoded to a specific family line and gruesome death was the required toll.
I wrote Barbarians fairly slowly, starting it pre-pandemic and finishing it off on August 1 2022. Much of it was written concurrently with my novel Ymir–thus the decapitation motif, which also crept into my Reactor story “Headhunting.” It’s my first novella, so I didn’t realize I was heading for that length until I hit what’s now the midway point and saw much yet to be done.
Though the initial spark came from a dream, Barbarians drew from many other sources during the writing process. Eric Kowalick’s creature art inspired the ecosystem of the decaying deepswimmer–both the deadly razormug and stately shell-pelican–while the floaties came from a Wiki on Half-Life enemies that never made it into the actual game.
The general set-up and vibes owe much to Treasure Planet, one of the best animated movies of all time. Once, in a small town in Spain, I faked my way through a book club discussion on Treasure Island solely with knowledge of Treasure Planet. If I ever fail to tear up during that scene with the Trent Reznor song, something is very wrong.
The Indefinite Cypher was inspired by that movie’s globular map, though the name is a reference to my never-published novel Cypher–which, thanks to the pitiless vagaries of online retail algorithms, exists in a sort of horrible limbo alongside my actually-published novel Ymir. If you like Barbarians, you might like Ymir. I’m still trying to sell people on Ymir, even though it sold poorly and won no awards, because I still believe it’s a very good, difficult book.
Once, in a small town in Spain, I faked my way through a book club discussion on Treasure Island solely with knowledge of Treasure Planet. If I ever fail to tear up during that scene with the Trent Reznor song, something is very wrong.
But, back to Barbarians. Since this was my first novella, I wasn’t immediately sure where to send it–which is maybe why it ended up getting published in French before English. I had mentioned the project in passing to my friend and translator Pierre-Paul Durastanti, and it piqued his interest enough that he started working on the French version soon after I sent him my first draft.
He took it to Le Bélial, the Paris-based publisher who did La Fabrique des lendemains (Tomorrow Factory) and Ymir (Ymir). They bought it for their novella line, and it came out in France–plus Québec, where I currently live–as Barbares. I completely failed to mention all this to Asimov’s when I subbed them the English version, giving Sheila Williams an unnecessary shock when she saw the novella she’d so recently accepted already on shelves, albeit in another language. Mea culpa.
I was forgiven, the contract was amended to specify language rights, and here we are: standing on the threshold of a rip-roaring intergalactic treasure hunt that some French people found “percutante et très riche” and others called “pas bien original ni recherché,” now available for your reading pleasure in one of the very best magazines to ever publish science fiction.
I hope it’s a thrill.
From Earth to the Stars 