Emily Y. Teng is a speculative writer based in Seattle, Washington. Her short fiction has appeared in Uncanny Magazine, the award-winning anthology The Book of Witches, and the award-winning anthology Death in the Mouth 2: Original Horror from the Margins. She has published poetry at Apparition Lit magazine. She currently works full-time as a narrative game designer and has been known to get way too competitive about “casual” game nights. “Dragon Pearl” is her second appearance in Uncanny, a compelling military SF story that deftly blends science, technology, and myth.

Uncanny Magazine: “Dragon Pearl” is a story of dramatic transformation in a futuristic world with biotechnical dragons. What was the spark or inspiration for the story?

Emily Y. Teng: It’s going to sound completely out of nowhere, but back in the olden days of the internet (i.e. twenty years ago), I came across a drawing someone had done of a woman in a qipao, nestled in the curl of a dragon’s body. I hadn’t thought of that picture for almost two decades, and then one night I was lying in bed unable to sleep, and the insomniac thought that popped into my head was this drawing. I found myself wondering who that woman was. What was her relationship with this dragon? Was she there of her own volition? Why would the dragon be okay with being this close to a human? And because this was about 2 a.m. and I had work the next day, naturally I got out of bed and started taking (largely illegible) notes.

So that was the start. But I’ve always been interested in retellings of myth and folklore, especially in futuristic settings, and a lot of the stories I’ve noodled with previously were along a similar vein. There’s something about the juxtaposition of mythology and technology that really resonates with me, and I tried to capture some of that in “Dragon Pearl.”

Uncanny Magazine: What research did you do for this story?

Emily Y. Teng: Not too much, honestly. Most of the lore I drew on—dragon pearls, the Chinese zodiac—was stuff I’ve just sort of known. I couldn’t pinpoint any specific moment; it feels like I just osmosed them at some point from an adolescence spent in Saturday Chinese classes.

The biggest “new” thing I incorporated would have to be less a single item and more of a complete overhaul of the central message and themes. The story I initially wrote was more conflict-oriented, with a more traditional three-act structure that culminated in the destruction of the Phoenix Empress’s palace. A really action-packed scene, but that had never felt satisfying to me. Then I happened to read Spring, Summer, Asteroid, Bird: The Art of Eastern Storytelling by Henry Lien. The book discusses non-Western storytelling structures and themes, and it made me radically rethink what I was really trying to convey with zodiarchon.

Uncanny Magazine: I love the depictions of family and the way the protagonist’s relationship to them shifts as the story progresses. The scene near the end, with the opportunity to see family one last time, is particularly poignant. What do you know about your characters when you start writing? Do they ever do things that surprise you?

Emily Y. Teng: My characters constantly surprise me, even the ones for whom I plot out personalities, motivations, and arcs. I’m always getting to the end of a story, then having to go back and completely rewrite the first two-thirds of what had come before. My first drafts are nightmares. In that particular scene, in fact, I didn’t know until the moment writing it that the main character would refuse to see her family one last time. I knew she would be getting one last shore leave, but it wasn’t until I put her in a groundcar and she was on her way that I realized she was never going to make it to her parents’ home.

Uncanny Magazine: If you became a zodiarchon, what would you miss the most?

Emily Y. Teng: Being able to hold my children. Not that I’d ever qualify, I’m fairly certain I’d make a terrible zodiarchon. Assuming I did get transformed, at some point I’d probably get too annoyed with following orders and just, I don’t know, go tail-whip a military station or something to vent.

Uncanny Magazine: How much does your work in narrative game design influence your fiction? Are there skills that transfer over from one to the other?

Emily Y. Teng: I work on a card game. That means the majority of worldbuilding or narrative work that the audience experiences is conveyed through card titles, mechanics, and art. Sometimes there’s extra space for flavor text too, but that’s not a guarantee. There’s no linear storytelling, no guarantee that anyone will know any particular bit of lore when they see another part of the world. So I’m always thinking of how I can worldbuild in a way that can fit cleanly into independent, bite-sized chunks. Can a piece of backstory translate cleanly into clear visual direction on a static piece of art? What worldbuilding details are important to get across in flavor text, and what do I have to be okay with people not necessarily picking up on? If someone sees only ever one card of a particular set, will it be an accurate depiction of what the world is? 

The most obvious way this has influenced my own writing is in this “bite-sized” way of thinking. It’s not a direct skills translation, but I have noted a correlation between my narrative game design work and the way I package themes and symbolism in my personal work. On the flip side, I think the ruthlessness that comes with self-editing my own fiction writing in order to polish it up for submission means that I’m better equipped to assess my narrative game design worldbuilding. I know with more confidence what details I can cut or change without losing my original vision and where to hold my ground.

Uncanny Magazine: What are you working on next?

Emily Y. Teng: Short story-wise, I’m working on a relationship drama about two researchers who live on a giant orbiting alien corpse and eat it to hallucinate science. Longer story-wise, I’m in the middle of a first draft of novel-formerly-known-as-a-novella about an imperial spy sent to hunt down a rogue operative on an island territory ruled by a fugitive internet goddess. Who knows her dad.

Uncanny Magazine: Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us!

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Caroline M. Yoachim is a four-time Hugo and seven-time Nebula Award finalist. Her short stories have been translated into several languages and reprinted in multiple best-of anthologies, including four times in Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy. Her short story collection Seven Wonders of a Once and Future World & Other Stories and the print chapbook of her novelette The Archronology of Love are available from Fairwood Press. For more, check out her website at carolineyoachim.com.