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Authors: Steven Savile

BOOK: Elemental
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Why Elemental?
December 26, 2004.
The day the wave came. We all saw the images on our television screens though at the time we simply couldn't appreciate the magnitude of what we were witnessing. We were left feeling numb as we looked at images of Phuket and Banda Ache and watched the number in the corner of the screen ticking forever upward as the death toll rose—only then did it begin to sink in and we were engulfed by a collective grief unlike anything I have experienced in my lifetime. We were suddenly aware; we knew what tsunamis were, we knew how they were formed, and we knew, in sound and vision, the devastation they left in their wake. It is the dual gift and curse of the media generation, we cannot help SEEING things, and that immediacy affects us. These were real lives, real families, not episodes of glitzy television shows. Like the wave itself, the media coverage was relentless, and with good reason: this was a disaster on a worldwide scale.
I am lucky, I know good people—good people who know even more good people—which is how this book came about. For every one of the writers in here two more sent messages of support for the project and put us in contact with people who threw themselves body and soul into helping with the project. We owe the editors, the production teams, the marketing departments, the buyers, the reps, and the designers, absolutely everyone who had a hand in making
Elemental
real. You see, the science fiction community is exactly that—a community—and it banded together in the form of this book in a way that made me proud to be a part of it and call these people my friends. These people inspired me with the way they responded to the challenge and they humbled me with their generosity.
I saw the images of destruction on the television in a hotel room in London, but it wasn't until I retuned home to Stockholm that the shock wore off and the numbers really started making a sick kind of sense. On January 11, 2005, everything changed for me. I was walking down the corridor to the classroom where I taught fifth grade at the English School in Stockholm, ready for another day of the same old same old, when the school psychologist grabbed me and asked if I had heard. The way she said it stopped me cold. Six of the children had been there, two were still unaccounted for, and one of my own eleven-year-olds, Nikki, had stood on the beach in the middle of it, surrounded by corpses. She was all right. Her family had returned with a young boy who had lost his entire family on that beach. Then, with it right there in my face, I started to think and for a moment felt utterly helpless against the sheer force of nature I was up against. I got home and I called Alethea and asked if she was up for doing something stupid—my way of saying
I've had another one of those huge ideas; think we can pull it off?
She said yes.
Suddenly the ball was rolling. Over the next few weeks,
Elemental
was conceived, a collection of stories showcasing the various elements of speculative fiction, hence the wide variety of stories presented here, from space opera and Vonnegutesque absurdity to high fantasy, magical realism, and the shadowy fringes of dark fantasy and slipstream. I wanted it all, in one book, unified because in itself
Elemental
represented the way the entire community banded together to help.
There was never any question that the money raised by the project should go to help the children left behind, so it was a natural choice to donate all proceeds to Save the Children's Asia Tsunami Relief fund.
The disaster may have slipped from the front pages of our newspapers and been replaced by celebrity gossip on our television screens, but before I go, I want to leave you with some of the cold hard facts.
As of today:
 
INDONESIA: 122,232 people dead, 113,937 missing
SRI LANKA: 30,974 people dead, 4,698 missing, and over 100,000 families have been displaced
INDIA: 10,776 dead, 5,640 missing—5,554 on the Andaman and Nicobar Islands
THAILAND: 5,395 dead, 2,993 missing
SOMALIA: 150 dead
MALDIVES: 82 dead, 26 missing
MALAYSIA: 68 dead
MYANMAR: 59 dead
TANZANIA: 10 dead
SEYCHELLES: 3 dead
BANGLADESH: 2 dead
KENYA: 1 dead
AUSTRALIA: 13 dead, 349 missing
AUSTRIA: 6 dead, 500 missing
BELGIUM: 6 dead
CANADA: 4 dead, 87 missing
CHINA: 15 dead (10 from Hong Kong; 3 from the mainland, and 2 non-Chinese residents of Hong Kong), 29 missing
CZECH REPUBLIC: 1 dead, 7 missing
DENMARK: 7 dead
FINLAND: 5 dead, 214 missing
FRANCE: 22 dead, 74 missing
GERMANY: 60 dead, 668 missing
ISRAEL: 5 dead, 5 missing
ITALY: 20 dead, 310 missing
JAPAN: 8 dead
NETHERLANDS: 6 dead, 30 missing
NEW ZEALAND: 2 dead, 64 missing
NORWAY: 16 dead, 908 missing
SINGAPORE: 8 dead, 31 missing
SOUTH AFRICA: 11 dead, 4 missing
SOUTH KOREA: 11 dead
SWEDEN: 52 dead, 1,838 missing
SWITZERLAND: 23 dead
TAIWAN: 3 dead, 45 missing
UNITED KINGDOM: 51 dead, 1,083 missing
UNITED STATES: 18 dead, 472 missing
 
In total, 170,125 people from 36 countries lost their lives, with another 134,012 people missing, the majority of whom are now presumed dead. Over one-third of these were children. These figures don't include those who were injured, those who lost their homes, those whose families were swept away.
On Christmas Day 2004 these weren't just numbers, they were people with families. Twenty-four hours later they became statistics in one of the world's worst natural disasters.
It seems fitting to write this closing paragraph today because it is the six-month “anniversary” of the school psychologist stopping me in the corridor. Six months gone by in the blink of an eye for me, but not, I suspect, for those left behind in the wake of the wave who still need food, shelter, clothes, an education, things we all take for granted. In buying
Elemental
you have gone a little way to helping rebuild these children's lives. It's a small step, but small steps can change the world. I thank you with all of my heart.
 
Steven Savile
June 11, 2005
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in these stories are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.
 
 
ELEMENTAL: THE TSUNAMI RELIEF ANTHOLOGY
Copyright © 2006 by Steven Savile and Alethea Kontis
Introduction copyright © 2006 by Arthur C. Clarke
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.
 
 
Edited by Steven Savile and Alethea Kontis
 
 
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
Tor
®
is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
 
 
eISBN 9781466827356
First eBook Edition : August 2012
 
 
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Elemental : the Tsunami relief anthology : stories of science fiction and fantasy / [edited by] Steven Savile and Alethea Kontis.—1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-765-31562-9 (hc)
EAN 978-0-765-31562-5 (hc)
ISBN 0-765-31563-7 (tpbk)
EAN 978-0-765-31563-2 (tpbk)
1. Science fiction, American. 2. Fantasy fiction, American. 3. Science fiction, English. 4. Fantasy fiction, English. I. Savile, Steven. II. Kontis, Alethea.
PS648.S3E544 2006
813'.087608—dc22
2005034486
First Edition: May 2006

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