Writer Spotlight: David Anaxagoras
Welcome to the 25th installment of Writer Spotlight. This week’s focus is David Anaxagoras. I’ve reviewed 12 of Anaxagoras’s pieces, 10 of them individually on InkFoundry’s “Get WYSR” feed. (In case you didn’t know, InkFoundry is a wonderful and free resource that aggregates short fiction and poetry pieces!) One more WYSR review will be published / updated here on August 27th, when “Ladd’s Robot Repair” is published in Lightspeed.
Recurring Themes:
Coming of Age Stories
Toxic Masculinity / Positive Masculinity
Sexual Awakenings
Manic Pixie Dream BOYS (aka upending tropes)
Loneliness / Yearning for Connection
Day One - Aug 6
“Five Dispatches from Conflict Zone W-924/B Regarding Post-Battle Deployment of A. Thanatensis” | WYSR Review
Dr. Nathaniel Letheford sends five dispatches from the field of the deployment of a bio weapon.
“The Everlasting Wound of Polyphemus” | WYSR Review
Polyphemus is trying to acclimate to the modern world.
The Pairing: (Spoilers)
These two stories were pretty different.
Individually:
“Five Dispatches from Conflict Zone W-924/B Regarding Post-Battle Deployment of A. Thanatensis” This short story includes war crimes, bio warfare, and the theme of realizing guilt / responsibility for something horrible.
"The Everlasting Wound of Polyphemus” This flash piece is from the POV of Polyphemus in Greek mythology, in the modern world. It includes themes about healing from past trauma.
Day Two - Aug 7
3. “Under a Star, Bright as Morning” | WYSR Review
Molly and Jo are fulfilling the prophecy to bring about a new age.
4. “We Shall Not Be Bitter at the End of the World” | WYSR Review
A 12-year-old celebrates with their parents when a bright light in the sky signifies the end of the world.
The Pairing: (Spoilers)
These stories both involve a bright light in the sky.
Individually:
“Under a Star, Bright as Morning” This story is a satire of the birth of Christ, which I found hilarious. There’s upending of tropes about prophecies and “how the story goes”, and there’s themes about betrayal and a sense of being manipulated to serve someone else’s narrative.
“We Shall Not Be Bitter at the End of the World” This is a coming of age story, with reflections around the concept of doing something about a bad thing instead of just accepting the inevitable. There’s also a lesson about not doing hard things alone.
Day Three - Aug 8
5. “Three Birds That Came Out of Grayson Huff and a Bunch More That Fell from the Sky” | WYSR Review
Grayson doesn’t understand why birds keep coming out of him.
6. “Your Dasher Has Accidentally Awakened the Crawling Chaos” | WYSR Review
The delivery driver shouldn't have folded the takeout order like that. Now the crawling horror is loose.
The Pairing: (Spoilers)
These stories seem different to me.
Individually:
“Three Birds That Came Out of Grayson Huff and a Bunch More That Fell from the Sky” This one has body horror, but at its heart I felt it was a bildungsroman. The horror was the coming of age part, the sense of everything changing or dying, and that’s puberty for you. This POV of a child reminded me of “We Shall Not Be Bitter.”
“Your Dasher Has Accidentally Awakened the Crawling Chaos” This story was a funny flash! I liked the medium of the chat log of the dasher.
Day Four - Aug 9
7. “Gumba Cuddles” | WYSR Review
The narrator just wants to help their grandfather cuddle babies and help them get better. With fire.
8. “‘We Require an Engine,’ Said the Testicle Collective” | WYSR Review
A mass of testicles have left their human hosts and want Frank to build them a rocket.
The Pairing: (Spoilers)
These stories both tackle the concept of toxic masculinity and display / model a more positive kind.
Individually:
“Gumba Cuddles” This story was endearing and heartwarming. It’s from a child POV, which reminded me of “Three Birds” and “We Shall Not Be Bitter,” though this POV seemed younger than the previous two.
“‘We Require an Engine,’ Said the Testicle Collective” This story made me think about gender. See my review above for that. Under the positive masculinity theme, there’s a sub-theme of men being called out and asked to take accountability/get better for the people in their lives which is awesome.
Day Five - Aug 10
9. “The Boy Who Ran From His Faerie Heart” | WYSR Review
Sheridan can’t stop thinking about Finlay, and how the other boy touched his mouth.
10. “The Last Time I Was On the Prowl With Farrell Jenkins”
Autumn’s friend Farrell can talk to fireflies.
The Pairing: (Spoilers)
Both these stories have a manic pixie dream boy (love the inverted trope!) who shows the protagonist the wonder of magic. Both also have themes of awakening sexuality which reminds me of “Grayson Huff”, and an overall coming of age theme as in “Grayson Huff” and “We Shall Not Be Bitter.” Both also have themes of magical body transformations into animals: Sheridan and Finlay’s wolf hearts, and Farrell as a cat boy. This reminded me of “Gumba Cuddles.”
Individually:
“The Boy Who Ran From His Faerie Heart” This is a coming of age romance between two young boys, one faerie, one human. This one also had homophobia, as well as themes on manliness and how the protagonist disagrees with the adult men in his life, which reminds me of the language in “Gumba Cuddles” and “Testicle Collective.” Sheridan has a sweetness to his character that made his yearning for connection with Finlay very endearing and precious. Especially considering how lonely he is / isolated.
“The Last Time I Was on the Prowl With Farrell Jenkins” This one was short and sweet, a coming of age as well, though this one from the POV of I believe a young girl.
Day Six - Aug 11
11 & 12. “Anything Short of Death is Survivable” | WYSR Review
As a young scavenger employed by Grubb, Olive just wants to pay off her debt and start her life.
“Anything Short of Death is Survivable” This story has elements of the other coming of age stories, in the implied age of the protagonist and the attraction between her and Jakk reminds me of “Farrell Jenkins.” But in other ways, it’s different from other Anaxagoras bildungsromans in that Olive is already very much adult in her ways of thinking; she’s had to grow up very fast. The “shatter” reminds me of the Wormwood term in “We Will Not Be Bitter”, both being about the end of the world.
Day Seven - Aug 12
13 & 14. “Ladd’s Robot Repair” | WYSR Review (Upcoming, late August)
The MC tries to scavenge the Tumbledown ruins and meets a robot from before the apocalypse.
“Ladd’s Robot Repair” This story echoes many previous themes, including that of a young protagonist in the throes of puberty, as mentioned in the above stories. The main theme, though, is one of loneliness / lack of connection, which made the relationship between the protagonist and Bits very endearing, which definitely echoed “The Boy Who Ran.”
The MC is also a scrapper, which immediately made me think of “Anything Short of Death is Survivable.” The post-apocalypse setting reminded me of “Five Dispatches.” The Nullhound’s ability to morph also put me in mind of “Anything Short of Death” because the Bullseyes could change themselves as well.
Emmie’s Personal Favorite: “Ladd’s Robot Repair”
Interview Questions
What are the themes you tend to return to the most in your work overall? Why do think that is?
Anaxagoras: It’s always hard for me to consciously examine my work because…the best way I know how to express these thoughts is through my fiction. Addressing them directly feels like I’m fighting my own nature. Which is to say, I’m bound to be clumsy about it. But I think I can freely admit to two themes.
First, I tend to gravitate toward stories of boys, boyhood, a sense of childhood wonder and adventure, and ideas about masculinity, which often seem to get bound up together in my mind. Stories are usually about change, and a boy on the edge of growing up is interesting and fertile storytelling territory for me. I find adults and their problems mostly boring. I have to live in the adult world, I’m not eager to spend my fantasy time there too! More than that, I have a sense we need stories in which boys embrace different ways to be men.
The second theme is loneliness and the search for a sense of belonging. I recently realized while working on a new novel that many of my characters have a profound loneliness at their core. They are isolated in some way from the world, from others, or from a sense of connection, even if they are surrounded by a crowd. A boy who is celebrating his birthday feels weird and out of place because the world is ending. Polyphemus struggles with trauma and refuses to see love right in front of him. A human boy is tortured by the love he feels for a faerie boy in a world that refuses to allow it. In many ways these characters just long to be seen. So finding a way out of loneliness seems to be the work of many of my characters.
2. What character(s) in these pieces do you relate to the most?
Anaxagoras: Many of my characters deeply resonate with me, of course. I think when I look back there are two characters who really stand out.
The boy in “We Shall Be Bitter at the End of the World” feels a lot like me growing up. Just that unmoored sense of the world being a little bit off all the time, of being less a participant and more of an observer in your own life, and being a little bit alone at your own birthday party. The world around him is strange and beautiful and magical and frightening all at the same time, and it’s constantly in flux.
I also feel deeply for Sheridan from “The Boy Who Ran from His Faerie Heart.” He cannot survive in the human world. The spider silk holding his wounded heart together is gradually unraveling. But this world has made him afraid to embrace who he truly is, even at the expense of his own life.
These two characters have an inner strength that I admire. They’re somehow stronger and more determined than me. They keep on going. They have a resilience to them. They keep teaching me to be strong.
3. How Has Your Writing Evolved Since You Began?
Anaxagoras: I’m better at developing an idea into a viable story. Early on, I just ran with an idea and sometimes it worked out and sometimes I did a total faceplant. That was very frustrating. I had to stop and figure out my process—what do I need to know about a story to successfully write it all the way to the end?
So I’m much more methodical about developing stories now. I have a story incubator where I keep notes on various story ideas, add to them, evolve them, and if an idea isn’t sparking yet I’m comfortable letting it marinate for a while. I had a note for “Gumba Cuddles” for a decade. I had the grandpa character, inspired by a real-life news item, but no story. It wasn’t until I realized I wanted to tell the story from his grandson’s POV that it came together for me.
4. Do you tend to start writing a story idea out of a particular element, like character, setting, or point of view?
Anaxagoras: Story ideas can come from anywhere. Sometimes unbidden—but I also find you can train yourself to be sensitive to finding them. If you regularly gather story ideas, if you decide you’re going to come up with three new story ideas every week, you become more open to those sparks. I used to trade story ideas every week with a friend via email to keep up the practice.
Many of my stories start with a random image popping into my imagination. I once had a flash of a boy riding a giant tortoise into the woods, so I followed him. Eventually I got “The Boy Who Ran from his Faerie Heart.” Sometimes I’m angry about something—like the way gun violence against children is so quickly memory-holed—and I build a story around that.
As for finding a way into the story once I have the idea—I’m finding lately that I’ve become a very voicey writer. I need to find the “voice” of the story before I can write it. That could be literally the voice of a first person narrator, or it could be more of an authorial voice or a vibe. I had many false starts on “‘We Require an Engine,’ Said the Testicle Collective,” and it wasn’t until I tried writing it in second person that it suddenly snapped into focus.
5. What short fiction author do you look up to? Why?
Anaxagoras: When I moved into my office on the set of my TV show (Gortimer Gibbon’s Life on Normal Street) I hung two photographic portraits over my desk: Ray Bradbury and Rod Serling.
Serling fired my imagination from an early age and he was one of the first writers I was even aware of. (It’s surprising how adults fail to mention the writer. I mean, as far as I knew, Charlotte’s Web was written by my second grade teacher because she was the one who read it to us.) I know Serling isn’t exactly a short fiction author, but I started out wanting to be a filmmaker and he was a heavy influence.
I came to Ray Bradbury surprisingly late—in my early adulthood—but was immediately ensorcelled by his prose. It was devastatingly beautiful and had a way of making my heart ache for a place and time and characters I never knew. There’s a moment in Dandelion Wine when Douglas’s best friend is moving away and says his goodbyes during a game of statues, when Douglas is frozen in place by the rules of the game, and it reduced me to tears.
6. Anything else you’d like to say about your work?
Anaxagoras: Only that I appreciate what you are doing for writers and for the art of short stories with this series, and I’m so glad to be a part of it. I hope readers will explore all the great fiction you’ve resurfaced here and at InkFoundry, and I hope we all follow your lead and get in the habit of talking more about the short fiction we love.
7. Do you have any piece, listed here or otherwise, that you would like to promote?
Anaxagoras: Readers might be interested in my audiobook, The Tower, about a kid who finds himself captive in the penthouse of a 75-story skyscraper along with a dozen other kids, all missing their memories.
I’m also very excited about my new novelette “Ladd’s Robot Repair,” in Lightspeed this month. It will be free to read on August 27, and I hope everyone will check it out.
Finally, I love to hear from people on Bluesky @davidanaxagoras.com, or readers can subscribe to my newsletter or drop by my website to keep in touch.