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Albuquerque authors Lauren C. Teffeau, Sarena Ulibarri go beyond the real world with speculative fiction
Lauren C. Teffeau and Sarena Ulibarri are imaginative Albuquerque writers of what is known as speculative fiction. Their recent work fits into the subgenres of science fiction and fantasy.
Both Teffeau’s most recent book, the novel “A Hunger With No Name,” and Ulibarri’s second novella, “Steel Tree,” came out last year.
The structure and some characters in “Steel Tree” are central to Ulibarri’s science fiction retelling of something unexpected — Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s classical ballet, “The Nutcracker.”
The setting of the retelling is on a moon called Eta. It has a fertile valley, though most of it is “a volcanic wasteland.”
In the ballet, as in the book, Clara is the lead character. However, in the novella, her name is spelled Klara. Fritz is her brother in the ballet. In the book, he’s a jealous neighboring farmer.
Drosselmeyer is the avuncular toymaker-gift giver in the ballet, and reimagined as a maker of nutcracker androids in the novella. He’s got one swiveling cyborg eye and one noncyborg eye.
The book’s opening scene is a Winter Party which this year Klara organized by herself. Her parents had left Eta for a planetary colony, leaving Klara to her own devices.
Klara wants her Winter Party to be as joyful as she remembered the parties her parents had arranged before leaving Eta.
The steel tree of the book’s title is a futuristic Christmas tree. It’s actually a space elevator that resembles a gigantic metallic tree.
Klara tells two party guests that she made other holiday decorations.
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“Lots of them, in fact,” Klara proudly declared. “Ice sculptures and spiral topiaries wrapped in silver tinsel. Trays of snowman-shaped cookies and peppermint cupcakes. Mistletoe draped around doorways, sparkling paper snowflakes dangled from the hanging planters.”
Suddenly, people began fleeing the party. What scared them was a giant rat, rearing on its haunches, “easily five-feet tall with dagger-like teeth.” Here again is another adoption. The menacing rat in the novella is a character taken from “The Nutcracker” ballet in which the Mouse King, or Rat King, is the main antagonist.
In fact, Ulibarri went a step beyond reinterpreting characters from the ballet.
The colony where Klara’s parents now live is named Petipa. That happens to be the last name of Marius Petipa, who was a real person — a 19th century French Russian dancer and choreographer.
Petipa remains widely known today for his choreography, especially of “The Nutcracker” ballet for the Royal Ballet.
Ulibarri said she pursued a retelling of “The Nutcracker” after attending a performance of the ballet with her husband.
“My husband loves to watch ‘The Nutcracker’ every year. I told him, ‘I’d go with you but to a different production,’” she said in a phone interview.
She did go. They saw it at Popejoy Hall.
“I was struck by a scene early on where Drosselmeyer brings two automatons as gifts to the children. I was struck that these were basically robots. And I wondered if anyone had done a science fiction retelling of (the ballet). I couldn’t find any. So I knew I had to write it,” Ulibarri said.
Some readers of the novella will likely connect the book’s references to the ballet’s story and characters. “They’re not exactly the same as the original but there are things people will recognize if they’re familiar with the original,” she said.
Ulibarri is from Denver and came to Albuquerque in 2003, where she got a Bachelor of Arts in English from the University of New Mexico, taking many creative writing classes.
She obtained a master’s degree in creative writing from the University of Colorado Boulder.
Ulibarri and Teffeau are friends and colleagues. They are part of a writers group and have been critiquing each other’s work for about 10 years.
Teffeau said that as a child she was attracted to the image of the “Star Wars” character Darth Vader on her TV screen, and since then she has always gravitated to fantasy and science fiction stories.
She grew up near Philadelphia, received degrees at universities in the South and moved to the Midwest before coming to Albuquerque in 2009.
She has described her novel “A Hunger with No Name” as “a coming-of-age tale with an environmental focus featuring an immersive fantasy setting inspired in part by the high desert of New Mexico.”
Teffeau writes on her website that she finds it ironic that she wrote the novel in 2016 as Trump was first elected to the presidency, and now is seeing it published as he is returning to the White House.
That political background, she writes, “puts me in a very weird headspace as many of the themes and philosophical questions I wrestle with in the book are ones our society is still grappling with — environmental issues, the decline of cultural relevancy, revolution, over-reliance on technology, the specter of artificial intelligence, rejection of capitalism’s ideals, and the conflicted role of women in society.”
