🎙️ B. Morris Allen

Read Morris' story, Escape Algorithm, now!

The first thing people tend to think of these days when they see the word “algorithm” is typically tech related—that’s not the case with this story. Was that dissonance intentional?

I recognized the dissonance, but I can’t say it was really intentional. I stole the phrase “Escape Algorithm” from Fran Wilde during a discussion 15 years ago. I think we were either both going to use it as a prompt or write something together; I don’t recall, and nothing ever came of it. It’s been slowly simmering in the back of my mind since then, until, quite recently it re-emerged as this story. I’d been failing to write a tech story based off the idea when it came to me that ‘algorithm’ didn’t really have to be tech related, and then this flowed quite easily.

The protagonist of the story seems meticulous in the way she numbers every page and wants to get everything just right. Is that just her nature, or is it a lesson learned from over 3,000 days in captivity and a strong desire to get out?

I see that as simply her nature; she’s tenacious and methodical. But she definitely has also learned from her failure.

Do you think you’d have the willpower to keep at it after 3,000 days of meticulousness and failure?

I can be methodical and tenacious when I decide something needs to be done. However, my first attempts tend to be much more instinctive - trying the things that feel right. In this protagonist’s situation, I frankly doubt I’d be able to maintain the anger and bitterness; I’d probably just get down to making the best of it after a while.

Do you think she gets her revenge?

I think she does, or at least keeps trying. She’s one of those people who just never forgets a slight. I don’t think she’d ever be able to let it go.

If you were to escape something like this, do you think you’d immediately start planning your revenge or would you try to get as far away as possible from the people who did this to you?

I can be as petty as the next person, and I do react strongly to what I see as injustice. However, I also hope I’d see that if the only injustice was to me, there would be better things to do with my life than exact vengeance.

Does this idea of needing to be exact in creating this recipe/spell come from your former career of being a biochemist?

I think that her meticulous notes probably do link back somewhere to the lab notebooks we all kept - what we planned, what actually occurred, what the result was. If you really want to learn from experimentation, good records are essential.

How many times has this story been rejected from other mags?

According to Submission Grinder, it was rejected exactly 10 times.

What’s a great short story you’ve read recently?

I read a collection (When Mothers Dream) by Brenda Cooper, whom I’d known very little of, and really liked the story “Southern Residents”, about a young influencer exposed to the work of a marine conservatory. 

What book are you reading right now?

I’ve always got a few books going. Right now, they include Mercury Rising by R.W.W. Greene, Mud and Brass by Andrew Knighton, and  some NetGalley selections, The Castle and the Cloister by Laura E. Weymouth and Not With a Bang by Temi Oh.

Do you have anything else you’d like to share?

Speaking of rejection, I’m in the final stages of editing TRUNK: stories that took the long way, which is an anthology of original SFF stories that were rejected many times - anywhere from 11 (for a novelette) to almost 50 (for a short story). Submitting stories can be incredibly tedious, but publishing is a question of finding the right editor for the right story, and it’s one circumstance where tenacity really can pay off. I’m aiming to have the anthology out around mid-year - keep your eyes open for it!

Thanks to Morris for talking algorithms and revenge with us today!