Chatting with Frank Baird Hughes

Frank Baird Hughes is a Philadelphia public school teacher and former (current?) anthropologist. He writes science fiction and fantasy stories about life and unlife reinventing one another. You can find him on Bluesky at @cultureworrier and at frankbairdhughes.com.

Frank is the author of “The Oneiromantic Sheep” from Issue 10.

Q: “The Oneiromantic Sheep” features an interesting blend of pastoralism juxtaposed against space travel. How did you approach blending these while writing? Do you see the tension between them as an important element of the story?

One question that interests me is how humans, non-humans and non-living things affect one another. I think the tension I’m poking at is where certain humans imagine themselves atop everything else. The story doesn’t assume that industrialization or capitalism are some logical end of human development.

The story is part of a larger universe of stories I’ve written in which machine intelligences (actants; also called godplanets) have improved on themselves to the point that their abilities lie outside human understanding. The actants, who have desires of their own but no “natural” urge to dominate or enslave humans, created gates that allowed humans to colonize a set of planets. A large actant might inhabit a planet; smaller ones can animate a tree or building--or change a flock of sheep to permit it more autonomy. Humans now find it impossible to claim to be the only sentient beings.

Q: In your blog piece about “The Oneiromantic Sheep,” you shared that the story didn’t begin as explicitly anarchist. At what point in the process did you realize it was?

My reading and connection to anarchist politics is underdeveloped, so I’m glad I was able to incorporate anarchism into my story! I based the economy in my story partly on pre-European contact societies—taking inspiration from feasting and cooperative living sans capitalism or a controlling central government. I figured that some remnants of a colonial government still existed on the planet, but these were far away and irrelevant to my characters. Not worth mentioning, really.

This past year on my work commute, I binged a LOT of David Graeber. For those not familiar, he was an activist, an anthropologist, and an anarchist. I wrote the story before I read Debt or The Dawn of Everything, but so much of what he says resonated with what I saw the story doing. For instance, like most anthropologists I know, he argues against viewing societies as “progressing” through evolutionary stages whose naturally highest form is the nation-state. After my fourth Graeber book, it seemed natural to me that the folk of Avunculus would probably do fine in the long term despite (or even because of) the absence of a state to compel obedience.

Q: Your story reflects anarchist ethos not just politically, but relationally. The beings relate to one another through mutual care. Was this a conscious characterization choice on your part? Or did it emerge naturally?

I think it emerged naturally out of what I know from anthropological literature. The archaeological record provides for the strong possibility that humans have often chosen to create societies like these.

Q: You mentioned reading ethnographic research on multi-species relations as part of your writing process. Can you share any interesting tidbits with us?

Multi-species work has become popular in recent years. Ethnographers have variously looked at rainforests, mountains and deserts as active protagonists in and beside human cultural life. Even corn and corn’s relational connections to humans have been examined. I love that corn can be a main character!

The medical anthropologist Natalie Porter wrote an article called “Training Dogs to Feel Good: Embodying Well-being in Multispecies Relations.” She points out that humans can never fully understand the inner life of a dog, nor how they experience the world or their own bodies because of the extent to which our biologies differ. But those of us who care for dogs routinely create models that predict a dog’s mental and physical state so we can act accordingly. The specific case of human-dog relations is applicable to understanding how beings with very different bodies can still care for one another. Academics call this intercorporeality, a concept that has definitely influenced my thinking on the sheep!

Q: As somebody with expertise in both fiction writing and anthropology, what do you think fiction can do that anthropology can’t—and vice versa?

Thinking of intercorporeality, I suspect good fiction requires writers to anticipate other people’s experience of the world. They write stories others can read (both figuratively and literally). Some academics—particularly anthropologists—have trouble with that. The jargon can be impenetrable to outsiders, including those they write about (Graeber is one exception).

But anthropology has developed arguments writers can use. Particularly science fiction writers. That there are uncountable ways to “do” gender, family, economy, or religion. That civilization wasn’t perfected in Greece or Britain or the USA or by anyone ever. That ideas about human difference in capability are less objective reality and more productions by cultural actors to serve certain interests. The common example of this is race, a purportedly “natural” set of categories that European colonizers found invaluable.

Q: Do you believe that “the human condition” exists, and where do you fall on the nature vs. nurture debate?

I’d pluralize the term and call it “human conditions,” considering how many ways humans do things.

Although genes and environment interact in complex ways, I look more to nurture when thinking of “human conditions,” especially human diversity or the way we choose to live with one another.

Q: What have you found to be the most successful content to include in your newsletter?

I am still figuring that out. I hope to use it to share updates about my literary feats and successes, but it is a work in progress.

Q: Online you teased a new sci-fi story about the Ben Franklin Bridge—can you tell us a bit more about this? What can we expect from you next?

Occasionally, I’ll walk the Ben Franklin to Jersey and back. A couple of signs have captured my attention. One asks people not to pee on the walkway. The other memorializes the workers who died building the bridge a century ago. I like to imagine what would happen when objects gain intelligence. Would pigeons annoy the bridge? What might the bridge make of the violence in its origins? The result is a story about a future Philadelphia in which an aging bridge safeguards its dignity—and acts to keep unpleasant people out of Philly.