Discussing the Lit Blitz: William Morris's "Lucy & Ida at the End Times"

**Video Coming Soon

Discussing the Lit Blitz, previous finalist Annaliese Lemmon talks with the finalists from our most recent contest about their work.

​This interview has been edited for clarity.

Annaliese Lemmon: Welcome, everyone, to the Mormon Lit Lab podcast. I'm Annaliese Lemmon, your host for this series where we discuss the 15th annual Mormon Lit Blitz. Today, I'm joined by William Morris, author of “Lucy & Ida at the End Times.” Welcome, William.

William: Thank you.

Annaliese Lemmon: And you were on our podcast last year, but for those who have not listened to that podcast, could you introduce yourself and explain what your experience is with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints?

William: Sure. My name is William Morris. I write criticism about and edit and do other stuff around Mormon literature. My interest in Mormon literature comes from being a lifelong member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I have, in the course of my adult life, served in a number of callings, mostly in teaching positions and elders quorum presidencies.

I served a full-time mission in the early '90s to the Bucharest Romania Mission. I live in Minnesota, and I like to write both Mormon kinda science fiction, weird fiction, but also straight-ahead literary realism, what Eugene England might call faithful realism. And of course, the piece we're talking about today is more on the science fiction side.

Annaliese Lemmon: Mm-hmm. And yeah, I was really interested in the larger world in this story. For example, I was really curious what the old man was wanting to build with those electronics. Do you know what it is, and is there a reason you chose not to tell us?

William: I don't know specifically what it is. The main reason I decided not to tell the audience is that there is a word count limit. Although even without that word count limit, I probably would have left that vague. And so my impression is that he's probably creating either something to infiltrate or to block wireless networks.

There is a little bit of a sense in this world that there is some sort of functioning, if not the internet, at least various networks of various sorts. And that connecting to them or using them can be a little bit tricky. But I will say that the world of the story is really only the world of the story.

I've written numerous, science fiction stories featuring Mormon characters in Mormon settings. All of them kind of rather near-ish to maybe pre-apocalyptic, maybe even post-apocalyptic. Some that could be considered solar punk. But I've written a lot of fiction that you could say takes place maybe in sometime in the next 200 years of our current reality.

However, even though some of those stories might have similarities and you might see technologies repeat, or maybe not completely repeat, but there might be similar concepts that are used, I do not try to make that whole world completely unified, completely consistent because what I'm interested in is science fiction as a way of exploring aspects of Mormon experience and themes that are interesting, and come out of both Mormon history and current practice as well as doctrine.

And so I don't make any attempt to be super consistent. However, what is consistent is probably my approach, where there's a lot of mixing of technology with what you could call spiritual gifts or spiritual technologies, and certainly this story falls into that type of story that I have told and will probably continue to tell in the future as well.

Annaliese Lemmon: Yeah, that makes total sense because science fiction's exploring about the what if and there's so many different what ifs that we have.  It totally makes sense that you'd wanna have different kinds of futures to explore. You know, I was just thinking that there is much more room to explore this specific scenario, and because it is constrained to a thousand words, I thought maybe you left some things out. Were there any tidbits you were considering about that you could have put in?

William: No, no, not at all. I actually wrote this piece specifically for the Mormon Lit Blitz, as I do all of my pieces. I know there are people who maybe cut stuff down, but I don't submit to the Mormon Lit Blitz unless I have a concept that I feel I can do justice to in the 1,000-word limit. And so I only focus on what will work within the flash fiction format.

Annaliese Lemmon: Yeah, it's definitely its own art form as opposed to short stories or novels and things. I did want to look at a commentary that I saw in this story, which is contrasting Lucy, who recognizes someone who could be a benefactor to society, not in the way others would recognize, and Ida, who does nothing for the society but pray, and is valued for that. If this is commentary you intended, what brought you to make that commentary?

William: So the contrast is intended. I think the way I characterize it though is Lucy is on the front lines and Ida is not on the front lines. And there are hints in the story that Ida actually has supplied Lucy with some of the technology that she uses, and is maybe pulling some strings here and there.

But, I don't really know for sure because again, I purposely did not work all that out because I wanted to make sure that I could tell sort of a complete arc for each of them and have them be related and hint at a connection between the two of them, but not blow it out so much that then I would be compelled to tell a different story that would then require, you know, 6,000 or 10,000 or 50,000 words.

Annaliese Lemmon: Okay. And was there any other commentaries or things that you were trying to do with this story?

William: Well, so a persistent theme of mine, both in my fiction as well as in talks that I've given, lessons that I've given, is this whole notion of faith, hope, and charity. And so, what I'm calling the chits, were not the first thing that came to me when the story. It started with kind of this image of Ida praying and these men walking down a long walk.

And she being able to like see them coming through cameras and the notion that she was in a kind of a place defensed by technology. And then not too far along after that, Lucy's work in kind of a sort of bishop storehouse. But I'm really pleased that within that setup, I was able to incorporate this notion of faith, hope and charity because, you know, even though they are shown in the story to be a technology, but the technology that can be fueled by actual action and deeds and faith and things like that, to me, that is like a key, aspect of any sort of science fictional premise that I deal with in relation to Mormonism, and especially, you know, futures that are maybe a little bit tougher than the ones that we are in now, or I should say even more tough, that are post-apocalyptic or almost apocalyptic.

This idea that those of us who persist into the future, will need to not lose sight of the utility of things like faith, hope, and charity. And so the notion of literalizing them into a piece of technology was something that I was really pleased with and is a theme that is fairly persistent in my work.

Annaliese Lemmon: Okay. Yeah, and I think it works well from a storytelling perspective because oftentimes it seems like, the other alternative is to have faith then create a miracle that feels more deus ex machina rather than a tool that can help solve problems in its own way.

William: Yep, exactly.

Annaliese Lemmon: Mm-hmm. And once again, I like to ask this question to everybody: Do you have a piece of media, any format, any genre, that you recommend for our audience?

William: Yeah, I definitely do. I just finished the last one that's been published in the series of Penric novellas, by Lois McMaster Bujold. These take place in her world of the Five Gods setting, which is a fantasy setting, kind of late medieval, early Renaissance style setting. But it is a setting in which the gods are real and miracles actually happen, although not in the most straightforward of ways.

And the Penric novellas, through the course of the novellas, Penric is the lead character who is technically possessed by a demon, but it is a demon that he has control of, and is a demon who has been passed down along various holy figures. And so, as a result, he has all of the stuff that those previous individuals, the saints that possessed this demon before him had.

And this demon is not completely defined, but it is sort of beholden to the god that he has been called to serve. And as a result of this semi-possession, he is able to then work magic or miracles, whatever you'd wanna call it, and do things that normal humans can't do.

And so it's a, it's a cool fantasy premise, but most of all, because it's told in novellas, they're easy to read. And also, there's now 16 of them, and so he's just been in so many different situations, and it's just one of the most interesting, I think, long-term explorations of what it means to have a religious calling and what it means to believe in a god and even communicate and interact with that god, even if those communications and interactions can be confusing and are fairly rare.

And so, I think it would be of great interest to most of our audience.

Annaliese Lemmon: Yeah, that does sound interesting. And do you have any other projects and places to find you online you'd like to tell us about?

William: Yeah. The best place to find me is motleyvision.org. There's a huge archive of posts written by me and by others about Mormon literature. But the main thing is if you go there, there'll be a way to sign up for a newsletter that I send out every other month. That way you can keep up with everything that I publish and get behind the scenes of things I publish, but also various random thoughts on Mormon literature and culture.

And then I am right in the middle right now of finishing up working with the designer on a cover for my Mormon Lit Lab project, The Courtship of Elder Cannon. And the book is done, and I just need a cover. And so, once we get that cover done, and it goes through the final proofread, I'll be publishing it next year, likely sometime between February and March of 2027.

So look out for that or sign up for the newsletter and we'll tell you about it.

Annaliese Lemmon: All right. And thank you so much. Is there anything else that you'd like to add?

William: No, just everybody go read, you know, the Mormon Lit Blitz stories if you haven't, and also pick up the anthologies and go back and read the older, stories and poems and essays that have been published if you haven't been reading all along.

Annaliese Lemmon: Mm-hmm. Yeah, there's a lot of good stuff in there. And thank you so much, and can't wait to see more of your stuff.

William: Thank you.

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