by Ryan Hunke
Ryan Hunke is a former army soldier whose first Analog story appears in our latest issue. In this blog post, he discusses his past from his return home from the military, to his entry into academia, and calls on Analog readers to foster an enthusiastically diverse community around speculative fiction. Read Hunke’s latest, “A Synthetic’s Field Notes on Speed-Dating, and Birds” in our [July/August issue, on sale now!].
Returning home—either from a deployment or after their term of military service—can be one of the loneliest times of a soldier’s life. There is an abrupt disconnection from something that’s hard to appreciate or describe while you’re in the bubble, located in a space that sits at the intersection of niche community and shared purpose. Such sudden transitions are temporarily alienating at best, but to those without social safety nets, the isolation can be catastrophic.
My first redeployment homecoming was nearly ten years ago, in October of 2013. On the last leg of our long trek home from Afghanistan, our senior NCO, First Sergeant Fischer—a man with five deployments under his belt—took a moment to sit us down and warn us about managing our expectations before going home: “You’re not going to be able to pick up where you left off. Life has gone on without you. Your families have learned to function without you. You will feel lonely at some point, even if you’re lucky enough to be surrounded by loved ones. So look out for your battle buddies, and support each other, okay?”
Redeployments are underwhelming. By 2013, the US had been at war for a decade, and redeployment ceremonies were a dime a dozen. After a thirty-six hour globe-hopping shuffle, we finally arrived via school bus in a run-down gymnasium on post, where we were paraded through a sparsely attended dog-and-pony show for mandatory “thank you for your service” speeches. After the canned (albeit sincere) remarks were complete, all that was left was a final safety brief, one last warning to not go off and do dumb things. And then just like that—we were all unceremoniously disconnected. Set free, after existing entirely within the bubble for months or years.
The novelty of freedom was exhilarating . . . For about 48 hours. And then the weekend ended, and while I still had two weeks of leave to burn, everyone else I knew went back to work. Life went on, as it had been the whole time. Only now I got to see what “life going on” without me looked like, up close and personal. First Sergeant Fischer was right—I was lonely.
My experience was not unique. My friend Mat—recently redeployed as well—described a similar experience: “When I got home it was really weird. My daughter ignored me for a few days. She didn’t want anything to do with me. And my wife was on her normal work schedule so she went to work and stuff. No one really cared about what I had just been through. Not in like a malicious way. I just had trouble connecting with people.”
After my two weeks of lonely leave I went skulking back to work, secretly relieved to be back at the grind. Mat slowly reconnected with his family, but significant feelings of isolation followed him as he left the military to pursue a civilian career. Our experiences were on the mild end of the spectrum—we had the benefit of social safety nets; since 2001, veteran self-harm figures have consistently been about double the US national rate. While isolation and loneliness aren’t the only factors in this equation, they absolutely play a significant role. Furthermore, veterans certainly aren’t the only impacted communities—immigrants and refugees, marginalized people, disability communities, and anyone that falls under the “nontraditional” banner are also at particular risk.
For me, this was an eye-opening glimpse into the role that community—or the lack thereof—plays in our overall well-being and mental health. And for me, it was a problem without a satisfactory solution, other than returning to First Sergeant’s advice: “Look out for your battle buddies, and support each other, okay?” Good advice, but how and why? I could only guess.
Several years later, I finally mustered the courage to disconnect for good. I wanted to pursue a future in education and writing fulltime, but the fear of disconnecting from the only community I knew I could belong kept me around years longer than I intended. My new plan—not great, but it was a plan—was to throw myself enthusiastically at the next problem (school) and hope against hope that I might stumble across a few like-minded folk along the way.
It turns out, I didn’t have to stumble. It turns out, both educators and speculative fiction community members have a knack for wrangling enthusiastic waywards and bringing them into the fold. Lucky me.
What I was missing years before was the language to describe the sort of communities that I found important, deeply valued belonging to. As I began my studies in academia with a focus on writing and pedagogy, I became fascinated with the concept of discourse communities. I found the definition of discourse communities located it at that intersection of niche community and shared purpose. For the first time, I found explanations that explained how and why these sorts of communities can be so powerful.
This isn’t a lecture (and even if it was I’m not qualified to give it), but in broad strokes: A discourse community is a group of people that connect through shared interest and values, and achieve general cohesion through language and their dialogue of shared purpose. These communities are noted for their organization centered around shared interests or goals, their unique specialist lexis (jargon!), and insider communications across a variety of genres (print magazine! Twitter! Cons!).
What I was seeking wasn’t just a physical space to occupy. I was seeking community forged in passion and niche interests, based on the enthusiastic exchange of novel ideas and exciting information. And I finally found it. I found you all. I got a little lost along the way, but I got here as fast as I could.
My story (in Analog’s July/August 2023 issue!) “A Synthetic’s Field Notes on Speed-Dating, and Birds” was the very first thing I wrote after I officially separated from ten years of active-duty service. In the story, a combat robot named Bee-Dee has been emancipated from a lifetime of involuntary service and now dabbles in a variety of innocuous human experiences, like speed-dating and bird-watching. Bee-Dee is keenly self-aware, but struggles to connect with people because his lived experiences—isolated, exploited, and traumatized—hasn’t prepared him to communicate with normal humans in everyday human spaces.
What I was seeking wasn’t just a physical space to occupy. I was seeking community forged in passion and niche interests, based on the enthusiastic exchange of novel ideas and exciting information. And I finally found it. I found you all.
I was not deliberately projecting myself or my existential worries into that story. I just wanted to write a silly story about an out-of-place robot. But I guess the unconscious has a way of seeping into our writing. I didn’t realize the extent until I workshopped this story and someone pointed out, “Well this is clearly a commentary on the challenges veterans face when integrating into civilian society.” It was?! Oh. It was.
Rereading it in that light was embarrassing for how exposed I felt, but also enlightening because I wasn’t aware that I also spilled unarticulated hopes and dreams into my writing. In the story, Bee-Dee is helped along by kind humans who simply want to see Bee-Dee connect with humans and meaningfully participate in the human experience. Speculative fiction gives us the freedom to imagine the world in any way we wish. At its heart, in this story, I hope for a world where empathy, inclusion, and connection abound.
This is the part where I call for action. This is the part where I hope that we humble readers of Analog and those in our broader quirky SF fandom communities can make a difference. You can make a difference. You probably already have. Here’s why:
There’s this book called Radical Inclusion, written by Martin Dempsey and Ori Braufman. It’s primarily aimed at senior leader-types in government, defense, and industry, examining how leaders can improve their organization through building buy-in and community trust with comprehensive and meaningful inclusion efforts. Dempsey’s call for inclusion is apolitical, and explains it’s value to society isn’t a matter of being “liberal or progressive or being inclusive for the sake of being egalitarian.” Inclusion, at it’s core, reconsiders power dynamics within organizations and communities, and consciously allows power to flow into the capable hands of community members instead of remaining consolidated in the hands of a few.
When communities embrace inclusion as a shared value, community members can in turn confidently pursue communal goals, meaningfully advocate for the community’s shared values and beliefs, and ultimately grow the community by connecting with—and including—new members that aspire to find a place they belong.
That’s what I think is so powerful about the capable members of our discourse community: They are a formidable force for good, simply by virtue of being smart, enthusiastic, and welcoming in their interests and hobbies.
But we’re not an organization, right? We readers of Analog—and the larger science fiction readership—is a community of communities, each of us overlapping and intersecting in weird and unpredictable ways. Our personal lives collide with our professional lives, and our hobbies and niche genre interests fill in the cracks. We are technicians and veterans and retirees, scientists and teachers and stay-at-home heroes. We’re readers and writers, we’re motorheads and musicians and techies, we’re collectors of all things quirky—gemstones and succulents and coins and more.
We are a thousand-thousand other things besides, but here and now—today—we possess the power of [re]connection, of inculcating holistic well-being in others simply by being inclusive with the things we already love to do.
You are both member and master of multiple discourse communities in your private, professional, and hobbyist lives. There are people all around you aspiring to join your communities, hoping to participate in whatever your unique bubbles are. These people may feel invisible, or if they’re inconveniencing others simply by existing, or they may not even be able to articulate exactly what they’re looking for at all. Maybe they just have a vague sense of wanting to be a part of something more. Believe in yourself, and believe in what your discourse communities have to offer. What you have to offer is good in all senses of the word. Don’t be afraid. Geek out! Embrace that specialist lexis. Exchange those novel ideas and information you find exciting. To you, it might be just another Thursday. To them, it might be the [re]connection they’ve been desperately looking for. Small acts of kindness and little gestures of inclusion can be transformative.
I guess, all I want to say is: look out for your battle buddies, and support each other, okay?
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