You've probably seen the image in a home aquarium or a poster: a hard hat diver from a Jacques Cousteau-era submarine goes deep in the ocean, finds a mermaid and they kiss in a warm embrace.
But what if that story happened in Hawaiʻi?
Sam Fletcher was working at a dive shop with the mermaid image when he learned about the first commissioned Navy submarine to be lost at sea, which was about three miles from Diamond Head in 1915. The salvage operation took many hard hat divers and more than a dozen died.
The protagonist in his story "Blues of Eu" is a Navy diver from Virginia working on the salvage mission.
"So he's gonna have all these preconceived, sort of mythological concepts that are different from the ones that are established here," Fletcher said. "I believe it's Kāmohoaliʻi, the shark god, whose punishment is turning these people into sharks."
"And I just thought, what if we had one of these Navy divers down there at the time, and he had seen one of these slow transformations, a sacrifice from human to shark, but in the middle of that with his preconceived notions from not being from here, he mistakes it as a mermaid and falls in love?"
Fletcher is the editor of "ʻIke Pāpālua: Science Fiction & Fantasy Stories from the Hawaiian Islands." The book from Mutual Publishing is a collection of speculative fiction featuring veterans like Alan Brennert, the author of bestsellers like "Molokaʻi" and "Palisades Park," and first-time authors like Krystle Yanagihara.
Fletcher was inspired by King David Kalākaua's book, "The Legends and Myths of Hawaiʻi."
"It was very clearly kind of influenced by Grimms' fairy tales and what was going on in the world," Fletcher said. "But what I really loved about it was, it was presented like traditional kind of fairy tale-type stuff, but it was interwoven with very real, verifiable history of Hawaiʻi."
It also updates some classic Mutual Publishing volumes that are now out of print, such as "Horror in Paradise" and Glen Grant's "Obake Files" and "Chicken Skin Tales."
To be included in the book, the stories needed to take place in Hawaiʻi and needed a speculative element of science fiction, fantasy or horror. Some are reprints while some debut in this book.
In Yanagihara's "For All the Hearts We Buried," the protagonist relives moments of her recently deceased grandmother's life through paranormal trinkets. In Brennert's "Puowaina," a woman realizes her power to see when people die — and how she uses it, or doesn't.
“There are stories that represent older, mythological and fairy tale style stories, all the way up to like cutting edge, futuristic, science fiction and talking about very contemporary, or even what we imagine what could be contemporary, struggles or viewpoints," Fletcher said. "I mean, obviously, it goes without saying, Hawaiʻi is a very mixed place and the perspectives in the story are all over the place.
"There's obviously Native Hawaiian voices in there, there's local, non-native voices, there's voices of tourists, there's voices of military personnel," Fletcher said. "So you just get like this huge mix, which I think is kind of very telling about the writers here today, and just maybe the people here today.”
da Shop: books + curiosities will hold an author talk and book signing on Saturday, Sept. 30 from 2 to 4 p.m. Editor Sam Fletcher and writers Tom Gammarino, Jeffery Ryan Long, Phillip Riley, James Rosenlee and Krystle Yanagihara will talk about their short stories. More information can be found here.
