2014 Writing and 2015 Stuff

2014 Writing

A review of the year, with links galore:

• The UK edition of When the Blue Shift Comes, with Robert Silverberg, was published by Gollancz. Seeing it on the shelves at Blackwell's in Oxford during our WorldCon trip was so cool.

• Throughout the year I wrote 17 new stories. I started 3 other stories I didn't complete but will continue working on in 2015.

• I sold 14 short stories: 11 to pro-paying markets, and 3 to non-pro markets.

• I had 9 new stories published in 2014. Here they are:

1. "Fires of Night" appeared in the anthology Dark Expanse: Surviving the Collapse, edited by Alex Shvartsman and William Snee.
2. "Coffee in End Times", with Alex Shvartsman, was published in Nature. It was also podcast by Nature.
3. "Hot and Cold" was published in Analog Science Fiction and Fact.
4. "Eine Kleine Nachtfilm" appeared in Galaxy's Edge.
5. "Waste Knot, Want Knot" appeared in Nature Physics.
6. "The Memory-Setter's Apprentice" was published in Fantasy Scroll.
7. "A Vision of Paradise" was published in Bastion SF.
8. "Dumpster Diving" appeared in Nature. It was also podcast by Nature.
9. "Miranda's Wings" was published in The Journal Of Unlikely Entomology.

• My poem "Conservation of Energy" was published in Apex.

• My retrospective essay on Norman Spinrad's work, "Iron and Chromium: Five Key Novels by Norman Spinrad" was published in The Los Angeles Review of Books.

• My essay on the theme of drugs in science fiction, "“We’re All Dreaming,” Arctor Said: Drugs in Science Fiction, from the 1960s to the Present" appeared in Clarkesworld.

• My short essay "A Craving for Endings: The First Line of Knut Hamsun's Hunger" was published in the lit magazine The First Line.

• I wrote an introduction for the new Fairwood Press paperback edition of Jack Skillingstead's short story collection Are You There and Other Stories.

• I reviewed two non-fiction books for Brian Clegg's Popular Science blog: Particle Physics: A Very Short Introduction and Magnetism: A Very Short Introduction.

• I started a new bi-monthly review column, "Another Dimension", for the magazine Intergalactic Medicine Show. My first column covered the anthologies Solaris Rising 3: The New Solaris Book of Science Fiction and Time Travel: Recent Trips.

• I interviewed Chuck Wendig, Ann Leckie, Robert Reed, Jo Walton and Kameron Hurley for Clarkesworld.

• I interviewed Nancy Kress and Jack Skillingstead for the Locus blog.

• I interviewed Steve Rasnic Tem and Christa Faust for SF Signal.

• I edited a number of guest posts and Roundtable discussions for the Locus blog and wrote a couple of my own.

2015 Forthcoming Stories

• "Repeat After Me" is my first middle-grade SF short story, and will be included in the 2015 anthology Young Explorer's Adventure Guide, edited by Corie and Sean Weaver. I've seen the ebook version of this, and think physical copies will prob start shipping in Jan or Feb.

• "The Obvious Solution", in which I resurrect a famous SF author, will appear in Buzzy Magazine. This is scheduled for publication on 02/06/2015.

• "The Romance of Flying on Dead Languages" will be appearing in the first issue of Bahamut (scheduled for June 2015), edited by Rima Abunasser and Darin Bradley, with quite an extraordinary line-up of authors.

• Mike Resnick bought "The Rose is Obsolete", about time-travel and the challenges of old age, for Galaxy's Edge. Not sure yet when this will come out, but will be in 2015.

• Rose Lemberg picked up my experimental piece "And Now You Are Alone Among the Stars" for the anthology she is editing, An Alphabet of Embers. Not quite sure of publication date yet.

• "The Black Hole and the Entropy Collector" will appear in Nature Physics. Again, not quite sure of publication date yet.

• "Gate of Sun, Gate of Moon" will be appearing in the anthology Ruins Excavation edited by Eric. T Reynolds. The theme of the anthology is archaeologists who are women of color. My story is science fiction, but other entries will be in different genres, as well as mainstream. No final publication date yet.

• The Hugo-nominated podcast StarShip Sofa has recorded an audio version of "The Memory-Setter's Apprentice" and this should be appearing in early 2015.

• A French edition of When the Blue Shift Comes, from ActuSF, is forthcoming, and will most likely appear in 2015.

Hauntings Galore

I recently had the pleasure of asking renowned editor and anthologist Ellen Datlow some "crackpot questions" about one of her latest projects, the anthology HAUNTINGS.

The interview was published by SF Signal today.

In her Introduction Ellen writes that "Ghosts are persistent memories, refusing to let us forget the people and things we had thought gone, the people and things whose loss had grieved us, and especially the people and things whose loss had brought us relief."

This idea is specially present on my mind as I've been spending some time recently reconnecting with my sister, who lives in Spain and has spent a few weeks visiting here in Southern California. I've rediscovered a number of memories I had no idea I still possessed, often dazzled by my sister's power of recollection. Some of these memories had seemed vanished for perhaps a decade and have now been reawakened. Ghosts, perhaps, or simply the ordinary hauntings of memory.

As Ellen goes on to write, "ghosts stay with us because of something in their own lives--a need for familiar comforts, a desire for revenge, a powerful love. The emotions that drive us also create ghosts."

Indeed they do, and the same emotions that create ghosts, I've found, can bring them back to life, so to speak, when we had long thought them dead.

Monkey See, Monkey Do

SF Signal has published another "Crackpot" set of questions by Yours Truly; this time the individual on the answering end is Rick Klaw, whose latest project is an excellent anthology titled The Apes of Wrath. Hope you enjoy the interview. It was fun trying to insert as many references to monkeys etc. as possible in my questions -- and, if it wasn't clear, I do recommend the anthology.

In other news, that estimable publication, The New York Review of Science Fiction, has reviewed When the Blue Shift Comes in its January 2013 issue. In the first two thirds or so of his review, D. Douglas Fratz does a great job of describing this collaborative project, and provides a good summary of Silverberg's opening novella. And though he's not exactly impressed with the work in toto ("very interesting to those of us immersed in the field of science fiction writing, but not really a satisfactory work of sf"), he says some very nice things about my closing novella along the way:


"I was therefore surprised to find that Alvaro Zinos-Amaro did an excellent job of finding answers to all of these puzzling questions, creating a conclusion to the novel that in retrospect feels not only right but the only way the story could proceed to its logical conclusion. He also matches Silverberg’s quirky narrative technique and style so well that much of the text (especially early on) reads like a pastiche of Silverberg’s piece."
(D. Douglas Fratz, NYRSF January 2013, Number 293)

It's a real pleasure to be reviewed by the NYRSF, and I couldn't be happier with Fratz's comments about my contribution to the Blue Shift.

New Review up @ Strange Horizons

My review of the new Asimov robot novel went up at Strange Horizons yesterday.

In a way, the prep for this review was delightful; any excuse to return to Asimov's original Robot stories will do.

To summarize, I guess: I wasn't blown away by Reichert's book as much as I'd wanted to be. But, given the material, I could have easily also been enormously disappointed, which I wasn't. Though I'm not counting down the days until the next book in the trilogy is published (and I'm hoping it's not called I, Robot: To Serve or I, Robot: To Uphold), I'm looking forward to it, and the chances are fairly good  that I'll actually read it. I had mixed feelings--and in some ways even contradictory ones--about the first volume, but I tried to offer a balanced perspective in my review.

If you've read this book and have an opinion you'd like to share, I'd love to hear from you, either here or in the review's comments section at SH. 

Absence of Self

The latest issue (September 2011) to reach my mailbox of that marvelous publication, The New York Review of Science Fiction, contains my essay on Karen Joy Fowler's short stories ("Absence of Self").

The issue arrived here while my parents were visiting from Spain, last month; nice for them to be able to see my name in print :-)

Make Time for These Three

My review of three classic time-travel novels by Robert Silverberg, recently reprinted in a beautiful omnibus, was published by Strange Horizons yesterday.

Link:

• Review: Times Three by Robert Silverberg @ SH

Slice of Maybe

My review of Paul Haines' short-story collection, Slice of Life, appeared over at Strange Horizons last week. Definitely an ambivalent review.

Link:

• Review: Slice of Life by Paul Haines @ SH

Salon Futura and I

Salon Futura, Issue #8, went up yesterday.

It has interesting pieces by Gary Westfahl, Raz Greenberg and Jonathan Clements, in addition to the usual lively editorial and interviews by Cheryl. I'm happy to announce that I also contributed a piece to this penultimate issue of a fine magazine -- here's the link:

• "Hunting the Snark: The Literary Essay in Modern Science Fiction" @ Salon Futura

An essay about essays. Go figure. Actually, I wrote the piece in response to a specific podcast I listened to a few days before (which I comment on in the essay's first paragraph). Hope you enjoy it.

Anyone looking at the table of contents will also notice my name next to the "Pipeline" feature, where staff and guest contributors recommend upcoming books they're excited about.

After contributing an essay back in December I was asked to volunteer some titles for that issue; invited back to pick some new titles in January, and thereafter asked to edit the feature on a monthly basis. It wasn't something I planned, but I've felt lucky to be a part of Salon Futura in this capacity, and have enjoyed editing the "Pipeline" feature for the last three issues. At this point it looks like Issue #9 may be the final one, so I'll probably get to edit the feature one last time. Wish the learning experience could have lasted longer, but am definitely glad for the opportunity I had. And there's plenty of recommended books in the last four or five Pipelines to keep one busy for a long time!

Classique: 1941

Apparently I haven't blogged since the start of January. What can I say, they only bring my head out when the tourism peaks. I then peck away at the keyboard with my nose, which is slow going. (Sneezing really messes up my punctuation). Maybe one day I'll get lucky and meet Leonard Nimoy's head.

Before they cart me back to my designated shelf spot, I will mention that Strange Horizons has published my review of classic SF stories from 1942. This is my review of Volume 3 in a series of 25 anthologies. Believe it or not, I'm looking forward to reading and writing about the remaining twenty-two volumes.

Link:

• Review: Isaac Asimov Presents the Great SF Stories 3 @ SH

New Piece Published at Salon Futura!

My essay on Generation Starships, "The Next Generation of Generation Starships," has just been published in the fourth issue of the nifty on-line magazine Salon Futura.

Salon Futura which has great features on short fiction, articles on trends and tropes in SF, and short blurbs on books that have just appeared, all by the likes of the talented Karen Burnham, Jonathan Clements, Sam Jordison and of course the editor herself, Cheryl Morgan. It's a pleasure to appear in its pages.

If you're looking for reading material, the "Pipeline: December 2010" piece has some interesting picks.

Incidentally, I've always wanted to publish a piece with the phrase "The Next Generation" in its title. Sigh of relief. Can't promise this will be the last time, either.

Classique

What's a three month absence between friends? Nothin', I tell ya, hardly worth mentioning!

So I'm back, at least for now. (And now.) (And now.) (And so on....)

My review of classic stories first published in 1940 came out in Strange Horizons two days ago.

Link:

• Review: Isaac Asimov Presents the Great SF Stories 2 @ SH

That's two reviews done in this series -- only twenty-three to go. Bravely on!

The below is a nice little feature on John Kessel.

New Story Published in Basement Stories!

A new SF magazine has arrived ... please provide a warm round of applause for Basement Stories!

The first issue was published earlier today and may be found at Issue One of Basement Stories.

I'm very excited about the launch of this new 'zine, which is edited by Carol Kirkman and James Dent (for an interview, see here; for the "About" section see here). The first issue contains fiction by Aaron Polson, Spencer Koelle, Erich William Bergmeier, Rajan Khanna, Gary Cuba Ericka Kahler and George Potter. I'm not familiar with their work but look forward to checking it out shortly.

This first issue also contains my story:

"Nor Youth Nor Age"

Hope you enjoy it!

[For the record, this is my first fiction sale for which I was paid at a rate of cent-per-word, rather than a token or flat fee payment -- which surely isn't a big deal at all, except it is for me! Every measure of progress is encouraging :-)]

New Story Published

My story "Half a Block Away" has just been published in the second issue of online magazine New Dead Families.

The venue publishes pieces of "imaginative work of a non-realist nature" and is self-described as a "a cross between H.L. Gold’s Galaxy, and Gordon Lish’s the Quarterly, and/or Michael Moorcock’s New Worlds and Bradford Morrow’s Conjunctions."

The second issue contains stories and illustrations by David Backer, I. Fontana, Robert Kloss, Sam Luke, Jennifer Oakes, Amber Sparks, Tetsunori Tawaraya and Barry Yourgrau.

I originally found out about this through Michael Hemmingson, whose story "Brothers" appeared in the first issue. "Brothers" is dedicated to Barry Malzberg, so naturally, I became interested...

Classic Stuff

My review of classic stories first published in 1939 came out in Strange Horizons a few days ago.

Niall introduces the new review feature over at Torque Control; and here's a link to the piece itself:

• Review: Isaac Asimov Presents the Great SF Stories 1 @ SH

On a different note, over at his blog Daryl Gregory has posted a video of a talk he gave on Philip K. Dick; mucho bueno, recommended.

First Sale to NYRSF

My review of Jack Skillingstead's dazzling first novel, HARBINGER, was just published in the March 2010 issue of The New York Review of Science Fiction (p. 12-13). That's my first sale to this fine publication.

Six Fascinating Stories

My review of six 2009 stories I really enjoyed has been published at Strange Horizons.

I was lucky in that I was able to blather on pretty much to my heart's content about each piece :-)

• Review: Selected short fiction from 2009 @ SH

Of Canary Fevers

I just received Issue 105 of Foundation: The International Review of Science Fiction in the mail today. It's got a ton of great features and reviews, some of which I've been reading during the last few minutes. It also has my 7-page review of John Clute's collection of reviews Canary Fever.

Reviewing a reviewer? Sure, why not? I'll admit, this was one of the most challenging books I've ever reviewed -- and enormously rewarding also.

Review of Stephen Baxter's ARK @ Strange Horizons

This is the fourteenth review I've written this year, and the twelfth to be published. I encourage anyone who enjoys grand-scale hard SF with a mild but distinct existentialist bouquet to seek out Baxter's novels FLOOD and ARK. ARK is the better of the two.

My review appears with Jonathan McCalmont's take on the same novel, meaning you get two different viewpoints for the price of one (or, in this case, for the price of zero).

Link-y:

• Review of ARK by Stephen Baxter @ SH.

Review of Tobias Buckell @ Strange Horizons

This is the thirteenth review I've written this year, and the eleventh to be published. Link-y:

• Review of Tobias Buckell’s first collection, Tides from the New Worlds, @ SH.

Review of Clarkesworld #32 at The Fix

This is the eleventh review I've written this year, and the tenth to be published. Link-y:

• Clarkesworld #32, May 2009, over at The Fix.