Just a short note… In case you missed it, there is a podcast edition of my recent story “The Way Home,” which was dual published last week in Lightspeed Magazine and the anthology Operation Arcana.

I had a chance to listen to the podcast yesterday. It’s really well done, though I have to admit there are parts when I was thinking, “No, no. The emphasis wasn’t meant to be like that!” Yes, we all have our different ways of interpreting dialogue.

The podcast is hosted by Jim Freund, produced by Skyboat Media, and narrated by Stefan Rudnicki. Find it online at Lightspeed Magazine.

In my wanderings around the Internet I came upon the video archive of Future of war : First Annual Conference. The event was held February 24 – 25, 2015, in Washington DC. I’ve watched just a few videos so far, but they’ve been fascinating. The two I want to mention are…

How Will the Digital Biology Revolution Transform Conflict?
This is a discussion of synthetic, or digital, biology, along with implications and how some of the extreme downsides might be mitigated.

How Will the Wars of the 21st Century be Fought?
This covers a lot of ground, some of the most interesting parts having to do with nationalism as opposed to neomedievalism — when loyalties are divided among nations, regions, corporations, cultures, and religion.

There are several more I want to listen to. The entire conference schedule, along with all the videos, can be found here at NewAmerica.org

READ IT ONLINE

Operation Arcana, an anthology of military fantasy stories edited by John Joseph Adams, is out today in both print and ebook editions.

The anthology includes stories by T.C. McCarthy, Genevieve Valentine, Myke Cole, Elizabeth Moon, and many more, including me.

My story is called “The Way Home” and it’s available to read online at Lightspeed Magazine. There’s also an audio version available at that same link, if you prefer to listen.

In addition, Robyn Lupo did a short interview with me, to get some background on “The Way Home.” Read the interview here.

This story is a favorite of mine. I hope you enjoy it.

My agent sent a brief email this morning to let me know that a review of The Red came out in Publishers Weekly, a trade magazine of the publishing field — and it’s a “starred review” which counts for… well, I was going to say an extra-bonus-thumbs-up, but seriously, it counts for a lot. You can see the review here.

And here’s an interesting write up from Slate on the subject of books reviews: How four magazines you’ve probably never read help determine what books you buy.

The 2014 Nebula Awards Nominations were published today. If you haven’t seen the list yet, you can find it here. A lot of the shorter fiction — those works published at Tor.com, Lightspeed, and Clarkesworld for example, are available to read online, so check those out if you get the chance.

Given the vast amount of fiction being published these days, the publicity that follows being nominated for an award like the Nebulas can be a real boost to a writer’s career, as I can personally attest after The Red: First Light was nominated last year in the novel category.

TRFL was initially self-published. (It’s being re-released by Saga Press/Simon & Schuster in June.) Back in December 2013 I posted on “Awards & Self-published Books” in response to Shaun Duke, who suggested there were logistical problems in considering self-published books for the major awards. If you’re interested in revisiting the discussion, my post includes links to Shaun’s, and there is a follow-up here.

A hearty congratulations to this year’s nominees!

I was cleaning out a closet and found this most awesome document. The price list for a Columbia portable computer, as offered by a computer company on Oahu, in 1983. Click the image to see it big.

I don’t remember who wrote those helpful notes that appear on the price list. But notice that 128K of additional RAM is available for only $445!

Below is the invoice of what we actually bought. You can see we got a nice discount on the $395 dot-matrix printer!

THOSE ARE 1983 DOLLARS, BY THE WAY!

We must have been insane to spend that much money — but at the time I felt it was necessary since I wanted to be a writer.

By the way, I got the computer in lieu of a diamond engagement ring. To this day, I wear only a gold wedding band. No regrets! 🙂

Addendum: I just found the HANDWRITTEN original draft of the first novel I ever wrote. It was a “closet” novel, meaning unpublished. I had totally forgotten that I’d been handwriting the thing. I’m impressed with the fortitude of my younger self — and totally understanding of why I was willing to pay so much for a computer.

The ARCs are here!

ARCs, or Advance Reader/Reviewer Copies, are early versions of an upcoming book that get sent out a few months ahead of publication to reviewers, and to other writers or well-known people who might offer a quote that will help publicize the book.

The ARCs for The Red went out a couple weeks ago, but my copies arrived late yesterday.

There will be a simultaneous hardcover edition, but the copy I have is an “oversized” paperback — the sort commonly seen for political thrillers. So with luck, this Red Thriller should fit right in.

The Saga Press edition of The Red releases in June. You can read more about it here.

Updated on February 8, 2021 to show current book cover

I think of my novel, Limit of Vision, originally published in 2001, as the book-no-one-has-heard-of. Certainly, it occupies a weird place in my mental landscape, in large part because it was written in the great, oxygen-deprived emotional void that followed the publication of Vast.

I can’t talk about Limit of Vision without talking about Vast. Vast was a special book to me. It took everything I had to give as a writer. It was edgy, nontraditional science fiction, something I knew at the time would appeal mostly to the hard core of the genre. It was the book I was born to write — that’s how I felt, and I’m not going to argue the point now. But Vast, of course, was a market failure and very quickly out of print.

The experience left me with a sense of futility, but I forged on anyway and wrote Limit of Vision, a near-future biotech thriller that takes place primarily in the Mekong Delta. The novel sold to Tor for a much larger advance than I’d ever had before. Even so, in the wake of the failure of Vast to find a larger audience, I was not brimming with confidence.
Read the rest of this entry »

If you’ve got fifteen minutes, do go watch the short film “All Her Children Fought,” now available on YouTube. It’s based on a story by Tobias Buckell, and it’s a really excellent example of what can be done on a small scale by dedicated film makers.

Toby talks about the story behind the film in this blog post: “Sometimes it pays to take a chance.”

David Afsharirad is the editor of The Year’s Best Military SF & Space Opera, published by Baen Books. This is the first of an annual edition, and I’m very pleased and proud to report that two of my 2014 stories will be included:

* “Codename: Delphi” originally published at Lightspeed Magazine

and

* “Light and Shadow” originally published in the War Stories anthology.

Both stories are set in the story world of The Red, and “Codename: Delphi” features some of the same characters.

Publication date for the ebook is May 16, 2015, with the print book following on June 2, 2015.