With thoughts on the evolving science fiction ecosystem…

Best-of-the-year lists have started to appear across the Internet. Those lists are a lot of fun when your book appears on them. And when it doesn’t? It’s easy to shrug and sooth your ego with the certain knowledge that the list-makers never read or considered or even heard about your book. Anyway, that’s how I handle it! 😉

When I originally indie-published The Red: First Light back in 2013, the Internet’s science fiction eco-system was different than it is today. SF Signal was a thriving website, the author cooperative Book View Café had a new-ish online bookstore and freshly enthusiastic membership, there were a lot of excellent independent blogger/reviewers willing to have a look at vetted indie work, Twitter was more personal, and the potential end of the Republic was not a great weight on anyone’s mind.

Times have changed. I feel like it’s a lot harder to get the word out about a new book — and I don’t think I’m alone. The sheer number of excellent novels being published every year remains overwhelming. But we do what we can.

To that end, here is my annual post of my award-eligible work from 2019. “Award eligible” generally just means the work was published in the past year. If you’re able and interested in nominating for the annual science fiction awards, in particular the Hugos, Nebulas, and Locus awards, I would appreciate your consideration.

In the short story category:

“Devil in the Dust” (amazon affiliate link)†
A short story set on Mars in the last days of a bitter war. Included in the anthology Mission Critical, edited by Jonathan Strahan. (July 2019)

In the novel category:

Edges (Inverted Frontier #1)
From the Edge of Apocalypse:
Deception Well is a world on the edge, a lone surviving outpost at the farthest reach of human expansion. Now a determined crew resolves to cross the light years to explore the fallen worlds of old and discover what monstrous life might have grown up among the ruins.

Silver (Inverted Frontier #2)
A Lost Ship — A New World:
A hardened adventurer, marooned on a surreal artificial world, must master the mysterious nanotech known as “silver” to defeat the entity who pursues him.

I like to think of Inverted Frontier as Sense-of-Wonder fiction — an exploration of the cosmos and of human potential, embedded in a far-future adventure.

If you’re not yet acquainted with the books and that description appeals to you, I hope you’ll click on over to my website where I’ve posted the opening chapters. You should be able to quickly tell if these books are for you.

If you have read the books and you consider them award worthy, I implore you to focus your attention on Edges. Can’t have them competing with each other after all!

Thanks for stopping by…

Asimov’s Reader Award Finalist!

A few months ago, my newest short story “Theories of Flight” appeared in the November/December issue of Asimov’s Magazine. I just learned that this story placed in the top five in the annual Asimov’s reader-award poll. This is the first time a story of mine has received that honor from any magazine. Thank you, to everyone who voted for it! 🙂

Sheila Williams, Asimov’s long-time editor, asked if she could post PDFs of all the top-five stories in each fiction category so they could be easily read for Hugo (and Nebula) consideration. I agreed.

Read it online!
If you didn’t get to read “Theories of Flight” when it first came out, here’s another chance. Click here for the PDF. The story takes place in the world of my novel Memory. If you’ve read that, you’ll want to read this story. And if you read this story, I hope you’ll want to read Memory too.

Finally, if you’re eligible to vote in the Hugos or the Nebulas, I hope you’ll keep “Theories of Flight” in mind as you fill out your ballot. Later on, voting will open up for the Locus awards, and that is open to everyone, so expect another post on my eligible short fiction.

I do this post every year, for those able and interested in nominating for the annual science fiction awards, in particular the Hugos, Nebulas, and Locus awards. This year’s post is short — I have only two publications to consider.

In the short story category…

“Longing For Earth”
Find it in Infinity’s End, the final volume of the critically-acclaimed science fiction anthology series edited by Jonathan Strahan (July 2018). SFWA members are invited to download a copy from the SFWA Forum.

Also in the short story category…

“Theories of Flight”
This one is set in the world of my Campbell Memorial-award nominated novel, Memory. Find it in the November/December 2018 issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction. Editor: Sheila Williams.

(This post is from November, but I’m pinning it to the top of my blog for a bit since we are now in AWARD SEASON, and I long ago gave up being shy about this sort of thing. 🙂 )

For those of you who like to nominate for the annual science fiction and fantasy awards, including the Nebula and Hugo awards, here’s a roundup of my 2017 award-eligible work.

In the novel category…
The Last Good Man
A high-tech, near-future thriller

Army veteran True Brighton left the service when the development of robotic helicopters made her training as a pilot obsolete. Now she works at Requisite Operations, a private military company established by friend and former Special Ops soldier Lincoln Han. ReqOp has embraced the new technologies. Robotics, big data, and artificial intelligence are all tools used to augment the skills of veteran warfighters-for-hire. But the tragedy of war is still measured in human casualties, and when True makes a chance discovery during a rescue mission, old wounds are ripped open. She’s left questioning what she knows of the past, and resolves to pursue the truth, whatever the cost. (June 2017)

• Publishers Weekly starred review
• On the Locus Recommended Reading List

In the short story category…
“Diamond and the World Breaker” is short story in the anthology Cosmic Powers, edited by John Joseph Adams (April 2017).

“The Martian Obelisk” is short story available to read online at Tor.com, editor: Ellen Datlow (July 2017).

“The Martian Obelisk” has been included in five best-of-year anthologies:
• The Best Science Fiction & Fantasy of the Year Volume 12, edited by Jonathan Strahan
• The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Thirty Fifth Annual Collection, edited by Gardner Dozois
• The Best Science Fiction Of The Year – Volume 3, edited by Neil Clarke
• The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy, 2018 Edition, edited by Rich Horton
• …and one that I don’t think has been announced yet.

“Region Five” is a military science fiction short story set in the story world of the Red. Find it in the anthology Infinite Stars, edited by Bryan Thomas Schmidt (October 2017).

➛ SFWA members: an ebook edition of The Last Good Man is available for download in the SFWA Forum. Once you’re logged in, you can find it by following this link.

That’s it! Thanks for stopping by.

Third post within 24 hours, because apparently I blog in flurries…

The deadline for Hugo Award nominations is March 31, just a few days away. For those eligible to nominate, I hope you’ll consider Going Dark in the best novel category when filling out your nomination ballot. The Trials is also eligible, if you’re truly enthusiastic. 😉

Another suggestion is a vote for my editor, Joe Monti, in the Editor/Long Form category — but not just because he had the courage and enthusiasm to publish me. In 2015, Joe launched Saga Press, a rapidly growing and much praised line of science fiction and fantasy, at a time when other SF imprints are disappearing. Click here to see some of the books published by Saga Press in their first year, 2015. Scroll through the pages and you’ll be able to see some upcoming titles.

Saga Press is an imprint of Simon & Schuster.

For those of you who like to nominate for the annual science fiction and fantasy awards, including the Nebula and Hugo awards, here’s a roundup of my 2015 award-eligible work.

In the short story category…

“The Way Home” is a military fantasy story that reads like science fiction. It belongs to the subgenre known as “portal stories” in which ordinary people pass through some sort of portal to an extraordinary world. Bluntly, I think this is one of the best short stories I’ve ever written. I like its structure, its characterization, and its compactness — it contains an action story with multiple characters in only 6,300 words. Since I tend to write long, I take the latter as a personal victory. All that said, the story has garnered very little interest. So judge for yourself! “The Way Home” was reprinted at Lightspeed Magazine where it’s available to read free online.

In the novel category…

The Trials
book 2
The Red Trilogy

Going Dark
book 3
The Red Trilogy

The books in The Red Trilogy are fast-paced, near-future, high-tech science fiction thrillers. The Trials continues the story begun in the Nebula and Campbell-nominated The Red, and Going Dark completes that story.

A short history for those of you new to The Red Trilogy: The Red was originally self-published in 2013. It was republished by Simon & Schuster’s Saga Press this past June, with The Trials following in August, and Going Dark released in November.

Edit: this sale price is no longer available. As of this writing, the ebook of The Trials (and also of The Red) is on sale at most ebook vendors for $1.99, so if you’re interested, this is a great time to pick them up.

Edit: For the month of February 2016, the Saga Press ebook editions of all volumes in The Red Trilogy are priced at $2.99 each.

SFWA members: ebook and PDF editions of all three volumes of The Red Trilogy are available for download in the SFWA Forum. Once you’re logged in, you can find them by following this link.

That’s it! Thanks for stopping by.

This list is posted for those of you who like to nominate for the annual science fiction and fantasy awards, including the Nebula and Hugo awards. At the start of this year I expected to have a novel, two novelettes, and two short stories on my 2014 list of award-eligible work. As it turns out, I have only two (very short) novelettes and one short story.

What happened to the novel?
I had originally intended to publish the sequel to my Nebula and Campbell nominated novel The Red: First Light on my own, but plans change and The Trials will now be published in 2015 by Saga Press, an imprint of Simon & Schuster.

The third short story will also see publication in 2015.

So what’s up for 2014?

In the short story category…
“Codename: Delphi” is my personal favorite of the year. If you have time to read only one of my stories, I hope you’ll make it this one. Besides, it’s easy to read because it’s available online. Find it in the April issue of Lightspeed Magazine.

In the novelette category…
A novelette is defined as a story of at least 7,500 words but less than 17,500 words, which makes my story “Attitude” a very short novelette. It’s only 7,900 words. Find it in the anthology Reach For Infinity edited by Jonathan Strahan.

Update: the anthology Reach For Infinity was nominated for the 2014 Philip K. Dick Award.

And at 7,700 words, my story “Light and Shadow” is an even shorter novelette. Find it in the anthology War Stories, edited by Jaym Gates and Andrew Liptak.

Update: for SFWA members, the entire War Stories anthology is now available in the forum.

All three stories are hard science fiction. Thanks for considering them!

Here’s the annual list of all my 2013 award-eligible work in one easy-to-read location…

Note to SFWA members: reading copies of both the novel and the stories are available in the forum, in epub and mobi formats.

Novel:
The Red: First Light — published in print and ebook editions by my own imprint Mythic Island Press LLC and reviewed by Russell Letson (Locus), Paul Kincaid (Through the dark labyrinth), and Stefan Raets (Tor.com), who called it “…an amazing novel.”

Short Story:
“Through Your Eyes” — Asimov’s, April/May 2013 issue

“Out In The Dark” — Analog, June 2013 issue

“Halfway Home” — Nightmare Magazine, September 2013 issue. Read it online.

Evidently it’s customary at this time of year to list one’s award-eligible work — at least that’s what I’m seeing on twitter. So I’ll jump in too. Those of you who read this blog regularly have heard all this before, so I’ll keep it short:

Novel:
Hepen the Watcher: Stories of the Puzzle Lands–Book 2 — published in print and ebook editions by my own imprint Mythic Island Press LLC.

Novelette:
“Nahiku West” — originally published in the October issue of Analog, and selected for Jonathan Strahan’s The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Volume Seven, The Year’s Top Ten Tales of Science Fiction 5 an audiobook compilation edited by Allan Kaster, and Rich Horton’s The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy, 2013 Edition. Also received a “recommended” from Lois Tilton at Locus. Available in the SFWA members forum.

Short Story:
“Nightside on Callisto” — originally published at Lightspeed Magazine in the May 2012 issue and selected for Gardner Dozois’ The Year’s Best Science Fiction, Thirtieth Annual Collection

“A Moment Before It Struck” — originally published at Lightspeed Magazine in the August 2012 issue.