23 Tuesday Jan 2018
By Gorthian (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons
Someday I’ll write a longer appreciation of her work in which I try to explain how meaningful her writing has been for me. For now, I’ll simply reprise the last essay I wrote about Le Guin, a post about her marvelous book The Lathe of Heaven.
11 Saturday Nov 2017
Posted in fantasy, My Fiction, Stranger Bird, YA fantasy
A couple of months ago, in a flash of youthful optimism, I predicted that I would be able to publish my first book, Stranger Bird, while posting regular musings and ponderation to this blog. Ah, how naïve I was at the tender age of 46…
Today, the grizzled 47 year-old me realizes what a fool’s errand it was to try and publish a book “in my spare time.” Luckily, I had fantastic people–Erica Thomas, Lauren Moran, Jeff Simmons, Gracetopher Kirk–who did practically all the publishing work for me. But even with their heroic efforts, I found that publishing Stranger Bird sucked up all of my blogging time and more.
Now I am back at The Subway Test at last. I’ll be making a plug for the book from time to time (like now, for instance: Stranger Bird is available here on Amazon and already has a couple of sweet positive reviews! The Kindle version is coming soon!)–but my hope is to return to the musing and the pondering about the topics that have always motivated The Subway Test: science fiction, fantasy, civil society, SETI, the republic’s Trumpist infection, AI, ecology, and mythic themes in children’s cartoons. See you again soon!
18 Monday Sep 2017
Tags
Analog Science Fiction and Fact, books, fantasy, literature, mythopoesis, racism, sci-fi, Science Fiction, self-publication, Stories
I’m happy to announce that the great science fiction magazine Analog has picked up my story “Potosí” for publication. “Potosí” will be the fifth story I’ve had appear in Analog, and by far the longest story (nearly 10,000 words) I’ve ever placed in a professional market.
As I wrote elsewhere, “Potosí” is set in a near future where corporations and countries squabble over the solar system’s vast mineral rights. It’s also a meditation on white supremacy and terrorism, an attempt to explain today’s world in new and striking clothes–much the same way that Star Trek explains the Cold War and Forbidden Planet explores World War II survivors’ guilt.
It’s been a good (and busy) week for my writerly life. One of my recent stories (another Analog pick-up called “Proteus”) is getting some very nice attention, and my quest to publish my first young adult fantasy novel, Stranger Bird, continues apace. I’m hoping for a publication date of November 3–keep watching the transom for that.
There’s also much more that I want to share here on The Subway Test, and I’m sure I’ll have some longer musings and ponderations here soon, but for now I’m pretty busy just keeping on top of my sci fi and fantasy writing.
The Subway Test 