"A Darker Cycle" in Nihilist Sci Fi, Issue 1

Hey! Sold my Week 5 Clarion West short story to the lovely folk(s?) over at Nihilist Sci Fi in their first issue, for five dollars used American currency!

I'm just happy it's found a home, cause this has been one of my most problematic stories. (When I saw the market, Nihilist Sci Fi, come up, I immediately thought of this story. This story is nihilist as shit!) Two professional novelists have torn it asunder. And yet, it's still one of my favorites. It's from an old conversation I had with a friend, oh, say, 7 years ago. Would a peaceful society make war on itself in order to test whether or not peace is superior to war?

My background is in anthropology, the Franz De Waal branch, which recognizes peacemaking and reconciliation are more common than aggression, and that cooperative peaceful societies (species) tend to out-produce war-like ones (mind you, this doesn't mean the war-like ones won't destroy the peaceful ones, thus in the end out-producing the otherwise more productive society). But what if we did have total war? Always? What if that was our laudable goal? What if we were Klingons? Personally, I don't think Klingons would make it into space. And yes, we are really having a Star Trek conversation right now. 

Civilization is, at least in part, built on cooperation, with slavery being forced 'cooperation'. We might be able to slave ourselves into space, but could we war ourselves into space? If you had paradise and perhaps even a means to rebuild your civilization if it turns out that war leads to ultimate destruction (because you're in a posthuman post-scarcity god-like civilization) might you be seduced into war just to make sure peace was the right choice all along? Add to that a bit of historical amnesia and a dash of boredom, and voila!

Originally, this story was of two posthumans in a trench, reciting poems to each other, who the capture an enemy they don't really know what to do with. Halfway through I remembered just how bad I am at poetry.

I workshopped this with Charles Stross. Charlie is a bit of an idol of mine, I'm not ashamed to say. I loved Singularity Sky and Iron Sunrise and was blown away by his short story collection Wireless. He ripped my story a new one. Everything he said was absolutely on point. What remained after his public flogging I swept up and pieced together. Later, I workshopped this with another group and got accused of being a closet torturer. That also wasn't the most pleasant experience. "A Darker Cycle" has an opening that makes people bounce. But if you write provocative things you best be prepared for what you provoke.

"Houses" on Miette's Bedtime Stories Podcast

Whoa! Patrick Scott, talented filmmaker/animal wrestler/early morning skateboarder, lends his sexy, sultry voice for my 2011 short story "Houses" published over at Lightspeed Magazine (Issue 18, November 2011)  and now in audio form at Miette's Bedtime Stories. Yum! Take a listen.

And thanks to Miette for hosting my story and Patrick for recording/performing! You guys ROCK!

Out this week: Robots the Recent AI!

Out this week is the anthology Robots: The Recent AI which includes my story "Houses", originally published over at Lightspeed Magazine. Get a taste here.  This is an excellent collection of stories that features some crazy talented writers. Somehow I weaseled my way in and I'm pretty pumped. Like I said above, you can check out my story for free to get a taste of the book, and if you like grab yourself a copy (electronic/hardcopy) here (Amazon) or here (Barnes and Nobles) or here (Prime Books). Enjoy!

“Tideline” by Elizabeth Bear
“A Jar of Goodwill” by Tobias S. Buckell
“Balancing Accounts” by James Cambias
“The Rising Waters” by Benjamin Crowell
“The Shipmaker” by Aliette De Bodard
“I, Robot” by Cory Doctorow
“Kiss Me Twice” by Mary Robinette Kowal
“Algorithms for Love” by Ken Liu
“Alternate Girl’s Expatriate Life” by Rochita Loenen-Ruiz
“The Djinn's Wife” by Ian McDonald
“Houses” by Mark Pantoja
“Artifice and Intelligence” by Tim Pratt
“Stalker” by Robert Reed
“Droplet” by Benjamin Rosenbaum
“Eros, Philia, Agape” by Rachel Swirsky
“Under the Eaves” by Lavie Tidhar (original)
“Silently and Very Fast” by Catherynne M.Valente
“The Nearest Thing” by Genevieve Valentine

Clarion West 2011 Publications

Here's a little line up of fiction put out by my Clarion West 2011 classmates, written up by the lovely belly dancing Jenni Moody over at her blog Dancing the Story Fantastic. Check out some of these tasty treats!

"Houses" in Lightspeed Magazine Issue 18

"Houses" is out now in Lightspeed Magazine Issue 18. My first professional sale and it's a Clarion West story! Yum! The whole November 2011 Issue 18 is fantastic. It's pretty awesome to appear next to China Mieville and John Crowley. Pick up a copy here. 

I came to the Clarion West Writer's Workshop with a number of ideas, half-stories, little gems of inspiration, some of which I distilled into stories I submitted to the Workshop, but "Houses" was not one of them. One morning I woke up on my horrible little plastic mattress bunk bed (we dormed in this enormous sorority house and we all all got our own rooms, but we had to sleep on these bunk beds with these mattresses that seemed to be designed to easily hose off vomit from sorority sisters who'd done too many keg stands) and the first line just popped in my head (which I later deleted, as per Terry Bisson’s rules [he's right, by the way]): “After the humans left, the houses got bored.” I had all these ideas after that, about the society these houses and machines we humans left behind created, our toys playing house, so to speak, eventually waking up and realizing that they didn't have to our lead, our psychology, our biology. But, I didn't know how to handle such a thing, it could easily turn into a sprawling work that couldn't be contained in a short story.