My poem “Instructions for Astronauts” has been nominated for a Rhysling Award by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association (SFPA)!
The poem was originally published in the Mithila Review along with a video produced by Salik Shah that includes my voice reading the poem. The Rhysling nomination means the poem will be published again, this time in The 2018 Rhysling Anthology of all nominated poems.
A short story I wrote a few years ago that was published in the anthology Veterans of the Future Wars has been recorded as is now available on StarShipSofa, the Audio Science Fiction Magazine.
Check it out on StarShipSofa or listen to it below (the story is introduced by Tony C. Smith and read by Spencer DiSparti):
Thank you StarShipSofa!
I had two poems published in 2017 that are eligible for the 2018 Rhysling Awards, which are awards for speculative poetry. These awards must be nominated by a member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association (I’m a member, but people can’t nominated their own poems).
Eligible in long-poem category:
Eligible in short-poem category:
Thanks for checking them out!
You can also read the poem at Mithila Review.
What is the future of science fiction?
It could be in the pages of Up and Coming: Stories by the 2016 Campbell Eligible Authors.
You can download the book here: http://www.badmenagerie.com/
Hurry up, though, the download will only be available until March 31, 2016.
What is a “Campbell Eligible Author” you may ask? These are writers who are new to the science fiction and fantasy field with their first professionally paid publications. The John W. Campbell Award is presented at the World Science Fiction Convention (this year, it will be held in Kansas City, Mo., in August). More info on the awards is available here: http://www.writertopia.com/awards/campbell
I was happy to see lots of writers that are familiar to me from my reading of shot stories and/or SFF-related blogs, including:
So you could consider this list of writers as a point of entry into this tome. You may find plenty of your gems in it, though.
Let me know what you find and recommend.
This review originally appeared in the Times Union on Jan. 2, 2007, long before the Brad Pitt movie came out.
“World War Z,” by Max Brooks. Read by a full cast. Abridged, 6 hours. Random House Audio. $29.95.
The stellar cast includes Alan Alda, Carl Reiner, Mark Hamill, Henry Rollins, John Turturro, Rob Reiner and Brooks as the one compiling interviews with survivors of a worldwide war between zombies and humans.
While the variety of locales — China, Israel, South Africa, Canada, the United States, Cuba, Chile, Finland, Greenland, Barbados, Japan — puts to shame any James Bond story, the book lacks suspense.
Instead, it has realism to emphasize how the zombie wars upend how people live and what they hold sacred.
The best example occurs in South Africa, where a dreaded apartheid-era figure comes up with a plan to save the country by sacrificing parts of the population. Though most of the politicians are aghast, they accept it once the unnamed but recognizable Nelson Mandela figure approves.
The performances emphasize this human quality of physical and psychological struggle.
This review was originally published May 8, 2005, in the Albany Times Union.
Kazuo Ishiguro is a master of the writing of memory. In fictions about an English butler, a Japanese artist and a world-renown pianist, he has found life-defining secrets, decisions and failures in the smallest moments, and uses them to create literary novels that read like thrillers.
His sixth novel, “Never Let Me Go” (Knopf; 282 pages; $24), includes emotionally engaging passages about friendship, love, duty, sex and betrayal in the lives of the three main characters; however, the effect is undermined by the world in which Ishiguro contains them.
The story centers on Kathy, Ruth and Tommy, whose friendship begins at Hailsham, a boarding school in the English countryside.
Kathy is reflective, passive and somewhat dreamy. She is the kind of girl who, while listening to a pop song, dances and holds a pillow, pretending it’s her baby. Ruth is bossy and likes to appear knowing; it gives her a power that attracts others to her. For example, she pretends to know more about chess than the older students, but when she shows Kathy how to play, she says all the pieces move in an L-shape. Tommy is athletic, warm-hearted and gullible, and he is mercilessly teased by his classmates. The boys enjoy setting off his uncontrollable rages, and the girls like to watch from the dorm windows.
Me, the author, autographing my story in “Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History”
Readercon is awesome. The conference for speculative literature is always worthwhile, as it offers a deep dive into issues and concerns that are at the forefront of literature.
So I got to hear luminaries like Michael Dirda and Peter Straub talk about their development as readers and writers. (Dirda doesn’t have time to reread books; Straub is rereading Iris Murdoch right now.)
I got to hear Samuel Delaney read for a work in progress that is from the point of view from a young Herman Melvill(e), and includes scenes during his life and times in Albany.
I learned a lot about the difficulties of living in space (the weakening of the body in low gravity; the politics of funding); about how authors try to strike a balance between fulfilling and subverting readers’ expectations (though one panelist argued that very little writing is truly subversive); and that some Readercon attendees bring really killer bourbon and are very generous with it, late into the night.
Most of all, though, I met some great people — writer and readers — but people who share my values for the importance of story.
The highlight, though, was the group reading of seven writers whose works are included in the much-praised anthology “Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History.”
Even better, was being asked to autograph my story. This is something that I have never done before. With the journals and anthologies in which I have been published before, I never had a chance to attend any of the events related to the release of those publications. Mostly because they were far away: in Japan or on the West Coast; or my day job and life made it too hard for me to be there. Continue reading →
I’ll be one of the readers reading a story from the anthology “Long Hidden” at Readercon next week’s Friday.
What’s Readercon? It’s a literary conference that focuses on “imaginative” literature. It is like a sci-fi / fantasy conference but without the costumes, games, movies and music. It’s all about writers and writing, and readers and reading.
Michael Janairo 