Friday, November 27, 2020

My Obligatory 2020 Awards Eligibility Post

It's one of the most awkward times of the year for writers: the month-long flurry where we all pick our favorite thing we had published this year and why we'd be ever so pleased if you'd consider it for things of an award-ish nature. My one big publication this year, to nobody's great surprise, is my novella Busted Synapses, published by Broken Eye Books in November 2020.

Some reviews/blurbs:

"Johnny Mnemonic goes Millennial. Cyberpunk is not dead, and Erica Satifka is its queen.” -- Silvia Moreno-Garcia, author of Mexican Gothic

"Satifka effortlessly packs a full adventure into a limited page count. Readers will be hooked." -- Publishers Weekly

"Busted Synapses grabs that familiar, thoroughly depressing reality outside the window by the sack and gives it a goodly twist, just like proper science-fiction should." -- Lawrence Burton, Pamphlets of Destiny

I won't lie: Being nominate for any one of the many extent SF/F awards would make me extremely happy on a personal level for all the reasons you'd expect. But I also want to get more eyes on Busted Synapses because it's a look at the kind of dystopia the 2020s might turn out to be: extreme income inequality, hyper-gentrification, and a descent into technological neo-feudalism. Busted Synapses isn't the only book out there tackling these themes, but it's the one I wrote and I'm pretty damn proud of it.

Anyway, if you'd like to get a review copy of my novella for possible nomination purposes, you can email me at satifka at gmail dot com or DM me on Twitter (my DMs are always open, baby).

In addition to Busted Synapses, I published two original short stories this year, "Where You Lead, I Will Follow: An Oral History of the Denver Incident" in Weird World War III (Baen Books), and "Sasquatch Summer" in Kaleidotrope. The latter is available online for free, and I can send you a copy of the former if you want too.

Wednesday, November 25, 2020

BUSTED SYNAPSES: Still Out

Hello again, after a surprisingly short (for me) period of time! I'm not sure if anyone reads this blog, or blogs in general, but if you've gotten this far you might as well read the rest of the post.

In news that is not related to Busted Synapses, two anthologies came out with stories of mine in them! One original, one reprint. The original is "Where You Lead, I Will Follow: An Oral History of the Denver Incident" in the Baen Books anthology Weird World War III, edited by Sean Patrick Hazlett. I'll be writing a full post about it later (hopefully after another surprisingly short period of time), but basically it's the tale of how Pokemon Go destroyed the world. The anthology also includes many other stories of a US-Soviet war that never was from writers like John Langan, Martin L. Shoemaker, Nick Mamatas, Alex Shvartsman, Eric James Stone, and many others. Read more about the anthology and get your own copy at the Baen site.

Also out this month (along with Busted Synapses, which I'm getting to) is Wonder and Glory Forever: Awe-Inspiring Lovecraftian Fiction (Dover Publications), edited by Nick Mamatas. This one includes my Lovecraft/Cordwainer Smith mash-up "You Will Never Be the Same," first published way back in 2013. Also includes stories by Laird Barron, Molly Tanzer, Victor LaValle, and others. Get a copy at Books, Inc., or wherever else fine books are sold.


Now for the part where I talk about Busted Synapses! It's been out for three weeks now, and while I haven't collected many reviews yet (gee, it's like it came out on Election Day or something), the ones I've gotten have been fantastic, both in terms of being positive about the book and also making me feel personally good as hell. Over at Pamphlets of Destiny, Lawrence Burton says "Busted Synapses grabs that familiar, thoroughly depressing reality outside the window by the sack and gives it a goodly twist, just like proper science-fiction should. The call centers, screen addiction, and human populace reduced to economic resource will be known to most of us. The rest is extrapolated from where we are right now, but not by a whole lot, and not enough to leave us cosily reflecting on how at least things aren't yet this bad because they sort of are but for the small print."

And at Parsecs & Parchment, JonBob writes "Busted Synapses is the shot in the arm the genre needs. It has that gritty techno-pessimism that’s at the heart of cyberpunk, and it doesn’t offer a rosy picture of the future or indeed offer any solutions, but it has done what modern cyberpunk needs to do in order to have a future, and that’s start critiquing the corporatism of our own society which, in many ways, is manifesting the very dystopia the progenitors of the genre warned us about decades ago." (You can also read my interview with JonBob at P&P!)


Finally, on the off chance you're not completely content-ed out, you can read my Big Idea essay at John Scalzi's blog on rural cyberpunk: what it is, where it's going, why I made it up. And last but certainly not least, check out my episode of Podside Picnic, where I talk a little about Busted Synapses but mostly about short stories (most of which you can read for free!)

And that's it for now! If you'd like a review copy of Busted Synapses, please email me at satifka at gmail dot com. And if you've already read it, please take a moment to drop a short review (even star-only reviews are fine) at Amazon or Goodreads; they really do help both with sales and also with the appeasement of my neurotic existentialism.

Tuesday, November 10, 2020

BUSTED SYNAPSES Has Been Released (for a week)

One week ago, while one of the many storylines of this strangest of years reached its climax, my novella Busted Synapses made its debut. If you're like most people in the twenty-first century, you've already seen my frequent posts about Busted Synapses on Facebook, Twitter, my mailing list, that courier pigeon outside your window, etc. And now you're reading about it here too!

Eternal thanks to Scott Gable at Broken Eye Books for bringing this book and its amazing cover to life. This is a strange little book set in a world I hope to return to again, described by one person on Twitter as Hillbilly Elegy meets cyberpunk. Hey, I'll take it. (And for some background on the setting and why I chose to write a "rural cyberpunk," check out my Big Idea essay.)

Here's a couple reviews I've received so far:

"Satifka effortlessly packs a full adventure into a limited page count. Readers will be hooked." --Publishers Weekly

"A superb example of dystopian, cyberpunk f lash fiction that echoes William Gibson’s Neuromancer, this volume may be slim but it packs a punch." --Library Journal

You can pick up Busted Synapses on Amazon (including Kindle), Powell's, or the Broken Eye Books website. You can also request it at your local library, even if you did buy it elsewhere. That would be really awesome, actually.

Now, onward, into our terrible future!