My Stories for 2015

As I have no additional stories coming out in 2015, I guess it's high time for me to list the stuff I had published this year, as is the style of the time.

Anyway, I had eight stories published this year. Damn! Three of them are flash, five of them are not. Probably the most "important" one, the one you should read first, is "Loving Grace," which marked my return to Clarkesworld Magazine after a whole eight and a half years, which must be some kinda record. You can read story notes here, but basically it's about what happens when human minds (and governments) are too small to accept the gift of post-scarcity. This story was originally titled "Fables of Post-Capitalism" until I realized that title was extremely pretentious (I did keep the fables, however).

I also had a return to the pages of Shimmer with "States of Emergency," which is another story I really like because like life it's just a lot of insane stuff that happens for no reason. If "Loving Grace" is too political, maybe you'll like a story with a sin-eating shredder, I don't know.

In flash country, my Queers Destroy Science Fiction piece "Bucket List Found in the Locker of Maddie Price, Age 14, Written Two Weeks Before the Great Uplifting of All Mankind" got some buzz (the concept of buzz for one of my stories is new to me) and I'm happy that most people seemed to realize what I was doing (implication over action).

I don't know why I thought this was
the best photo to illustrate this post.

Additional stories published in 2015, some not available online:

"The Species of Least Concern" in Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show: Genetic engineering! Disabled protagonist! I was reading a lot of Nancy Kress when I wrote this story and that's not a bad thing at all.

"Clarity" in Daily Science Fiction: May just be the most depressing story I have ever written.

"A Slow, Constant Path" in Cats in Space: Robot cats and cyborg girls on a doomed generation ship. It's cute!

"Dear Conqueror" and "Summer in Realtime" in Daily Science Fiction: More stories to enjoy, and only one of them is about death!

I also had quite a few reprints published this year, including my debut in Escape Pod ("The Silent Ones"), which was very exciting! Even if nobody on the message board understood the story (not that I ever know what my stories are about either).

Other things I did in 2015, writing-wise:

• FINISHED MY GODDAMN NOVEL. No, seriously this time, it's been submitted and everything. The one thing I wanted out of 2015 was a completed novel and that's what I got. So that's pretty sweet.
• Started another goddamn novel, the rough draft of which will probably be finished this year. Maybe I can not drag on the revision/abeyance stage as long as the last one?
• Finished nine short stories (and counting?), which doesn't seem like a lot, but one of them is a friggin' novelette and that one took forever so I think it counts as like four stories. Most would disagree. All of these are either sold or on submission. Crossing fingers.
• Started teaching occasional adult extension writing classes at Portland Community College. Want to take a class from me? You can! (Well, if you live in Portland.)
• Did a lot of freelance editing and here's a link for that too.

Anyway, that's 2015 for you. Not as productive as I should have/could have been, but isn't that always the case? Looking forward to what next year brings!

OryCon Schedule!

Orycon 37 is next weekend (November 20-22) at its new location, the Waterfront Marriott Hotel. Here are my panels:


FRIDAY

2:00 - 3:00PM: Endings: Cuddling with the Reader - You've just blown your reader's mind with your story's climax. Make sure they'll come back for more--give them a good denouement! David D. Levine, Erica L. Satifka (M), Anna Sheehan, Ann Gimpel, Grá Linnaea

3:00 - 4:00PM: Strong Characters in SF - What are the truly memorable characters in SF and what makes them so? Is memorable the same as strong? How do writers develop excellent characters that are integral to SF settings? Esther Jones, Andrew S. Fuller, Erica L. Satifka, Clayton Callahan (M), DongWon Song


SATURDAY

7:00 - 8:00PM: Short Stories, Novelettes, Novellas, and The Markets Who Love Them - Online markets for speculative short fiction have blossomed since the 1990s. What are the ins and outs of the spec fic short fiction markets in 2015? What are these markets publishing? What might the future bring? Andrew S. Fuller (M), Erica L. Satifka, Wendy N. Wagner, Rob McMonigal, James Patrick Kelly


SUNDAY

12:00 - 1:00PM: Structurally Speaking - Stories have rhythm. Is there One True Pattern, or can we mess with it? Are we really bound to the Hero's Journey, or are there other models? Doug Odell, Leslie What, Grá Linnaea, Erica L. Satifka, Anna Sheehan (M)

1:00 - 2:00PM: The Death of the Stand-Alone Book - Trilogies, tetralogies--we're not even sure of the right names for five, six, seven-book series! Where does the madness end? Is there no market any more for non-series books? Mike Shepherd Moscoe, Fonda Lee (M), Erica L. Satifka, Esther Jones, Doug Odell

2:00 - 2:30PM: Erica Satifka Reading - Erica Satifka reads from her works. (Probably this one.)


See you there! Watch me defend the honor of the stand-alone novel!

Some New Stories!

Hola, amigos. I know it's been a long time since I rapped at ya, but I have two new-ish stories out:

"Summer in Realtime" in Daily Science Fiction is a little YA virtual reality story:

"What's it like down there?" asked the woman sitting next to her in the mess hall. 

Tina closed her eyes, recalling the glory of the simulated Earth. "Well, you remember it. Don't you?"

"No. I've never been in the program." 

"Oh," Tina said, feeling sympathy. "Well, it's bright and green all the time. Nobody ever gets sick. Nothing's ever broken down or rusted over. You get everything you want by pressing buttons in your hand." She held hers up, examining it. Tina felt the loss of her palmtroller like a phantom limb.

There's also a reprint of my flash story "Real Plastic Trees" up at Fantastic Stories of the Imagination this month, which is its first time on the web! So check it out.

Meanwhile, I'm a little over a third of the way through the first draft of my second novel that counts, and man that is a lot of prepositional clauses. Like my first novel that counts, it's an SF story set in the present day with a ton of paranoia, because I guess I run to type? This is going to have an incredibly long bake time and I don't even know for sure that it will "count," so I don't want to provide too many details. But that's mostly what's been happening.

I also might spend the rest of December after I finish the first draft of this novel working on a novella. Or not! It's wide open!

"Loving Grace" Audio Version & Story Notes!

In case you missed it, the audio version of my story "Loving Grace" came out a little while ago on the Clarkesworld site. So if you like stories, but hate reading, give it a listen. Thanks to Kate Baker for the excellent narration!

While I think the story is fairly self-explanatory, notes seem to be the thing to do, so I figured I'd talk a little more about what inspired the story. It springs (sprang?) from one simple question: Why do we still have a forty-hour workweek?

Because when you think about it, we shouldn't. Advances in automation should have made our lives easier, but instead, people are working longer hours than ever. What makes it even worse is that so many of the jobs that we do are unmitigated bullshit. The job I have now is real, but I'm sure I'm not the only person who has had a job warming a desk for hours upon hours a day, not really doing much of anything at all. What is a "project manager"? Machines are taking our jobs, which is a good thing (as Marybeth says in the story, "machines can do things better than we ever could"), but we aren't seeing the benefits of automation, only a shift into jobs built on endless paperwork. Politicians talk about "job creation," which is another way to say "make work." Nobody is saying the obvious: that we need a Shift in the way we think about jobs and money, that we are closer to fully automated luxury communism than we know.

This could be us if we want it to be.

In the world of the story, luxury communism is within society's grasp. But because of the American work ethic, nobody is willing to just accept the fact that capitalism is transitory and enjoy this bountiful stage of advanced civilization. Or rather, they might accept it... except that the government has made it illegal to revel in your fully automated life. So in addition to the employment lottery, things are shoddier than they have to be. The characters could have real food, fine clothing, adequate transportation, but they haven't "earned" these things. Hell, setting up a draft and keeping everyone cowed is more work than just letting utopia reign, but living in luxury without "earning" it is obscene. Never mind that there is no actual way to earn it! The workers are psychologically invested in this racket as well (e.g. draft volunteers, Chase being anxious about the Shift instead of joyful, and so forth).

I believe in a basic income. I believe BI is the pathway to post-capitalist economic liberation, and that if we had one, scientific and artistic progress would skyrocket. But we'll never get there if people who stand to gain the most by a massive automation-fueled economic Shift remain obsessed with "welfare queens" and the concept of "earning" things we should have by rights.

So anyway, that's the story. Read or listen! Support basic income!

"Loving Grace" up at Clarkesworld

So happy to announce that my story "Loving Grace" is live at Clarkesworld Magazine. Here's a sample:

When full automation made human employment superfluous, the first reaction was panic. Pink slips fell like confetti. Even Chase had protested against the coming of the machines at first, though Marybeth hadn’t.

“It’s a paradigm shift,” she’d said. “Relax, Chase. It’s the way things were meant to be. Machines can do things better than we ever could.” 

The early days of the Shift were a time of great upheaval, as people who’d spent their whole lives working suddenly found themselves without a job, a purpose. The solution was drastic: a complete social safety net, and a draft. Every day, a few people were called for employment, targeted by the drones that also swept the city clean, monitored crime, and performed chit drops. Stretches of employment varied from a few months to a few years. 

You’ll come back, the Employment Bureau said. Everyone will come back. We count on it. Chase knows nobody who has returned, but that doesn’t prove anything.

This issue also features fiction by Robert Reed, Bao Shu, Elizabeth Bourne, and many others! I'm not going to break my usual pattern of not talking about my stories, but I will say that the article "On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs" by David Graeber was a huge inspiration for this piece, and of course this poem by Richard Brautigan. Read it if you want to, and let me know what you think!