I have the plea­sure of announc­ing that my story “The Culture Archivist” (known to early read­ers as “Fuck U.P.s”) has been accepted to the Federations anthol­ogy, edited by John Joseph Adams and com­ing out from Prime Books some­time in the future, I think later this year.

Here’s an excerpt:

The first goods cap­sule hit half a klick away and unfolded into a blos­som of blue flames.  Judging from the size of the impact, it had to be a habi­ta­tion mod­ule.  The big stuff usu­ally came in first.  Toasters didn’t quite have the same awe fac­tor as four-wheel drive vehi­cles and two-story starter homes.  But the deliv­ery mech­a­nisms were noto­ri­ously flaky and the goods didn’t always arrive plan­et­side intact. Case in point.

I could make out the smell of fear excre­tions from the Humpty herd in the dis­tance. The debate had turned into noth­ing more than chaotic noise.  Other rogue cul­ture archivists might have taken the oppor­tu­nity to col­lect data on the dis­rup­tion of a native cul­ture, but I had seen plenty of that in my time, both in my cur­rent life and the one before.

The con­sumer goods that had begun to rain down from the heav­ens reminded me of Santa Claus, that mytho­log­i­cal mag­i­cal crea­ture that flew through the air bring­ing toys and gifts to all the chil­dren of Terra, deliv­ered simul­ta­ne­ously on a sin­gle night.  A col­league spe­cial­iz­ing in the old cul­tures long since sub­sumed by the U.P. did a cal­cu­la­tion once based on pop­u­la­tion esti­mates and given how absolutely fuck­ing huge every­thing was back then, and fig­ured that old Santa’s vol­ume of goods to be tens of thou­sands of cubic meters.

This was like that, only if some prim­i­tive gov­ern­ment had fired a surface-to-air mis­sile and blown that mag­i­cal bas­tard to smithereens.  Merry Clausmas, Humpties.  Try to get out of the way.

Thanks to all the won­der­ful peo­ple who pro­vided feed­back on this story when I was fran­ti­cally try­ing to fin­ish it for the dead­line.  I um, can’t find my list of who you are, so speak up in the com­ments so I can thank you again.

This will mark some­thing like the 4th or 5th sale at pro pay rates that still doesn’t qual­ify me for SFWA.  Heh.