Posts Tagged ‘Short Story’

Fantasy Magazine: The Men Burned All The Boats by Patricia Russo

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

I haven’t been read­ing much short fic­tion lately, but I am sub­scribed to the Fantasy Magazine feed.  I saw the open­ing of this story and the words drew me in.  I had to read it, even so early.

The men burned all the boats, so it is impos­si­ble to leave the island now. Everyone cheered when the pyres were lit. The danc­ing went on for three days, as if for a wed­ding. The men chanted, We are fear­less! Let our ene­mies attack us now. We will slaugh­ter them, and take their boats as war prizes. And if the sea folk come against us, we will crush them, too. Our magic is so strong we will pur­sue those cold ones under the waves, torches blaz­ing. We will burn out their black eyes, tear their sil­ver flesh to strips, and lick up their pale blood. We are mighty. We are invincible.

via Fantasy Magazine » The Men Burned All The Boats.

Patricia Russo is another Fortean Bureau alum.  It makes me so happy to see a new story by her, and one that is so great.  I highly rec­om­mend you give it a read.

Federations Table of Contents

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Federations | John Joseph Adams.

John has posted the table of con­tents to Federations, the anthol­ogy to which I have made my lat­est sale.  Excuse me while I get a lit­tle starstruck and nostalgic.

The first author I ever shared with my father was also my first sci­ence fic­tion author.  When I was around 8 or 9, I stum­bled across a lit­tle book in my grade school library called Dragonsong by Anne McCaffery.   To this day, it is one of less than half a dozen books I have read more than once, an honor I reserve only for the most impor­tant titles in my life or, books I had to read for more than one class through my long edu­ca­tion. One of the first books I ever bought with my own money was an omnibus of the Dragonriders tril­ogy.    The first (and as far as I know, only) fan let­ter I wrote as a child was to Anne McCaffery.  I think she even wrote back.

My Dad and I read every sin­gle McCaffery book she pub­lished, pretty much.  She was one of those authors who the library sys­tem man­aged to get new books for, oddly enough.  Whereas I was mostly stuck read­ing Golden Age SF in the bow­els of the local library (lit­er­ally, the SF sec­tion was in the base­ment, in the back cor­ner), the new books shelf seemed to always have a McCaffery.

My Dad and I didn’t talk SF very much, but most of the time we did, it was regard­ing the lat­est McCaffery book.  We had long dis­cus­sions when [spoil­ers] Pern turned out to be a lost human colony of space far­ers.  [/​spoilers]  Later books, I haven’t been on top of.  Since her son started writ­ing them, I haven’t read them, not because of any rea­son other than lack of time, and well, nobody to talk about them with.

In one of the last con­ver­sa­tions I had with my Dad, when he was in the hos­pi­tal the day we learned that he wasn’t going to get any bet­ter and that it was time was hos­pice care (a med­ical term meain­ing ‘give up and die grace­fully’), I signed a copy of All Star Zeppelin Adventure Stories for him, telling him that he could beat the can­cer like a pulp hero beats up Nazis.     He stood up, all 90-​​some pounds of what was left of him, and gave me the strongest hug I think he ever gave me and he said, “I’m proud of you son.”  I must have acted sur­prised because he said, “I’ve always been proud of you.”

That was prob­a­bly the most emo­tional moment of my life, and will remain so for a very long time. At least until I get to tell my own child the same thing,

Today, I feel like I earned that pride a lit­tle more, and I know that if he were here, he would be as excited about me being in this book as I am.

New Podcast: The Girl With the Sun In Her Head

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

My story from Polyphony 4,  and one of my ear­li­est suc­cess­ful attempts at the short story (although your def­i­n­i­tion of suc­cess may vary from mine in this case), is now live as a pod­cast on PodCastle.  You can give it a lis­ten over on the PodCastle site, but if you’re into fan­tasy, you should sub­scribe to their feed.  The team over there does good work.  With this pub­li­ca­tion, I have one story left to appear on a podcast–I believe my story “Captain Bl00d’s B00ty” is sup­posed to appear on Starship Sofa at some point, although I haven’t heard any­thing about when.

Special thanks to Jay Lake and Deborah Layne for pur­chas­ing the story orig­i­nally, and again, thank you to the PodCastle staff, Anne, Rachel, et al for pick­ing it for the ‘cast.  I am grateful.

The story, by the way is inspired by the Orbital song of the same name.  I was bang­ing my head against the wall try­ing to come up with a story to write when the song came up in Winamp.  I saw the title and thought, hey, I could write a story about that Girl.    I don’t the story reads like the song, sadly.  I would be awe­some if I could make sto­ries read like songs.

I wrote a series of sto­ries with titles iden­ti­cal to songs.  Another one was Louis Jordan’s “A Chicken Ain’t Nothing But a Bird” about a south­ern family’s rooster named Scratch that was actu­ally a cock­a­trice.  Never went any­where with that one. I’m a huge fan of Lois Jordan’s music.  “Beans and Cornbread” is a clas­sic.  Never wrote a story with that title although I am tempted should I find the time.  I even have an idea of what it’s about.  Coincidentally, corn­bread is one of my favorite foods.  Nothing like some fried cat­fish and corn­bread hush pup­pies on a sum­mer night. Remind me to tell you how I feel about fish frys.  As in, ever­body get­ting together and fry­ing up a buck­et­load of fish, not some new Burger King perversity.

Available for Order: Seeds of Change

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

The lat­est anthol­ogy edited by John Joseph Adams, Seeds of Change, is avail­able for pre-​​order on Amazon now.    The table of con­tents includes Ken Macleod, Tobias S. Buckell, Jay Lake, and many more fine writ­ers.  It also includes my story, “Arties Aren’t Stupid,” one of my per­sonal favorites.

The ori­gin for this story came from read­ing about mad gar­den­ers in Britain cre­at­ing liv­ing graf­fiti with blendered moss and spray bot­tles.  I won­dered what would hap­pen if such peo­ple had in their hands some­thing a bit more pow­er­ful than a blender, and the story spun off of that concept.

I hope you’ll order a copy, if not for me, than for those other fine writ­ers.   I’ve read the anthol­ogy, and I thor­oughly enjoyed it.

Recommended Reading: The Wreck of the Grampus by Jeremy Adam Smith

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Lone Star Stories — The Wreck of the Grampus by Jeremy Adam Smith

“Do you under­stand the story, you machine? If there is an intrin­sic design to the uni­verse, human­ity has not been able to find it. We must make our own, and so are most fully human when in sit­u­a­tions that are wholly artificial.”

Picking some­thing from this story to quote was not easy. This is one of the best, if not the best sci­ence fic­tion story I have read this year. It has senswunda note after senswunda note–a ver­i­ta­ble senswunda orches­tra. It has robots and deep philo­soph­i­cal ques­tions and giant under­sea crea­tures. Believable human char­ac­ters, deeply human in their ways, and some deeply strange. This is a future that does not leave me cold like many post-​​singularity sto­ries do, which are so com­mon these days. In those sto­ries, you can almost feel the sil­i­con wrapped around you. Not here. There’s so much I want to say, so many sur­pris­ing bits, but I don’t want to spoil it for anyone.

I think it’s absolutely fan­tas­tic, and the author, Jeremy Adam Smith, and Eric Marin, the edi­tor and pub­lisher, should have as many kudos I can throw at them. This is damned good sci­ence fic­tion. Read it. Let me know what you think. Let the edi­tor and author know.

My only prob­lem is, the author’s name is Jeremy. I can’t stand that name!

“This, My Body” Live on EscapePod

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

My story from Interzone 199, “This, My Body,” a sen­sual tale of sex, food and reli­gion, is now live on Escape Pod.

I am very, very ner­vous about lis­tener reac­tion to this one.

From the Escape Pod Metacast #3

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Based on com­par­ing lis­ten­ers and sub­scriber num­bers, Escape Pod is the sec­ond largest mar­ket for short sci­ence fic­tion, with 20,000 down­loads after a month for each episode. I don’t have any­thing to say about that. I just want to men­tion it, and see what you all think of that. I’ve talked about this before, but I think their lis­tener count has grown since then.

(And yes, the prospect of my lat­est sale to them being heard by 20,000 peo­ple is some­what terrifying.)

Sale: “This, My Body” to Escape Pod

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

“This, My Body”, my sexy chef story that appeared pre­vi­ously in Interzone 199, will be–I believe– fea­tured in the 150th episode of Escape Pod next week. Steve Eley totally rocks.

Man, this year just keeps get­ting bet­ter! What a fan­tas­tic pick-​​me-​​up after the work events of ear­lier this week.

Big thanks to Rachel Swirsky for encour­ag­ing me to try Escape Pod with the story!

Seeds of Change ToC and Cover Copy

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

John Joseph Adams has posted the ToC of his upcom­ing Seeds of Change anthol­ogy with Prime Books. Some of the authors included are Jay Lake, Tobias Buckell, Mark Budz, Ken McLeod, and… me!