Short fiction. Shorter updates.

On 8/30, I shared a few short-fiction announcements, as parts of Con-fusion / Writing updates. Happily, more short-fiction news has accumulated and, well, there's no time like the -- holiday pun unavoidable -- present.

Science Fiction by Scientists, an anthology by astronomer, SF author, and good buddy Michael Brotherton, is hot off the presses (and in other editions, fresh from the electron mines). It contains, among many interesting things, my short story "Turing de Force." Like every tale in the antho, mine has an afterword about the underlying science -- in this case, computer science.

(If the phrase "Turing de Force" evokes a sense of déjà vu, I suspect you're channeling my "Tour de Force." The latter short story, on an entirely different topic, is part of a fun antho, Impossible Futures, with an entirely different premise.)

Springer, the big textbook publisher, published SFbS. Alas, they priced this anthology more like a textbook than your typical SF antho. If you're curious but the pricing is rich for your taste, suggest the title to your local library. (As I type, the Kindle edition is marked down ... this is the time to check it out.)

But wait! There's more!

The short story "Catch a Falling Star," which appeared last January -- online only, behind a pay wall -- over at Sci Phi Journal, is now in print and ebook formats as part of SPJ's first quarterly anthology: Sci Phi Journal, Q1 2016: The Journal of Science Fiction and Philosophy (Volume 1). (Lest you put your hands on that antho only to find my contribution seems familiar, "Catch a Falling Star" first appeared in my collection Creative Destruction.)

Traditional Festivus aluminum pole

I've seen the copy-edited pages for the "The Torchman's Tale," so I feel confident announcing that this short story will appear in the January issue of Galaxy's Edge. 

And quite recently, I got the word from Analog that they've accepted "My Fifth and Most Exotic Voyage." This novelette was a stylistic departure for me, and I'm quite pleased with the result. (Can you identify the protagonist from the story title?)

Meanwhile, I'm shopping a futuristic mystery novelette and I'm about 17K words into a secret-history novella ... after which I need to get back to the novel in progress.

Finally ... by the time you read this, Buy-a-Book Saturday 2016 will have come and gone. Don't let that stop you from considering books as gifts throughout the season. Perhaps to mitigate the Festivus feats of strength and airing of grievances ...