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Posts Tagged ‘genre fiction’

Bright sun, blue skies, and the sense of a storm looming just below the horizon. I’m working, watching and waiting, and maybe this latest unpredictable system will blow past us without much fuss. Or maybe, like many of you, we’ll find ourselves in the middle of an Arctic blast buried beneath many centimeters of snow. 

While we wait to see how this latest example of Nature’s power manifests, here’s another dose of free fiction.

Download the Tor.com November/December 2023 Short Fiction Bundle

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Photo by Mira Kemppainen on Unsplash

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Good news, fellow seekers of good fiction, my fellow Writer of the Future David Hankins has made his award-winning story “Death and the Taxman” available free for this week only! If you haven’t already read it in Writers of the Future Volume 39, I highly recommend it.

Read Death and the Taxman

The story is funny, well-written, and the springboard for his upcoming novel (I supported the highly-successful Kickstarter; the book will be widely released on Tax Day because David’s sense of timing is as on point as his humor!). 

Enjoy!

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Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

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An ode to the stories I want to read but haven’t quite managed, yet.

The Coffin Maker – Uncanny Magazine

Every so often, audio crackles through the room, too loud, and the crowd stills and quiets as one. Stephani knows that they are all like her, waiting, waiting, waiting to find out how this mission will fail, hoping it will be a small thing with no ripples, praying they won’t have to hear it, knowing they will listen if a surveyor’s last words are broadcast across the ship. 

Have I read this? I have not, but Uncanny stories are always high quality and often hopeful (if sometimes disturbing; fair warning in case this story turns out to be one of those!). Perhaps you will have more time today than I do.

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Photo by Photobank Kiev on Unsplash

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“Always do your very best. Even when no one else is looking, you always are. Don’t disappoint yourself.”

— Colin Powell

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Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash

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For me, the end of a year is a great time to think about the future. 

What did one of science fiction’s most acclaimed writers think about the future back in 1980, what’s changed, and which of his predictions have already come to pass?

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Photo by Ali Pazani on Unsplash

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Ken Liu is one of our modern masters of speculative fiction. The first story of his that I read was “The Paper Menagerie,” “the first piece of fiction to win three genre literary awards: the Hugo, the Nebula, and the World Fantasy Award.”

So he’s pretty good.

He’s also been thinking about art, AI and the evolving relationship between them. Here’s his new story:

Future Science Fiction Digest – Good Stories

Clara’s favorite part of the workday is the very beginning.

She likes flipping the switches on the wall right inside the office entrance, all sixteen of them, different colors and laid out in two neat columns, like the console from an old NASA space capsule that she got to sit inside once on a school trip to DC. As she takes a sip of her latte, her right hand running up the wall, click-click-click, flipping one switch after another, she imagines herself turning on rocket engines, initiating a docking maneuver, venting some dangerous alien spores out the airlock.

The story is one of the many interesting pieces in The Digital Aesthete: Human Musings on the Intersection of Art and AI, edited by Alex Shvartsman with an impressive roster of authors.

Today’s software can only imitate art, but what about tomorrow?

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Photo by Possessed Photography on Unsplash

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Today’s goal: To be perfectly imperfect.

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Photo by Jackson Simmer on Unsplash

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One thing about unfinished or trunked speculative fiction stories is that sometimes, they come true.

My work covers a lot of territory, including near-future science fiction. The problem with that is the ever-evolving definition of “near.” 

With today’s innovation landscape, it often doesn’t take very long for a speculative future to become an everyday present. I ran across a story draft from six or seven years ago, and realized that the subject was no longer fiction.

Now it’s just life.

What’s the lesson? In this case, I trunked the story because it wasn’t quite working, but in general? Focus on finishing, and submit to markets with short turnaround times.

Because the future can be closer than you think.

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Photo by JOSHUA COLEMAN on Unsplash

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Thanks to my day job, Tuesdays are the worst… except when they aren’t.

Me: Tuesday morning, grumble, grumble, work, work, work.

/muzak, lunch, muzak

Me: What’s this in my email?

/insert the crackling of digital paper

Me: An acceptance letter for one of my favorite fun stories? How cool is that?

More details as we get closer to publication, but it’s great news. And it couldn’t have come on a better day.

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Photo by Amy Reed on Unsplash

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“Everyone who’s ever taken a shower has an idea. It’s the person who gets out of the shower, dries off and does something about it who makes a difference.”

— Nolan Bushnell

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Photo by David Izquierdo on Unsplash

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