My novella "Sublimation Angels" to be reprinted in the Polish SF magazine Nowa Fantastyka

The Jan. 2014 issue of Nowa Fantastyka, which features my story "Monday's Monk."

My novella "Sublimation Angels," which was a finalist for the Nebula Award a few years ago, will be translated and reprinted in an upcoming special issue of the Polish SF magazine Nowa Fantastyka.

The magazine has already translated two of my stories — "Heaven's Touch" and "Monday's Monk," both of which were originally published in Asimov's and were named to the annual Locus Recommended Reading List.

"Sublimation Angels" was originally published in the British magazine Interzone.

Nowa Fantastyka is a beautiful 8.5 x 11 inch magazine with about half its 80 pages printed on full-color glossy stock and the rest on black and white newsprint. The issue at right is from January 2014 and contains my story "Monday's Monk." The issue also features three original stories by Polish authors along with translated stories by Sean McMullen and Keffy R. M. Kehrli. 

"Paprika" to be podcast on Escape Pod

My SF novelette "Paprika," published late last year in the British magazine Interzone, will be reprinted and podcast in Escape Pod later this month.

This will be my first appearance in Escape Pod. Many thanks to editor Norm Sherman for accepting the story.

The story is set in the far future and involves an artificial construct designed to preserve copies of human lives. Here's my post-script to the story as it appeared in Interzone (who also comissioned the amazing artwork at right by Ben Baldwin).

"Paprika" was inspired by the life of acclaimed anime director Satoshi Kon, who passed away in 2010 at the age of 46. In addition to animating the award-winning film which lent this story its title, Kon also directed several other influential anime films including Millennium Actress and Tokyo Godfathers. His final film, Dreaming Machine, was incomplete at the time of his death. His fellow animators have been attempting to complete the film based on his script and designs, but funding remains an issue and no release date has been announced.

SF/F good person of the day: Jim C. Hines

I'm continuing my fight against the hate swirling through the SF/F world by highlighting the good people who give me optimism for the future of our genre. The other day I started with K. Tempest Bradford. My good person pick for today? Jim C. Hines.

I first met Jim back in 2007 at the Context convention in Columbus, Ohio. That was the first SF convention I'd ever attended and Jim was nice enough to both sign a copy of his novel Goblin Quest and to talk with me a bit. I later interviewed him for Monsters and Critics, where he was nice enough to sit through far more inane questions than he likely wanted to answer.

You may have noticed I used the word nice two separate times to describe Jim. Well, there's a reason for that — he's one of the nicest people I've met in our genre. But he also has a strong sense of justice, meaning he'll engage on the tough issues affecting both our genre and the world. The stereotype of the nice guy who keeps his opinions to himself for fear of offending people definitely doesn't apply to Jim.

I urge people to go check out Jim's books and his must-read blog. And if you see him at a convention, go up and say hello. I, for one, will always appreciate how years ago he took the time to make this unknown, first-time convention goer feel welcome in our genre. 

I also want to note that not everyone will agree with the people I'm selecting as good people of our genre. Obviously my selections are highly personal and opinionated. But the point I'm trying to make is to show how many positive people exist in our genre. To show that no matter how much wrongness pulses through the SF/F world, in the long run the good people will outshine the haters.

So please consider making your own list of good genre people and sharing it with the world.

SF/F good person of the day: K. Tempest Bradford

The science fiction and fantasy haters have definitely been out of late.

First a certain writer turned the Hugo ballot into a political statement then complained when everyone calling him a racist — including me — wouldn't debate his racist hateful spewings. And today a SF writer known for starting hateful political fights decided to take his SF toys and go home because it turns out he hates losing said political fights.

There so much hate swirling around in the SF/F world that it's easy to forget all the good people in our genre. So I've decided to respond to this hate by highlighting the good people who give me optimism for the future of our genre.

My first SF/F good person of the day is K. Tempest Bradford.

Tempest is known both for her short story writing — with her fiction published in magazines such as Strange Horizons and Electric Velocipede, and anthologies like Federations and Dark Faith: Invocations  — and for her tech writing and blogging. I love Tempest for writing short stories because I freakin love the short-form fiction and her stories are always fun to read. And I worship her as a tech writer because she cuts through the clutter and inside-baseball-itis which infects so many techies. 

Tempest is also a tireless advocate for improving our genre, such as with her recent essay "Getting More Writers of Color to Workshops: A Modest Proposal" and her work for the Carl Brandon Society and on Con or Bust. Tempest is passionate about social justice and passionate about the SF/F genre and rightfully refuses to accept why these two passions can't co-exist and improve all our lives.

As with many people in the genre, I've known Tempest for a long time online. I met her for the first time in the physical world at the 2010 World Fantasy Convention. And I was thrilled to discover that Tempest in person turned out to be as amazing a person as Tempest online. 

Thank you, Tempest, for all you do and for being a friend.

If you don't know Tempest, go a read her blog and her fiction and her writings. And if you want to fight all the hate in our genre, consider mentioning your own SF/F good person of the day.

The coming Hugo Awards ballot-stuffing arms race

You've probably heard all about this year's Hugo Award controversy, where several individuals and groups succeeded in getting certain stories on the award ballot through organized vote campaigning (such as the entire Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson, or a certain hate-filled author who made the ballot as a political statement from his followers).

My view on this is very much with what SL Huang ‏has said: "People gaming the Hugos honestly doesn't tick me off as much as the fact that the Hugos are gameable." I totally agree. I also believe that this is about much more than simply which stories "merit" being on the award shortlist, as Rose Lemberg so amazingly said.

So what can be done to prevent this from happening again? Well, along those lines I suggested lowering the cost of voting in the Hugos, which would bring more people into the voting process. This would make the Hugo Award better reflect the diversity of fandom and also make it harder to game the system. Others have suggested alternate proposals, such as increasing the number of nominations a Hugo voter can make to 10.

But I doubt any of these suggestions, or any other improvements, will be made anytime soon.

You see, the Hugo Awards and Worldcon love inertia. There's a big stable of Worldcon fans who don't see any problems with their blessed award. And as Kari Sperring said, while there are many who do see the problems, there are so many people involved itshard to reach a consensus without some group blocking the change in the name of free speech or tradition or "This is how it's always been so why the hell should we change?" As Ian Sales has said, Worldcon's very "complexity is a barrier to change."

So here's my prediction on what will happen: Nothing. No change to the Hugo Award rules at all.

Thanks to the Hugo's arcane 5% rule, you can easily compare the number of ballots cast in the various award categories and work out roughly how many votes are needed to land a work on the final ballot. While the number varies, a few dozen votes for one short story could easily do it. Now that certain groups have proven the award can be so easily manipulated, we're going to see an arms race as every group begins campaigning for certain authors and stories. 

People can protest all they like against this. They can say it's not fair. Say it hurts the award. They can say whatever the hell they want. But people are still going to do it. And if Worldcon refuses to fix the Hugo Awards, I hope people do.

Part of this is a simple call to justice — when the haters of the world throw their hate all over what you love, you don't sit back and let them continue to spew hate. You fight back.

But having everyone engage in this vote campaigning might also be the only way to force the Hugo Awards to finally change. To force the reality of our ever-more-diverse genre down Worldcon's throat.

So I welcome the coming Hugo Awards ballot-stuffing arms race. It's probably the only way to force Worldcon and genre fandom to finally accept that a little change isn't a bad thing for the Hugos.