Nebula and Hugo Awards Short Story Eligibility

I have three works from 2023 that are eligible for consideration in the short story categories of the Nebula and Hugo awards. Excerpts are available on this website, and members of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association can download full reading copies (pdf, epub, mobi, or azw3 formats) from the SFWA Fiction 2023 online forum.

Hemlock on Mars” (6,000 words) was the opening story in the anthology Life Beyond Us edited by Julie Nováková, Lucas K. Law, and Susan Forest (Laksa Media Groups, 2023). The story is about a spacecraft en route to Mars that could be carrying a harmful terrestrial organism to the Red Planet. [Excerpt] [SFWA Reading Copy]

Beware the Glob!” (7,000 words) was first published in the September/October 2023 issue of Analog Science Fiction & Fact. The story is about a dangerous extraterrestrial creature that is unleashed from its frozen Arctic slumber by climate change. [Locus Review] [Tangent Review] [Excerpt] [SFWA Reading Copy]

Random Access Memory” (3,800 words) was first published in the anthology Game On! edited by Stephen Kotowych and Tony Pi (Zombies Need Brains, 2023). The story is about a strange phenomenon that befalls people who play a certain slot machine. [Review] [Excerpt] [SFWA Reading Copy]

Year’s Best Canadian Fantasy & Science Fiction is now available

The inaugural volume of Year’s Best Canadian Fantasy & Science Fiction edited by Stephen Kotowych is now available in trade paperback and ebook. The collection features 37 stories and poems including my Aurora Award nominated story “A New Brave World”.

Richard Graeme Cameron has written in Amazing Stories online a glowing review of the collection:

There is a lot of excellent genre fiction being written in Canada. May this series become the definitive annual sample. If all are good as this one, I can see them becoming textbooks for high schools and universities...You owe it to yourself to purchase it for your bookshelf.”

The praise for the collection is richly deserved, but what he said about “A New Brave World” put a lump in my throat:

Proof that the hard science genre is still capable of enjoyable originality, especially in the capable hands of excellent writers such as Eric Choi. I found the story exhilarating. It reminds me why I fell in love with science fiction in the first place.”

[Kobo] [Amazon Canada] [Amazon U.S.]

A Sky and a Heaven” wins the 2023 Sidewise Award for best short form alternate history

I am surprised and humbled that my story “A Sky and a Heaven” is sharing the 2023 Sidewise Award for Best Short Form Alternate History with “A Dream of Electric Mothers” by Wole Talabi. Thank you so much to this year’s Sidewise jury of Eileen Gunn, Matt Mitrovich, Olav Rokne, Kurt Sidaway, and Steven Silver. Here are the acceptance remarks that Nebula Award winning writer William Ledbetter delivered on my behalf at the 2023 World Fantasy Convention with one very important update in [square brackets]:

If Bill Ledbetter is reading this at the Sidewise Awards, then I will be both astonished and honoured. I am sorry that I cannot be with you to give these remarks in person, and I thank Bill for accepting on my behalf.

The threads of ‘A Sky and a Heaven’ have been coursing through my life for two decades. I was there in February 2003 at the Kennedy Space Centre when the Space Shuttle Columbia was lost. Thirteen years later, in July 2016, I was at the session of the International Space University in Israel and I was deeply moved by the enduring legacy of Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon and the strength with which his memory is being kept alive.

But it was the invitation by Andrea Lobel and Mark Shainblum to their anthology Other Covenants that motivated me to weave these threads into a story, and for that I am very grateful to them. Thank you Andrea and Mark for bringing Other Covenants into our timeline. Their remarkable collection produced two of this year’s Sidewise Award short form finalists, ‘A Sky and a Heaven’ and Gillian Polack’s extraordinary story ‘Why the Bridgemasters of York Don’t Pay Taxes’. I am honoured to have shared the Sidewise shortlist with Gillian and Michael Cassutt and Paul Levinson, [and I am absolutely delighted that ‘A Dream of Electric Mothers’ by Wole Talabi is sharing this year’s short form Sidewise Award.]

Thank you to the Sidewise Award judges for this tremendous honour. This recognition is particularly meaningful because it comes on top of feedback I have received from people at NASA, people who were involved in some of the events portrayed in the story that have told me what it means to them. The story also appeared in my collection Just Like Being There and for that I thank Angela Lahee my wonderful editor at Springer Nature.”

The watch I’m wearing belonged to my late dear friend Leslie Gelberger who first introduced me to the stories of that master alternate historian Harry Turtledove. I want to believe there is an alternate timeline in which Leslie is sharing all this with me.

Beware the Glob!” in the September/October 2023 issue of Analog

My new story “Beware the Glob!” about a dangerous extraterrestrial creature that is unleashed from its frozen Arctic slumber by climate change appears in the September/October 2023 issue of Analog Science Fiction & Fact. This is my third publication this year, my fifth appearance in Analog, and my first illustrated Analog story. Thank you to Trevor Quachri and Emily Hockaday for buying the story, Julie Czerneda and Peter Watts for their biology help, and K.A. Teryna for her artwork.

Update: Mina’s review in Tangent says “Beware the Glob!” is “fun but not fluffy” (which is exactly what I intended).

Double nomination for the 2023 Aurora Awards

I am tremendously honoured that two of my works are nominated for the 2023 Aurora Awards, Canada’s national literary prize for excellence in speculative fiction, which are voted on by members of the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Association (CSFFA). My short story “A New Brave World” is a finalist in the Best Short Story category, and my novelette “A Sky and a Heaven” is a finalist in the Best Novelette/Novella category. “A New Brave World” was first published in the anthology Brave New Worlds edited by S.C. Butler and Joshua B. Palmatier (Zombies Need Brains). “A Sky and a Heaven” was first published in my collection Just Like Being There (Springer Nature) and also appeared in the anthology Other Covenants edited by Andrea D. Lobel and Mark Shainblum (Ben Yehuda Press).

Voting for the 2023 Aurora Awards begins on June 17 and closes six weeks later on July 29. The awards ceremony will be held online on August 19 starting at 7:00pm EDT and will be hosted by Mark Leslie Lefebvre and Liz Anderson.

The Relevance of Speculative Fiction in a Real Scary World

I will be moderating an online panel called “The Relevance of Speculative Fiction in a Real Scary World” that will be taking place on June 4th as part of Origins, the annual conference of the Writers’ Guild of Alberta. Why is speculative fiction an ideal genre for exploring real-world issues? Can exploring alternative worlds, histories, and possibilities enhance our ability to understand and make our own world better? Join the discussion with Jacqueline Baker, Deborah Willis, and R.M. Olson. The panel is sponsored by EDGE Science Fiction & Fantasy Publishing.

Life Beyond Us is no longer beyond us!

Life Beyond Us, the new astrobiology-themed science fiction anthology from the European Astrobiology Institute and Laksa Media Groups, has arrived on planet Earth! Edited by Julie Novakova, Lucas K. Law and Susan Forest, Life Beyond Us features twenty-seven stories, each accompanied by an essay written by a scientist in a relevant field. My new story “Hemlock on Mars” opens the collection with the accompanying science essay “Planetary Protection: Best Practices for the Safety of Humankind (And All Those Aliens Out There)” by Giovanni Poggiali of Observatoire de Paris. Also check out the latest post on John Scalzi’s Whatever blog in which Julie, Lucas, and Susan explore The Big Idea behind the anthology and discuss my story “Hemlock on Mars”.

Thank you Julie, Lucas, and Susan for the honour of being included in this ambitious and beautiful anthology!

Contributor copies of Life Beyond Us and Extraordinary Visions

My contributor copies of the anthologies Life Beyond Us and Extraordinary Visions, under the watchful visage of an extraordinary terrestrial lifeform.

Life Beyond Us is the new astrobiology-themed science fiction anthology from the European Astrobiology Institute and Laksa Media Groups, edited by Julie Nováková, Lucas K. Law, and Susan Forest. The book features twenty-seven stories, each accompanied by an essay written by a scientist in a relevant field. Opening the collection is my new story “Hemlock on Mars” with the accompanying science essay “Planetary Protection: Best Practices for the Safety of Humankind (And All Those Aliens Out There)” by Giovanni Poggiali of Observatoire de Paris. Life Beyond Us will be arriving to our planet on Earth Day (April 22).

Extraordinary Visions is the first-ever fiction anthology presented by the North American Jules Verne Society, edited by Steven R. Southard and Matthew Hardesty. The book featuring thirteen stories inspired by the writings of Jules Verne including my story “Raise the Nautilus” which closes the collection. Extraordinary Visions is available now in paperback and hardcover. Check out the review on the Nerds of a Feather website.

While their themes are different, these books have much in common. Both are beautiful, with gorgeous cover art by Dan O’Driscoll and Amanda Bergloff respectively, and vividly illustrated interior designs. Both are ambitious, with terrific stories brought together by visionary editors who are passionate about the respective themes of their books. I am grateful and proud to be a part of these anthologies.

Murmurs of Earth: The Voyager Interstellar Record

Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 were launched in 1977 on a mission to explore the outer planets and their moons. The twin spacecraft are on escape trajectories that are taking them out of the Solar System and into interstellar space. Attached to each Voyager is a gold-coated record as a message to possible extraterrestrials that might encounter the spacecraft in the distant future.

Each record contains 118 photographs (including an image of the old Terminal One at what was then called Toronto International Airport), greetings in 55 human languages (and one whale language), an audio essay called “The Sounds of Earth”, statements from the President of the United States and the Secretary General of the United Nations, and almost 90 minutes of music from around the world. The contents of the record were selected for NASA by a small team led by Carl Sagan. As a non-core objective of the Voyager mission, the record project operated on a shoestring with few resources and limited time (only a few months). Many team members contributed their efforts on a voluntary basis.

For the musical selections, Sagan’s team worked with several experts including the ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax who was the founder of the Association for Cultural Equity (ACE) and had been an advocate since the 1940s of what we would today call multiculturalism. According to Sagan, the team “wished to avoid a Western European musical ghetto” and took great care to be inclusive with respect to geographical and cultural diversity. Of the 27 musical selections on the record, 14 are from non-Western cultures and include Andean panpipes, Azerbaijani mugham, polyphonic vocal music from Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo), Indonesian gamelan, Senegalese percussion, and a Peruvian wedding song. Only four pieces of American music are on the Voyager record: a Navajo night chant and three works by Black artists (“Johnny B. Goode” by Chuck Berry, “Melancholy Blues” by Louis Armstrong, and “Dark was the Night, Cold was the Ground” by Willie Johnson).

Update: My friend Ian Stones tells me the recording of Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier was performed by Canadian pianist Glenn Gould.

Billions of years from now our Sun, then a distended red giant star, will have reduced Earth to a charred cinder. But the Voyager record will still be largely intact, in some other remote region of the Milky Way galaxy, preserving the murmur of an ancient civilization that once flourished – perhaps before moving on to greater deeds and other worlds – on the distant planet Earth.”

Source: Murmurs of Earth by Carl Sagan, Frank Drake, Ann Druyan, Timothy Ferris, Jon Lomberg, and Linda Salzman (Ballantine, 1978), which was dedicated “To the makers of music – all worlds, all times.”

Holiday Reading

For your reading pleasure this Holiday season.

Just Like Being There
My first collection of short fiction featuring fifteen of my hard SF and alternate history stories including the Aurora Award winning “Crimson Sky”.

Brave New Worlds
Edited by S.C. Butler and Joshua B. Palmatier featuring fifteen original stories that follow humanity’s long dream of travelling to the stars including my story “A New Brave World”. [Reading Copy (for SFWA members)]

Extraordinary Visions
The first-ever fiction anthology presented by the North American Jules Verne Society featuring thirteen stories inspired by Verne’s work including my story “Raise the Nautilus”.

Other Covenants
Edited by A.D. Lobel and Mark Shainblum, this alternate history collection features stories and poems by thirty authors and includes my novelette “A Sky and a Heaven”. [Reading Copy (for SFWA members)]