I am thrilled to announce that Just Like Being There, my first collection of short fiction, has been released and is now available in trade paperback (Amazon, !ndigo, Barnes & Noble, Waterstones) and ebook (Amazon, Barnes & Noble). The collection features fifteen of my hard SF and alternate history stories including the Aurora Award winning “Crimson Sky” and the new novelette “A Sky and a Heaven”. Story topics include space exploration, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, cryptography, quantum computing, online privacy, mathematics (statistics), neuroscience, psychology, space medicine, extraterrestrial intelligence, undersea exploration, commercial aviation, and the history of science. Each story is followed by an afterword that explains the underlying engineering or science.

For more information, please visit the Just Like Being There page or download the brochure. Also check out my author Q&A on the Edelweiss blog, the review on AmazingStories.com, or my interview in Space.com.

Congratulations to the Toronto Public Library’s Merril Collection of Science Fiction, Speculation, and Fantasy on its 50th anniversary. As part of its celebrations for this important milestone, the Merril has compiled some recollections from a number of writers, editors, and scholars of speculative fiction including Leah Bobet, John Clute, Julie Czerneda, Alyx Dellamonica, Cory Doctorow, Ed Greenwood, Paula Johanson, Shirley Meier, Pippa Wysong, Melissa Yuan-Innes, and yours truly. Best wishes to the Merril on its first half century, and may it prosper into the coming centuries so vividly portrayed in the works of the collection. 

I first met Ben Bova at the 2011 Ad Astra science fiction convention in Toronto. Thanks to Alana Otis Wood and the concom, I found myself sharing an author signing table with Ben. There was a huge queue of fans for Ben and almost none for me (which meant that everything was right in the Universe), but I managed to make some small talk in the rare moments when he wasn’t giving his time to his readers. What I really wanted to talk to him about was an idea I had for a hard SF anthology, but I couldn’t quite get the nerve. Finally, like an awkward teenager asking for a date, I managed to blurt out my idea and asked if he might be interested in working with me.

He said yes.

Carbide Tipped Pens came out three years later, and I had found a mentor and a friend. Ben’s name rightfully came first on the cover, but he would often say to people “it’s really Eric’s book”, an act of genuine kindness that would leave me in a state of Heisenbergian uncertainty somewhere between impostor syndrome and bemused pride. I only knew Ben for a few years, just a short moment in the grand tour of his remarkable life, but that’s all friends need.

I am deeply saddened by Ben’s passing, but I am also angry. His death was due in part to the consequences of a pandemic whose effects have been made far worse by selfishness, science denialism, and outright lies – all things antithetical to Ben’s generosity, wisdom, and honesty. As writers and readers of speculative fiction, we can honour Ben’s memory by paying it forward and being voices for fact-based reason and science in the service of humanity.

My thoughts are with Rashida Loya and all of Ben’s family and his countless friends.