Sarging Rasmussen: A Report By Organic

This story appeared in the anthology Shine, released 30 March 2010, and edited by Jetse de Vries. It was written specifically in response to de Vries’ call for near-future, optimistic SF. An excerpt of Sarging Rasmussen is available here, as well as other stories in the anthology; if you like what you see, information on the many ways to get a copy can be found here. I have been interviewed by Charles Tan in relation to this story. There’s lot’s of background on this story there, so check it out. However, I will list off some of the texts and …

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Alone With Gandhari

“Alone With Gandhari” appeared in Clarkesworld #42, in March 2010. It was the second story I sold in 2010, but the first to be published. It was very sudden, and very exciting! Despite going from sale to print so quickly, my first attempt at the story was back in graduate school, sometime around 1999 or 2000. (In the dreadful original, a rural Indian named Gautam, working for his biotech-terrorist and nutball-Hindutvavādi uncle Prabinder, unwittingly unleashes a [fortunately quite unfeasible] biotech plague designed to emaciate cows and render them and their offspring permanently unfit for agricultural use; the plague ends up …

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Of Melei, of Ulthar

“Of Melei, of Ulthar” appeared in the October 2009 issue of Clarkesworld Magazine, which was thrilling for me. (And even better, it appeared on the Locus 2009 Recommended Reading List! And got an Honorable Mention in Gardner Dozois Year’s Best Science Fiction, Twenty-Seventh Annual Collection, and was on the long-list for the British Fantasy Awards 2010!) The story was also reprinted in Ross Lockhart’s Lovecraftian anthology The Book of Cthulhu II in September 2012, and was podcast by Far-Fetched Fables at the end of September 2014. I was especially happy to have my work appear at Clarkesworld, as  it was one of …

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Cai and Her Ten Thousand Husbands

“Cai and Her Ten Thousand Husbands” appeared in Apex Online‘s issue for February 3rd, 2009. You can read the story here, or pick up the anthology in which it was republished, titled Descended From Darkness: Apex Magazine Vol. 1, edited by Jason Sizemore and Gill Ainsworth. This story received an Honorable Mention in Ellen Datlow’s Best Horror of the Year 2009 (Vol. 2), and in Gardner Dozois Year’s Best Science Fiction, Twenty-Seventh Annual Collection. Reviews: “This is a vivid, engrossing tale, told in wrenching detail. Its subject matter is brutal, but its heroine rises above her situation with a strength …

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The Country of the Young

“The Country of the Young” appeared in Interzone 219, in November 2008. If you missed the print edition, Interzone 219 is available as an eMagazine at Fictionwise. This was the third full story I drafted at Clarion West, for the week when Nalo Hopkinson was our instructor. (And both Nalo’s and the class’s comments, and some discussion of the biology of aging with my classmate Guy Immega, were a great help to me.) I’d long been thinking of writing a story set in a post-reunification, corporate-annexed North Korea. A theme I’d intended to work with earlier ended up being set …

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Wonjjang and the Madman of Pyongyang

“Wonjjang and the Madman of Pyongyang” is now available in Tesseracts Twelve, the 2008 edition of the annual Canadian speculative fiction anthology, which was edited by Claude Lalumière. This story also appeared on the Locus 2008 Recommended Reading List. (You can get Tesseracts Twelve at Amazon.ca, Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, or, in Korea, at Whatthebook.com.) I’m really happy that this story has found a home. I have to confess, the idea was originally inspired by Cory Doctorow‘s short story “The Super-Man and the Bugout,” which is a distinctly (Eastern-) Canadian remix of the Superman story. I thought it over, and realized that …

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Dhuluma No More

“Dhuluma No More” is the second story I’ve published in Asimov’s SF so far, and if I have my information right, it’s on newsstands now. (The Fictionwise eMagazine edition is up as well.) The advance notice of its forthcoming publication (in the September 2008 issue of Asimov’s) read, the acclaimed Gord Sellar returns with “Dhuluma No More,” a counterpoint to Robert Reed’s novella from the perspective of a desperate African terrorist in an uncertain future … which surely got me feeling wary: in a literary armwrestle between myself and Reed, I would not be betting on myself. It’s nice to …

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Pahwakhe

Here’s Pahwakhe online at Fantasy magazine, along with the Author Spotlight (me being interviewed by K. Tempest Bradford) that went up around the same time. My first real fiction sale to a real fiction market,”Pahwakhe” was the first of my two Clarion West Week 6 stories, and received a thorough critique by Vernor Vinge and my classmates. Fantasy magazine bought it shortly after I sent it to them, and it’s currently forthcoming sometime in 2007 early 2008. What was really amazing was that I wasn’t the first to know. News of the acceptance was posted after I was emailed but …

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Lester Young and the Jupiter’s Moons’ Blues

This story was the second story I wrote for Week Six of my stay at Clarion West—the week when Vernor Vinge was instructing us—and I was incredibly excited to see it accepted by Sheila Williams at Asimov’s SF for publication in July 2008. The issue is no longer on newsstands, but you can still buy a downloadable copy of the Fictionwise eMagazine edition here. The story also appeared in Gardner Dozois The Year’s Best Science Fiction Vol. 26. As of March 25, 2009, there is a wonderful podcast of this story at Starship Sofa, read by JJ Campanella, and illustrated …

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The Egan Thief

“The Egan Thief” is a funny little (~2100 word) story that appeared in issue #4 (Fall-Winter 2007) issue of Rudy Rucker’s online sf zine Flurb. The story is here. There’s a funny story behind it, too. While at Clarion West in 2006, one of the writing-related anecdotes I shared with my classmates was my ill-fated second attempt at a novel, a draft called “Irreducible,” which I started working on in 1998 in Montreal, and didn’t give up on until after my trip to India in early 2004. It was a tale of frustrating discoveries of unknowingly rewriting stories already published …

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