“Trois morceaux en forme de mechanika” appeared in Clarkesworld #58 (July 2011). This is the second story I’ve written in the steampunky world of a mechanikae uprising. It explores some of the same issues as the previous story, “The Clockworks of Hanyang” and I won’t post a lengthy discussion of its themes, but instead will simply note things that might be of interest to one who has read it: The title is indeed inspired by the piece of music that the mechanika in Erik Satie’s room ponders. Satie, 19th century French composer, wrote the piece as a rebuke to critics …

“Improperly Prepared Blowfish” is available in the Machine of Death anthology, edited by Ryan North, Matthew Bennardo, and David Malki. (Order a copy, or check out the book’s website.) My story is illustrated by Jeffrey Brown. Go ahead and listen to the official Machine of Death podcast, narrated by Brett Donnelly. This story was one of the first batch of stories I sold, after attending Clarion West — not quite the first, I think, but maybe my third or fourth professional sale. It was written especially for Machine of Death. The concept of the anthology was as follows (from the book’s …

“The Broken Pathway” is available in The Immersion Book of SF, edited by Carmelo Rafala and published by Immersion Press, which will be coming out at the end of September. (But you can preorder it on Amazon now!) This is a story that’s especially fun because it’s set in the neighborhood where I live, featuring Wonmi-san (Wonmi Mountain) the small mountain where I have, several times in the last few years, gone hiking daily, and which was also the setting for a few stories by the inestimable Korean author Yang Kwi-Ja in her collection 원미동 사람들 (or, as the English …

“The Bodhisattvas” appeared in the Spring 2010 issue of Subterranean, guest edited by Johnathan Strahan for Spring 2010. (A Korean translation, by Kim Chang-gyu, titled “보살들,” appeared slightly earlier in the <백만 관년의 고독 > One Million Light-Years of Solitude) SOAO Workshop anthology from Omelas, December 2009.) This story was influenced by my attendance of two astronomy-focused workshops for creative writers (and other creators): The SOAO Workshop at Sobaek Mountain (South Korea) hosted by the Korea Astronomical and Space Science Institute in February 2009, and the Launch Pad Astronomy Workshop in July 2009. The original version of this story formed part of …

“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 …