Due to a quirk of deadlines and contracts, I have four new pieces of fiction out this month. Here they are:
- “A Stopped Clock” in The Atlantic Council’s War Stories from the Future. This is about smart cities and the future of urban warfare, as narrated by a middle-aged street vendor in Korea with an unspoken crush on her co-worker. This story will also appear in Gardner Dozois’ Year’s Best 33, which is very flattering.
- “Be Seeing You” in Pwning Tomorrow: Stories from the Electronic Frontier, recently published by the Electronic Frontier Foundation as part of their 25th anniversary celebration. I was beyond proud to be asked to participate in this, because the EFF does great work. For this anthology (which has a fucking killer table of contents, including Doctorow and Sterling and Hurley and Naam and Anders and Newitz and probably everyone else you like) wrote a story set in the universe of my forthcoming novel Company Town, out next year from Tor. I liked the story so much I ended up including it as a chapter in the book. It’s sort of like Veronica Mars meets The Terminator meets High Rise. (I also released another chapter in the Upgraded anthology, if you’re curious.)
- “Memento Mori” in Meeting Infinity, edited by Jonathan Strahan for Simon & Schuster. This is a cyberpunk fairy tale influenced by the films of Alfred Hitchcock. Also there is a poly marriage in it. Jonathan has done such great work with the Infinity anthologies; I was really pleased to be asked.
- “Thieving Magpie” in After the Fall, edited by Jaym Gates for Posthuman Studios. Jaym pitched me this story by asking if I’d ever played Eclipse Phase, and although I hadn’t, I was intrigued enough by its world that I said yes. Then I got the game manual, and holy shit. I was really intimidated. That world was so rich and so fleshed-out (literally!), I wasn’t sure there was anything I could possibly add to it. But that intimidation really pushed me to my creative limits. I can say without a doubt that “Thieving Magpie” is the weirdest story I wrote all year.
And hey, if that’s not enough for you, you can always pre-order my novels Company Town and reV: The Third Machine Dynasty. Or you could pick up Licence Expired: The Unauthorized James Bond, the anthology which my husband David Nickle and I co-edited for ChiZine Publications this year. It came out a month after we were married.
Have I mentioned that I’m a little tired? And that I am already facing new deadlines? And that if you would like me to write a story for you this year, whether for an anthology or publication or as part of a foresight project, you should get in touch nowvia the Contact form up above?