Eric James Stone's Blog, page 20

I did not win a Hugo

In case anyone missed the news, I did not win a Hugo for "That Leviathan, Whom Thou Hast Made."  Frankly, I anticipated losing, so it was only a slight disappointment.  I felt more disappointment on behalf of various friends who I hoped had a real shot at winning Hugos or the Campbell Award.

However, I was thrilled that my friend Mary Robinette Kowal won in the Best Short Story category.  And a couple of nights before the Hugos, my friend Eric G. Swedin won a Sidewise Award for his alternate history of the Cuban Missile Crisis, When Angels Wept.

I was not a total loser at WorldCon, though: I won the Iron Chef Flash Fiction panel by producing a rather terrible pun to win the tiebreaker round.

IGMS issue 24 is live

The August issue of InterGalactic Medicine Show has some fascinating stories — all of which I read as submissions and recommended to our editor. (It's the first time that's happened.)

"Under the Shield" by Stephen Kotowych is an alternate history in which Nikola Tesla developed a death ray and a force shield. 'Nuff said.
"What Happened at Blessing Creek" by Naomi Kritzer is another alternate history, about conflict between white settlers and American Indians and how things might have gone with magic and dragons involved. (Hint: Still tragic.)
Of the full stories in this issue, "Second Chances Made of Glass and Wood" by Michael T. Banker is perhaps my personal favorite, about a little girl who's lived her whole life in a doll's body.
"Old Flat Foot" by Ross Willard is the touching story of a robotic beat cop who has to decide what to do about his declining neighborhood.
"Whiteface – Part I" by Jared Oliver Adams is the reason I qualified my statement about "Second Chances…" above: it's only the first half of a heartbreaking story about a father and son whose roles in their tribe are determined by tradition and dyes.  The first half is worth reading on its own, and it'll be worth re-reading when part two comes out in October.

Getting to read stories like these in the slushpile and have a hand in their publication is the reason I enjoy being an assistant editor for IGMS.

Bulletin'

I've sold a story to Digital Science Fiction (not to be confused with Daily Science Fiction): "A Lincoln in Time."  It's my first sale to this new market; here's hoping it won't be the last.
Russian science fiction magazine ESLI has published "Этот левиафан, которого ты сотворил…," their translation of "That Leviathan, Whom Thou Hast Made."
I spent several days salmon fishing at Black Gold Lodge in British Columbia with my dad, my brother-in-law, and one of my nephews, and I now have a freezerful of salmon.
At 8:00 PDT on Saturday night, the Hugo Awards will be streamed live over the internet at this address: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/worldcon1

Этот левиафан, которого ты сотворил…

A list of brief updates

I've been superbusy with various things, so I haven't posted a blog entry in almost a month.

I went to the Launch Pad Astronomy Workshop and had a great time and learned a lot.
I went to an extended Erekson family reunion and really enjoyed catching up with a lot of my relatives.
The Chinese magazine Science Fiction World requested Chinese translation rights for "That Leviathan, Whom Thou Hast Made."
The Italian magazine Robot published their translation of the story in issue #63.
Daily Science Fiction bought another story from me: "A Great Destiny."
I posted my WorldCon schedule on my events page.
I watched Cowboys & Aliens and thought it was a lot of fun.
I wrote a story in an hour for a friend's anthology project.
I found out my collection, Rejiggering the Thingamajig and Other Stories , will be used as a textbook for a creative writing class at BYU.

New IGMS anthology

There's going to be a new InterGalactic Medicine Show anthology coming out later this year.  My story "The Robot Sorcerer" (which I still consider to possibly be the best story I've written) will be included. Here's the full table of contents:

"Trinity County, CA" by Peter S. Beagle

First appeared in IGMS issue #18
"Sister Jasmine Brings the Pain" by Von Carr

First appeared in IGMS issue #17
"The Ghost of a Girl Who Never Lived" by Keffy R. M. Kehrli

First appeared in IGMS issue #19
"The American" by Bruce Worden

First appeared in IGMS issue #20
"Silent as Dust" by James Maxey

First appeared in IGMS issue #7
"Horus Ascending" by Aliette de Bodard

First appeared in IGMS issue #8
"The End-of-the-World Pool" by Scott M. Roberts

First appeared in IGMS issue #12
"A Heretic by Degrees" – by Marie Brennan

First appeared in IGMS issue #10
"The Never Never Wizard of Apalachicola" by Jason Sanford

First appeared in IGMS issue #20
"Beautiful Winter" by Eugie Foster

First appeared in IGMS issue #13
"Blood & Water" – by Alethea Kontis

First appeared in IGMS issue #9
"Mean-Spirited" – by Edmund R. Schubert

First appeared in IGMS issue #16
"The Robot Sorcerer" – by Eric James Stone

First appeared in IGMS issue #10
"Aim For The Stars" – by Tom Pendergrass

First appeared in IGMS issue #15

The first four stories were the winners in the first-ever InterGalactic Awards, voted for by IGMS readers out of the stories published in 2010.  The other stories were selected by the editor and publisher.

"Freefall" now free at Daily Science Fiction

You can now read my short story "Freefall" for free at the Daily Science fiction website.  To whet your appetite, here's how it starts:

Freefall was the best part of a jump.

As she fell, Gina Wright looked down at Earth, half shadowed beneath her as dawn crept toward her landing target in Kansas, and relished the knowledge that she was about to demolish the world freefall record by more than 20,000 miles. This was going to be so much better than her spacejump from the old International Space Station. She would have forty minutes of freefall before she even entered the atmosphere.

Read the rest here.  It's short, only 1200 words.

"Freefall" coming in Daily Science Fiction

My short story "Freefall" is scheduled for the June 28 issue of Daily Science Fiction.  In practice, that means it will probably be sent to email subscribers late tonight.  If you're not a subscriber, why aren't you?  It's free, and they publish a lot of great stories, most of which only take a few minutes to read.

Sign up here.

Whinging

Don't worry, I'm not going to complain about anything in this post.

I'm not sure exactly when I first ran across the word "whinge," but I don't recall having seen it before about 2004.  I may have seen it on rare occasions before then, and just thought it was a misspelling of "whine," since that would have made perfect sense in context.  But over the past few years it seems like I've been seeing the word more frequently.

I thought it might just be an example of the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon: after really noticing the word for the first time, I started to see it more.  In other words, the frequency of usage for "whinge" hadn't changed, but my perception of it had.

When I came across it again recently, I remembered the existence of a tool that would let me check trends in word usage: the Google Ngram Viewer.  It uses its index of books and periodicals to show the frequency of word usage over time.  So I checked "whinge" and "whinging":

 

It looks like there's been a lot more whinging in recent years (the chart ends in 2008.)  The growth really started in the early 1980s, but it took a while before it impinged (impined?) on my consciousness.  So, while it's true that I may be noticing it more, it's also true that it's being used more.

Anyway, feel free to go waste time on the Google Ngram Viewer.

The greatest science fiction story ever written in Chinese

Someone has translated my story "The Greatest Science Fiction Story Ever Written," originally published in Nature, into Chinese.

My favorite comment from one of the readers is:

哈哈哈哈哈哈哈哈哈哈哈！！！ [Google Translate]

From searching Google, it appears the story's been published in Chinese on several websites — and that its publication in Nature caused quite a stir among Chinese scientists.  From one blog entry about it (as translated by Google):

October 28, 467 issue of "Nature" magazine published a short story, the title is called "the greatest science fiction." Article came out, first in "Nature" magazine readers – Physics, Chemistry, graduate students and scholars in the field, causing a firestorm.

"World's top scientific journals few tens of thousands of physical and chemical health researchers in the field of fighting endless life, may be in the" natural "and" science "that few of the journals published something. Today, a science fiction in a place on the pages of high cost of land, is quite a curiosity. "bio-energy in the UK to study Lei Wang PhD students to share the first time to this is science fiction.

StarShipSofa podcasts "That Leviathan, Whom Thou Hast Made"

Hugo-Award-winning (and currently Hugo nominated) fanzine StarShipSofa has created an audio version of "That Leviathan, Whom Thou Hast Made." It's read by Mike Allen, editor and publisher of Mythic Delirium and an award-winning poet and author.  Because I'm at work, I've only been able to listen to a bit of it so far, but Mike's got a great reading voice.  I look forward to listening to the rest of it this evening.