Collection Press Release and Bio
Bruce McAllister Publishes New Short-Story Collection
Science fiction and fantasy writer Bruce McAllister, who began his career at age 16, has published a new short story collection, STEALING GOD AND OTHER STORIES (Aeon Press). All of the stories are from the new millennium, and the book boasts an introduction by science fiction novelist and critic Paul di Filippo, with cover art by the award-winning artist Dominic Harman. Di Filippo calls it “a bold new collection full of marvelous gems,” and about the collection award-winning anthologist Ellen Datlow writes: “The eighteen stories here will fascinate and intrigue. Each McAllister story is a marvel."
McAllister has been publishing for six decades. His first science fiction story, written when he was 16, was chosen for Judith Merrill’s "best science fiction of the year” anthology, brought him attention in the field, and was reprinted decades later in Isaac Asimov’s “Golden Age of Science Fiction” anthology series, THE GREAT SCIENCE FICTION STORIES. Over the decades since that first story, his stories have won or been nominated for awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, Nebula, Hugo, LOCUS, Shirley Jackson Award, NARRATIVE magazine, and others; and been included in many “year's best” volumes, theme anthologies, and college textbooks.
His Hugo-nominated short story “Kin” was chosen to launch actor LeVar Burton’s podcast LEVAR BURTON READS, and his short story “The Boy In Zaquitos” was selected by Stephen King for THE BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES. His “ESP in war” novel, DREAM BABY—the story of an Army nurse in Vietnam who dreams the deaths of her patients and cannot save them—became a classic and was called by PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY “a tour de force—one of the most memorable chronicles of the Vietnam War.” For that novel McAllister spent a decade interviewing two hundred veterans of three American wars, and the storyline is based on a CIA contingency plan to end the Vietnam war that still has not been made public, though it is alluded to in Nixon’s memoirs.
McAllister’s semi-autobiographical novel of “magical realism,” THE VILLAGE SANG TO THE SEA: A MEMOIR OF MAGIC—was a Cybils Award nominee and was cited by LOCUS magazine as one of the year's twenty-five best fantasy novels. He has served on many awards juries. In 1992, as one of the science fiction field’s ”male feminists,” he was appointed to the James Tiptree/Alice Sheldon Memorial Award jury for the best feminist/humanist novel of the year.
While in high school, McAllister composed a questionnaire about “symbolism in writing” and sent it to 150 of the world’s most famous writers. Seventy-five of them answered. The story of his reaching out to famous authors and their generous responses went viral fifty years later thanks to the PARIS REVIEW and still influences the teaching of literature in schools across the country. While in high school, and for a science fair project, he was also involved as co-director of a sleep deprivation project that became the third most written-about story in the world and provided data to change how sleep deprivation was viewed by experts.
The son of a career Navy officer who worked for NATO in Europe during the Cold War and an underdog championing anthropologist mother who was probably part Native American, McAllister often writes about the social sciences and marine sciences in his fiction. When his father was stationed in Italy during the Cold War, McAllister and his younger brother Jack attended school in a local Italian village. McAllister had already begun to write fiction, and the experience of that “magical place and time would influence my writing ever after," he reports. Italy often features in his fantasy and science fiction, and he has a following in that country. Art is another of his interests. In Italy he was taught traditional drawing and painting techniques in Florence by modernist painter Arrigo Dreoni at the Institute of the Belle Arti. His other interests include Early Man archaeology, paleontology, conchology, international affairs, multicultural education and sciences in general.
While a faculty member at the University of Redlands in southern California for two and a half decades, McAllister established its creative and professional writing programs, was Edith R. White Distinguished Professor of Literature and Writing, and served as an interdisciplinary writing consultant on scholarly and scientific articles and books to other faculty.
When he isn’t writing fiction and poetry, he serves as a writing coach to new and established writers of all kinds of fiction, non-fiction and screenwriting, and as a publishing consultant. He works regularly with middle school and high school students one-on-one, has taught the Youth Writing Workshop at the Idyllwild School of Music and the Arts, and teaches occasional half-day writing and publishing workshops for Chapman University. He is currently working with three partners on a TV-series adaptation of his novel DREAM BABY and on two novels and short stories. He lives in Orange, California, with his wife, choreographer and medical Qi Gong instructor Amelie Hunter, and has three grown children—Liz, Ben and Annie.
Science fiction and fantasy writer Bruce McAllister, who began his career at age 16, has published a new short story collection, STEALING GOD AND OTHER STORIES (Aeon Press). All of the stories are from the new millennium, and the book boasts an introduction by science fiction novelist and critic Paul di Filippo, with cover art by the award-winning artist Dominic Harman. Di Filippo calls it “a bold new collection full of marvelous gems,” and about the collection award-winning anthologist Ellen Datlow writes: “The eighteen stories here will fascinate and intrigue. Each McAllister story is a marvel."
McAllister has been publishing for six decades. His first science fiction story, written when he was 16, was chosen for Judith Merrill’s "best science fiction of the year” anthology, brought him attention in the field, and was reprinted decades later in Isaac Asimov’s “Golden Age of Science Fiction” anthology series, THE GREAT SCIENCE FICTION STORIES. Over the decades since that first story, his stories have won or been nominated for awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, Nebula, Hugo, LOCUS, Shirley Jackson Award, NARRATIVE magazine, and others; and been included in many “year's best” volumes, theme anthologies, and college textbooks.
His Hugo-nominated short story “Kin” was chosen to launch actor LeVar Burton’s podcast LEVAR BURTON READS, and his short story “The Boy In Zaquitos” was selected by Stephen King for THE BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES. His “ESP in war” novel, DREAM BABY—the story of an Army nurse in Vietnam who dreams the deaths of her patients and cannot save them—became a classic and was called by PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY “a tour de force—one of the most memorable chronicles of the Vietnam War.” For that novel McAllister spent a decade interviewing two hundred veterans of three American wars, and the storyline is based on a CIA contingency plan to end the Vietnam war that still has not been made public, though it is alluded to in Nixon’s memoirs.
McAllister’s semi-autobiographical novel of “magical realism,” THE VILLAGE SANG TO THE SEA: A MEMOIR OF MAGIC—was a Cybils Award nominee and was cited by LOCUS magazine as one of the year's twenty-five best fantasy novels. He has served on many awards juries. In 1992, as one of the science fiction field’s ”male feminists,” he was appointed to the James Tiptree/Alice Sheldon Memorial Award jury for the best feminist/humanist novel of the year.
While in high school, McAllister composed a questionnaire about “symbolism in writing” and sent it to 150 of the world’s most famous writers. Seventy-five of them answered. The story of his reaching out to famous authors and their generous responses went viral fifty years later thanks to the PARIS REVIEW and still influences the teaching of literature in schools across the country. While in high school, and for a science fair project, he was also involved as co-director of a sleep deprivation project that became the third most written-about story in the world and provided data to change how sleep deprivation was viewed by experts.
The son of a career Navy officer who worked for NATO in Europe during the Cold War and an underdog championing anthropologist mother who was probably part Native American, McAllister often writes about the social sciences and marine sciences in his fiction. When his father was stationed in Italy during the Cold War, McAllister and his younger brother Jack attended school in a local Italian village. McAllister had already begun to write fiction, and the experience of that “magical place and time would influence my writing ever after," he reports. Italy often features in his fantasy and science fiction, and he has a following in that country. Art is another of his interests. In Italy he was taught traditional drawing and painting techniques in Florence by modernist painter Arrigo Dreoni at the Institute of the Belle Arti. His other interests include Early Man archaeology, paleontology, conchology, international affairs, multicultural education and sciences in general.
While a faculty member at the University of Redlands in southern California for two and a half decades, McAllister established its creative and professional writing programs, was Edith R. White Distinguished Professor of Literature and Writing, and served as an interdisciplinary writing consultant on scholarly and scientific articles and books to other faculty.
When he isn’t writing fiction and poetry, he serves as a writing coach to new and established writers of all kinds of fiction, non-fiction and screenwriting, and as a publishing consultant. He works regularly with middle school and high school students one-on-one, has taught the Youth Writing Workshop at the Idyllwild School of Music and the Arts, and teaches occasional half-day writing and publishing workshops for Chapman University. He is currently working with three partners on a TV-series adaptation of his novel DREAM BABY and on two novels and short stories. He lives in Orange, California, with his wife, choreographer and medical Qi Gong instructor Amelie Hunter, and has three grown children—Liz, Ben and Annie.
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