Fungi Anthology Available

Fungi CoverThe Fungi anthology by Innsmouth Free Press is now out (the official release date is 1st December, 2012). It has a mushroom person on the cover! You can’t get much more shiny than that. When my contributor’s copy arrives, I’ll put it on the shelf and admire the mushroomness.

But back on the word part. My story is called Letters to a Fungus, and is a bunch of letters written to a fungus. Admittedly, I don’t get any elaborate title points for that one*. It’s also my first published story about fungi, which is funny considering how much I like them.

The basic inspiration was giant fungi, such as the one discovered in Oregon. People tend to assume the mushroom is the fungus, but a lot of the mushrooms in an area may be produced by a single fungus (much as a bush may have lots of berries, but it’s still a single bush). As fun as mushrooms can be, we shouldn’t ever forget the real body of the fungus is out of sight, and might not be what we expect.

The Fungi website has a short piece on why they picked my story, and my answer to, “Why write about fungi?” (Though I’ll note I’m not a gigantic mushroom with a laptop**.) The Innsmouth website has a page with purchase information, including links to online shops and the option to buy directly from the publisher.

There’s also a Goodreads giveaway going on, ending on December 31, 2012. It’s open to people in the US, Canada, UK and Australia. You can add the book to your to-read list, or review it, from the Goodreads pages: hardback, paperback and Kindle versions.

That’s all the linkage. If you get hold of a copy, I hope you enjoy it!

* If it’d been a series of limericks written to a cat, and been called Letters to a Fungus, I could call it surrealism. But as it is, it’s one of those stories where people will ask, “What’s it about?” because they don’t entirely believe it really is a series of letters to a fungus. Maybe they’ve never written to a fungus. Some people are anti-fungal like that.

** I’m actually a tiny mushroom with a desktop.

# The art is by Oliver Wetter.

The Memory Eater – Matthew Hance (editor)

Memory Eater Cover - Cartoon head with pink bird eating the exposed brain

First Published: 19th June, 2012
Genre: Science Fiction / Short Story Anthology
Authors: Myra R. Taylor; John W. Otte; Ken Liu; Matthew Hance; Joe DiBuduo; Kate Robinson; Mike Kozlowski; j l mo; Lisa Martinez; Nicholas Conley; Wesley Gray; Bob Simms; Lisamarie Lamb; Lauren Kocher; Nina Pelletier; Kim Charles Younkin; Holly Day; Alex Shvartsman; Cassie Davies; Chad Jones; Justin Swapp; DL Thurston; Vivian Davenport; Lauren C. Teffeau; Kathie Huddleston
Available: Amazon.com | Amazon UK

The anthology is based on the premise that unwanted memories can be erased by a machine. Themed anthologies can suffer from the stories being too samey, and that was a big problem here. I read the first couple of stories, but after that, I skipped and picked a few at random from the rest. I’d hoped to see more of a range of situations, but the ones I chose all read as though they were set in near-future America, and focused on a heterosexual relationship problem. One story had a gay man being murdered for getting in the way of a different sex relationship, which is a negative trope I’d rather not ever see again, especially in an anthology with a heterosexual focus.

It’s possible there are some standouts in the ones I didn’t read, but I had no motivation to give the rest of the stories a chance.

When I first reviewed this, I said the stories were anonymous. Author names and bios are in a list at the back, but who wrote which story isn’t identified in the bios or on the stories. This was unfortunate as a reader (as I do like to know who authored a story, for better or worse) and bad for the authors themselves. I later realised there was a table of contents, but the book didn’t open to that page and it wasn’t the built-in table of contents Kindle recognises. All round, not a good way to format an anthology.

On the plus side, I didn’t see any issues in the editing and each story was illustrated. If you’re a fan of the themes I’ve mentioned, this might be for you.

Story in Penumbra

I don’t usually post two story announcements in a row. At least, not unless I’m slacking on my posting and haven’t written a content post inbetween. But this time, I have two things out within days of each other, so I have an excuse.

I have a story out in the dream issue of Penumbra eMag (by Musa Publishing). “The Road to the Beach” was one of the stories I wrote during last year’s NaNoWriMo and the first to make it out into the world. It’s also the featured story for this issue. Yay!

Penumbra is a subscription magazine, so this one’s not free to read.

Link: Penumbra, Volume 1 Issue 2, August 2012 (Dreams)

Steam-Powered: Lesbian Steampunk Stories – JoSelle Vanderhooft (editor)

Steam-Powered CoverSeries: Steam-Powered, #1
First Published: January, 2011
Genre: Steampunk / Short Story Anthology
Authors: Mike Allen; Rachel Manija Brown; Georgina Bruce; Amal El-Mohtar; Sara M. Harvey; Meredith Holmes; N.K. Jemisin; Mikki Kendall; Matthew Kressel; Shira Lipkin; D.L. MacInnes; Shweta Narayan; Tara Sommers; Beth Wodzinski; Teresa Wymore
Available: Out of Print

There were a few stories I particularly liked. “To Follow The Waves” by Amal El-Mohtar was one, set in Syria with dream crafting technology. The post-apocalyptic Western “Suffer Water” by Beth Wodzinski was also a fun story. Overall though, a lot of the stories didn’t really hold my attention.

The Kindle edition has no formatting, making it harder to read. If you’re going to buy it, the print edition is probably a better bet.

Roses Story in Nature (Nature Futures)

My hard science fiction piece “War of the Roses” is in the current issue of Nature (Volume 467 (7316), 7 October 2010). At least, that’s what their website says and I’m going to believe them.

It looks like the story is available online at the moment, but I don’t know how long that’ll last as they’re not primarily an online market: War of the Roses

Back when I was studying for my ecology degree, Nature was one of those places trainee scientists wanted to get published in. Perhaps a paper about some amazing research into the sort of things ecologists research*. I probably wouldn’t have believed time-travelling future me if I said I’d get a piece of fiction published there.

At least fiction doesn’t need citations**.

* Usually stuff like measuring lichens and wading out into swamps to take insect samples. Ecologists are the hardy branch of biologists.

** Blake, Polenth, A Bunch of Random Stuff about Roses, Polenth’s Brain, 2010