short stories

Meaty Story in Nature

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“Dead Meat” is in this week’s Nature. It’s out today in print and appeared on their website yesterday. Yay! [ETA: A number of people have commented that this is pretty graphic… I don’t react the blood quite that way, but if you do, be warned… the meaty part is quite literal.]

Link: “Dead Meat” at Nature

This story is a number of seconds. It’s the second story I’ve had published by Nature. It’s also the second I’ve had published about the arts in science fiction (the first was a horror story in ChiZine). There are times when it feels like people forget that drawing, singing and other forms of expression aren’t things that go away because we have nifty new gadgets. Odd considering creative writing itself is one of the arts.

That’s my thinky thought for the day. Mostly I’m in the yay space, so this is as about as thinky as I get.

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

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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)

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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**.

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* 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