Future Fire #18: More firsts
With all this frantic editing and book publicising going on, I forgot to mention something very important to me. My short story, ‘All the Way’ has just been published in The Future Fire.
If you don’t know this magazine, you should probably download some of their PDF editions and have a browse. The Future Fire deliberately aims to provide speculative fiction that explores social and political issues – my favourite kind!
I also hope you will pop across and read ‘All the Way’. Publishing this story is a significant milestone for me – not just because it is the first time I’ve had my name on a magazine cover, and not just because it is the first time a story of mine has ever been accompanied by specially-commissioned artwork, but because this is the second one of my Placid Point stories to be published.
Placid Point is a place in a future world I invented and in which I have set a number of short stories. ‘Murathera’s Orgy’, which appeared in the print anthology Masques earlier this year, is a story from the distant future and is actually set in Placid Point, a massive, orbiting space station, packed solid with computers, in which millions of people live as simulations. ‘All the Way’ is from a point in time just sixty or so years from now, when the first uploaded humans are learning to adjust to their new situation. At this time, Placid Point is known as ‘Omega Point’ and doesn’t even get a mention.
However, Omega Point features prominently in the novel I am currently writing: ‘The Credulity Nexus’. If this book ever sees the light of day, it will be great to know that Masques and The Future Fire, paved its way.
A key piece of the future history of Placid Point – including the background of one of its main characters – is contained in an unpublished short story of mine called ‘JimsWorld’. There is also a short story called ‘Last Christmas’ – the winner of last year’s ‘Spec the Halls’ competition – which describes the very end of the story. Any magazine or anthology editors reading this who want to be a part of this unfolding saga, just drop me a line.
Love it. And congratulations on cover byline!
I’m off to read. Sounds like the sort of story I love!
And Merrilee “really enjoyed” it, she just told me on Twitter!
Thank you Janette, thank you Merrilee. You both know how much I appreciate this, I’m sure.
Loved ‘All the Way’, great little short, packed full with the emotional scifi I enjoy. Congrats on the publication, this story deserved it.
Thanks, Ruzkin, all compliments gratefully received. Of particular interest to you, maybe, is that I’d cite this story as an example of the kind of work that fits my manifesto and which I believe I should be writing.