Black Gate

NB: This story is available for free online, through the good graces of Fortean Bureau, an excellent webzine. You can read it here.

I got the idea for this story one day while wandering around my local fairground — a good pastime for a theme-park nut. There was an old-timers’ ragtime band there, a clarinet and a set of tubs and a guitar with a little amp and a trombone, and all in matching red jackets, not a one under 60. They swung their way through a bunch of my requests, but it was all cut short when the goddamn airshow started and they got buzzed and buzzed and buzzed by jets. They valiantly struggled through it for a couple numbers, but then gave it up.

I’ve always been obsessed by the apocalype (I grew up in the antiwar movement, three-quarters convinced that I was headed for nuclear doom), and with apocalyptic lit, especially John Wyndham and Nevil Shute. When relatives nag me about not saving up for my old age, I usually smart off with a remark about not needing a retirement plan, just a long pole so I can dig for canned goods in the postapocalyptic rubble.

The title, of course, is from a great old Andrews Sisters number.
more

On Spec

Podcast: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

This story appears in my short story collection A Place So Foreign and Eight More and is licensed for downloading under a Creative Commons license. Download it here

This is part of the cycle of stories that started with Shadow of the Mothaship and continued in Home Again, Home Again.

I’ve written usuccessful fiction inspired by my activist past for years, but I think I’ve finally nailed it. I’m sure glad it’s found a home.
more

Starlight 3, edited by Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Tor Books

I’ve been trying to break into Starlight for, oh, six or seven years. For my money, it’s the best original sf anthology I’ve ever read, and I’m unspeakably pumped to finally sell Patrick a story.

No less spectacular are the circumstances under which Patrick accepted the story: it was at the reception before the Hugo Awards, and I was in a state of barely contained panic. Patrick said, “Hey, I keep forgetting to tell you — I want to buy your story for Starlight” — an hour later, I won the Campbell Award, and that was possibly the only thing that could’ve eclipsed my ecstasy over selling this piece.

I wrote this story while stuck in a hotel room in Montreal, working for an ad agency.
more