Proposed cover art for the Cloaked Press anthology “Spring Into SciFi 2020”
As you know, I recently announced that my short story “The Colonists” was accepted for publication in the Cloaked Press science fiction anthology “Spring Into SciFi 2020.”
Promotional image of the upcoming science fiction anthology “Infinity and I” by Sam Phillips
Just found out that Sam Phillips, co-founder of Australian indie publishing house Zombie Pirate Publishing is coming out with his own anthology of 70 science fiction stories.
Screen capture of the Cloaked Press website
You may recall that my short story “The Recall” was previously accepted for publication in the Cloaked Press anthology Spring Into SciFi 2019. This was followed by my fantasy tale “The Demon in the Mask” being featured in this publisher’s anthology Fall Into Fantasy 2019.
I am proud to announce that my science fiction short story “The Colonists” has been accepted for publication in the Cloaked Press anthology “Spring Into SciFi 2020”.
Phillip Wyatt 2020 Cadillac Mountain Fog
“I never thought anything could be so beautiful.” Natori, the young shaman’s son staggered on the rough trail in the lush forest. The fog was a widow’s shroud on the land. Though he was warm in the unfamiliar clothes of the Qu’ullad people, he still shivered.
Vastusia, took his hand, his flesh slightly darker than hers, and smiled. “I told you there was a world beyond the savanna.”
He frowned. V’rovi traditions do not forbid us traveling to other places.”
“Only discourage it.”
“Our land, our traditions define us. We would cease to be a people without them.”
© James Pyles
When I wrote about the recent passing of SF author Brad Linaweaver, and then reviewed his original novella Moon of Ice, a few of the people who knew Brad contacted me and shared a little of their experiences with him.
I was also gifted with a copy of the full length novel which I finished recently.
In a way, I’m not sure it was an advantage to have read the novella first. I was able to pick out seeming inconsistencies in the older material. A large part of this had to do with the novella being told from the point of view of Hitler’s propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, while the novel had several primary voices, but most of all Hilda, Goebbels’ daughter.
In the novel, Goebbels’ long suppressed journals are on the verge of being released to the public by Hilda thirty years after the end of the second world war, and not long after her father’s death. In this alternate universe, the Nazis developed the atomic bomb and subdued Europe and England, but were prevented from conquering the U.S.
Cover art for the November 1988 issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction Magazine
I first heard of the late science fiction author Mike Resnick in Louis Antonelli‘s response to Jaym Gates‘s Facebook complaint about him (and later, her twitter rant). I never really got to the core of her animosity toward Resnick and many other major SF/F writers, but I did chronicle my experiences, including her blocking me on the aforementioned social media platforms.
Oddly enough, Gates and her followers were the only ones who seemed to have issues with Resnick. Every other source of information I could find about him, including the File 770 fanzine, spoke quite highly of him.
Anyway, I settled on the Hugo award winning short story Kirinyaga, which he later developed into a novel by the same name.
Resnick originally wrote it as a submission to an anthology that was to be edited by Orson Scott Card, but the anthology never materialized. The theme was to be about stories dealing with developing a utopia. Resnick chose a reconstruction of an African savannah developed on a terraformed planetoid.
The late Mike Resnick – photo found at Goodreads
I’ll warn you now that this one is really long (if you include the screenshots), so if you’re a TLDR person, stop now.
Another warning: This is one of my rants about the culture wars that appear to be gaining momentum in the “official” world of science fiction and fantasy. It seems that it’s not enough to write a good story anymore.
I’d never heard of SciFi author Mike Resnick before he died. He’d won Five Hugos and other awards during his career, so that says something. He was heavily eulogized (if you’ll pardon the pun), and also memorialized by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. But he was also criticized.
Let’s get to his death first. From Heavy.com:
Cloaked Press LLC logo
As my regular readers know, two of my short stories were published in Cloaked Press anthologies. “The Recall” was featured in Spring Into SciFi: 2019 Edition, and “The Demon in the Mask” appeared in Fall Into Fantasy, 2019 Edition.
I have another submission into them that I hope will make it into their 2020 science fiction edition, but something else is going on. I just got this email:
I’d just like to say thank you again for being part of the Cloaked Press Family, and if I could ask a small favor, that would be wonderful. I’d like to take Cloaked Press to the next level and begin taking on single author novels, novellas, and collections. To do this, I started a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds for a large bath of ISBNs (100 to start is the goal), as well as purchase cover designs and some marketing ads with Amazon, Facebook, etc. If anyone would be willing to reach out to their followers to see about getting us a boost, that would be wonderful.
So here I am giving a boost.
Promotional image for the Zombie Pirate Publishing anthology “Treasure Chest.”
Treasure Chest is Zombie Pirate Publishing‘s first “best of” anthology, a collection of short stories they’ve previously published in other works.
Founded in 2017, Adam Bennett and Sam Phillips have produced a plethora of anthologies, giving indie authors like me, the opportunity to have our tales see the light of day and become available to readers.
My short story Joey, originally published in the SciFi anthology World War Four (please readers, post more reviews), is featured in the “Treasure Chest.” It’s one of my strongest missives emotionally, and I’m glad it was selected.
Cover image for issue 160 of Clarkesworld Magazine – Zarrio by Edwardo Garcia
UPDATE – January 18-2020: Fortunately someone archived the original story, so it is preserved, even though Clarkesworld it offline.
UPDATE – January 16, 2020: This story has been pulled from publication by the magazine, and the rationale can be found here!
On twitter, I happened across a tweet by Cora Buhlert. It was referencing a story written by Isabel Fall for Clarkesworld Magazine called I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter. Actually, I saw that Buhlert was referencing a twitter conversation of someone called The 1000 Year Plan (actually a Marxist blogger named “Gary” who announces personal pronouns as “he/him”) commenting on Fall’s story.
As you can guess, he didn’t like it.
What got my attention first is that Gary tweeted:
All of the comments are absurdly over-the-top praise that appeared almost immediately after the story was published. There are way more of these than is normal for a Clarkesworld story.
I looked at the story and couldn’t see any comments anywhere. Slightly earlier, Gary tweeted:
poweredbyrobots.com 