Wednesday, January 27, 2010Short fiction, cosmic and parahistorical

Two stories of mine have been chosen for various of the annual Best Of anthologies. 

Jonathan Strahan's Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year and Gardner Dozois's Year's Best Science Fiction have picked up my story "Utriusque Cosmi," originally published in last year's New Space Opera 2. 

And Rich Horton's The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2010 Edition will contain "This Peaceable Land; or, The Unbearable Vision of Harriet Beecher Stowe, from last year's Other Earths.

I've had a couple of email questions about the (admittedly somewhat unwieldy) title of "Utriusque Cosmi."  Below is the woodcut from Robert Fludd's 1617 Utriusque Cosmi Maioris, of which the story's narrator retains a dim and inaccurate memory. 

The cosmos in a single diagram -- simplifies things, doesn't it?

CURRENTLY READING:  John Le Carre's A Most Wanted Man, David Priestland's The Red Flag, and Fergus M. Bordewich's Bound for Canaan: The Underground Railroad and the War for the Soul of America.  Bordewich's book is excellent.  The story of the struggle against slavery is a wonderful catalogue of real American heroism on both sides of the racial divide.  Much of this history was pointedly ignored by post-Reconstruction historians in the interest of  "conciliation" with the South, but there's lots of it available at the moment.  The book also delves into the history of the fugitive slave communities that grew up around Windsor and other parts of Southern Ontario, a fascinating study in itself. 

CURRENTLY LISTENING TO:  Well, none of these, at least!