“Brother Blue” is complete in first draft. Came in at 13,000 words, in the end, an awkward length to sell, but I like it. It’s what I think of as a Zelaznian world, strange and wonderful, though the story itself isn’t at all a Zelazny story.
A student at a magical college that travels between worlds is separated from his friend, and strives to understand how the College works so he can get back to where his friend lives. Along the way, he has to deal with multiple distractions and temptations to abandon his quest, but each time, he chooses the path of love. It’s a celebration of the power of friendship, and the family that we choose for ourselves.
It could probably stretch into a novella – there are a couple of places with potential to expand, though they’re kind of digressions to the main thrust of the story. But I think I’ll try it out on the market as a novelette first, after my editor’s been over it.
The singularity is near here! As usual, here are a few of the last week’s best articles from around the web illustrating humanity’s progress toward the singularity. Enjoy 🙂
Like my posts? Add me for This Week in Tech, This Week in Science, This Week in The Singularity, and lots more each week. Or just follow my Collection The Singularity !
We’re at a pivotal moment in history. Billions of years of biological evolution has culminated to an intelligent species of hominids that in their sudden industrial-digital revolution create machines that can take them places they can’t even imagine. And to think that they don’t even pay attention to the transformation as neural networks make their first major appearances, as AI enters each of the main fields of science, and breakthroughs in computing threaten to leave even Moore’s Law in the dust. So do as I do and spread the word!
Three and a half thousand words on a new story, “Leaving Our Town,” and another thousand on “Brother Blue”. I think that makes a good point to take a break and look for reprint markets for some stories for which the rights have reverted.
So I have a mid-future SF setting on simmer where technology has become a lot “softer” (read: more organic, in the background, largely unnoticed). As part of that, I’d like to have a mesh network of genetically-engineered microbes exchanging P2P wifi signals. They’re in plants, animals, people, and so the Net is everywhere.
My problem is, what stops these microbes evolving back into non-wifi-enabled microbes that would have an advantage over the wifi-enabled ones (because they wouldn’t be using energy to broadcast radio signals, and would get to use it for themselves)? What advantage is there to a microbe in being part of a mesh network?
Looks like I’ve sold another story that I’d given up on. This particular market has had it since November last year, and never responded to my 90-day query in February, but I couldn’t think of another market to submit it to, so I let it sit.
Today they contacted me to say they thought they’d bought it, but had just realised that they hadn’t. (Their internal systems have been kind of a train wreck, by all indications.)
