Category: Weird World War III Authors

Martin L. Shoemaker

Martin L. Shoemaker is a programmer who writes on the side… or maybe it’s the other way around. Programming pays the bills, but a second-place story in the Jim Baen Memorial Writing Contest earned him lunch with Buzz Aldrin. Programming never did that! His work has appeared in Analog Science Fiction & Fact, Galaxy’s Edge, Digital Science Fiction, Forever Magazine, Writers of the Future, and numerous anthologies including Year’s Best Military and Adventure SF 4, Man-Kzin Wars XV, The Jim Baen Memorial Award: The First Decade, and Avatar Dreams from Wordfire Press. His Clarkesworld story “Today I Am Paul” appeared in four different year’s-best anthologies and eight international editions. His follow-on novel, Today I Am Carey, was published by Baen Books in March 2019. His novel The Last Dance was published by 47North in November 2019.

His story, “The Ouroboros Arrangement”, appears in the Weird World War III anthology.

Tell me about yourself. Where are you from? What’s your background?

I’m a software developer from Michigan. I’m also a lifelong writer, starting my professional fiction career in 2010.

What kinds of stories do you write? Why?

I dabble across genres: mostly science fiction, but occasional fantasy or mystery. I also have a habit of mixing mystery in my science fiction. I prefer near-future, near-space hard science fiction, but I go where the story takes me. I tend to write middle-length works, novelettes and novellas; but I write a lot of shorter work as well, and I’ve written two novels. A third should be released at the same time as Weird World War III.

Why? is a more difficult question. A lot of my writing process is subconscious. Tomorrow I might wake up with the urge to write a historical adventure story. But what would probably happen is that I would realize how much research that would involve, since I’m not much of a historian, and I would set it aside. I don’t like to work that hard! With science fiction I need less research—in part because I can make up many details, and in part because this is where I live as a reader. It’s familiar territory for me. I’m a child of the Apollo era, of Star Trek and 2001, of Heinlein and Asimov and McDevitt. So as the old cliché goes: Write what you know.

Which of your short stories is your favorite? Why?

“Today I Am Paul”, the basis of my first novel, Today I Am Carey (Baen books, 2019). First it’s my most successful story. It was nominated for a Nebula, it won the Washington Science Fiction Association Award, and it was in four year’s best collections. But more important has been the reader response. Readers tell me that they saw themselves in this story of an Alzheimer’s patient, her family, and her android caretaker. They tell me that they feel better because someone understands what they’ve been through with their own loved ones. That’s a high compliment for an author.

What authors have had the greatest influence on your writing? Why?

How much time do you have? A could list dozens, but I’ll restrict it to two.

I was an early subscriber to Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, so I was there when Barry B. Longyear sold his first story. And his second, and his third, and… And not only was he a great writer (“Enemy Mine” is one of my three favorite short works ever), but he was the first emerging writer I knew of. Prior to Longyear, all the writers I read seemed to be established by the time I found them. Like they had always been there. But I watched from the sidelines as Longyear became a professional writer, and so I knew it could be done! It took another four decades for me to follow; but I would never have known how it worked without his example.

But during that forty years, I built a successful career as a software developer; and as a result, much of my reading time was devoted to the science and craft of software. I didn’t make as much time for leisure reading, for science fiction. But a random trip to a bookstore led me to Jack McDevitt’s A Talent for War, and Jack reignited my science fiction flame. That book is one of my favorites, and I’ve gone on to read and reread everything Jack has written. My first Finalist in Writers of the Future, the story that persuaded me to keep writing, was inspired by Jack McDevitt’s Echo. And I was honored when Jack asked me to write the foreword to his collection, A Voice in the Night; and then honored again when he wrote a very kind blurb for my first novel, Today I Am Carey.

And because of my involvement in the writing community, I’ve gotten to meet both Barry and Jack. Some rewards can’t be measured in dollars and cents.

Besides yourself, which other contemporary authors would you recommend?

Here are recent books I’ve enjoyed:

  • The Art of Madness by A.j. Mayall. He has a talent for mixing and matching tropes from multiple genres and turning them into something fresh and uniquely his. I first saw this in an anthology story in Cursed Collectibles, and I immediately went out and bought this book. I didn’t regret it.
  • Spine of the Dragon by Kevin J. Anderson. I am sorry to say that I’m mostly burned out on epic fantasy. I’m sure there’s a lot of it that’s very good, but it just doesn’t engage me. This book did.
  • A Star-Wheeled Sky by Brad Torgersen. Brad wrote a very exciting space opera here, with a nice twist on both science and empire. I’m looking forward to the sequel.Simon Says by Bryan Thomas Schmidt. This is like a classic 70s/80s buddy cop film, only set in the future with one of the buddies being an android. It’s the first in a series, and I’m enjoying all of them.
  • Split Feather by Deborah A. Wolfe. This book was a delight from start to finish, with a vivid protagonist who discovers her roots in the native communities of Alaska—and in a unique folklore and magic system that Wolfe makes very real.
  • Level Five by William Ledbetter. This was my absolute favorite book of 2018, a sweeping tale of artificial intelligence, space exploration, and a conspiracy to bring about the end of the world.

Story’s Soundtrack

Each of the stories in this volume evoked certain themes and emotions that can sometimes be approximated with music. The below video is the editor’s best interpretation of the feelings and themes that this author’s story evoked. Please note that this is only the editor’s interpretation. The author did not know this portion of the blog post existed until the editor published it.

Order Weird World War III Now

Amazon
Kindle
NOOK Book
Barnes & Noble
Indiebound
Powell’s
Walmart
Baen
Bookstop
Books Inc.

2020-10-06T00:00:00

  days

  hours  minutes  seconds

until

Weird World War III Release Date

2

Brian Trent

Brian Trent’s work regularly appears in Analog, Fantasy & Science Fiction, The Year’s Best Military and Adventure SF, Orson Scott Card’s InterGalactic Medicine Show, Terraform, Daily Science Fiction, Apex, Pseudopod, Escape Pod, Galaxy’s Edge, Nature, and numerous year’s-best anthologies. The author of the recently published sci-fi novel Ten Thousand Thunders and the dark fantasy series Rahotep, Trent is a winner of the 2019 Year’s Best Military and Adventure SF Readers’ Choice Award from Baen Books and Writers of the Future. He lives in New England. His website is http://www.briantrent.com.

His story, “Shadow Rook Red”, appears in the Weird World War III anthology.

Tell me about yourself. Where are you from? What’s your background?

I’m a speculative fiction writer from New England, and my work appears regularly in Analog, Fantasy & Science Fiction, The Year’s Best Military and Adventure SF (my story “Crash-Site” won the 2019 Readers Choice Award), Nature, Daily Science Fiction, and more. I grew up with a deep love for sci-fi, fantasy and horror, gleefully immersing myself in the classics and writing my own stories from a very young age. I’m also an obsessive reader of nonfiction. My brand of sci-fi tends to combine technology, history, and society… how they interact, and how they might interact. I consider short stories as laboratories to explore a host of subjects from a future perspective: addiction, war, evolution, threat, sacrifice… all the ingredients that go into the human drama.

If you could live in any time period, when would it be? Why?

It would likely be Alexandria, Egypt during the early Ptolemaic Dynasties. I’m enamored of Hellenism and the scientific and artistic inquiry associated with it. I’d hang out in the scented halls of the Great Library, enjoying access to that repository of knowledge and speculation; in those days, ships visiting port would be searched for books and those books would be copied, so the Library would always be expanding its contents (beyond the new works being written by local scholars). There was also active research going on, and lectures to attend, and warm weather, and a diverse city representing a crossroads of civilization. Yeah, count me in.

If you could live anywhere in the world, where would it be?

Two places tie for this: Italy and Japan. I’ve been to both and find them equally enchanting. Italy is an exquisite array of contrasting regions: Rome, Venice, Florence, Tuscany, Assisi and other locales have the qualities of independent city-states, complete with rich layers of history. The food and wine are reasons enough to go, along with their general celebration of appreciating the moment. Japan also has an extensive history, fascinating culture, and a rather unique duality that I like: Akihabara and Tokyo and Shinjuku seem to exist some 20 years in the future, while Nikko and Kyoto and Hakone preserve an older and rural quality: mist-wreathed village, ancient shrines, and simple elegance. I enjoy that contrast… cyberpunk with a healthy mix of shinrin-yoku. 

What kinds of stories do you write? Why?

My writing preference is sci-fi over fantasy—I like the rational structures of the genre, the extrapolation from current state and fact. My story in Weird World War III is a good example of this preference: postulating how the Cold War of the ‘80s heats up when a new technology is introduced, and how it impacts geopolitical, cultural, strategic and tactical realties. I’m also a fan of worldbuilding, and the research and imaginative exercises that go along with that. A lot (but not nearly all) of my stories take place in the same far-future universe, too—it’s nice to have a sandbox that can yield different tales. Sometimes an oblique reference or seemingly throwaway line will generate its own spin-off. I enjoy the opportunities the genre affords me.

Which of your short stories is your favorite? Why?

I have to list two for different reasons. “The Memorybox Vultures” in F&SF (September/October 2018) is set in the near-future, when people continue to post on social media after their deaths… becoming post-mortem “quasints” based on their online posts made while alive. I like it because it seems inevitable, considering today’s ability of tagging people and scheduling future posts. Our infomorphic identities are already out there, after all.

My other favorite is “An Incident on Ishtar” in Analog (March/April 2018). It’s set on a Venusian aerostat colony in the far future, and on one hand is about a dangerous conspiracy… but fundamentally it’s about how far someone is willing to go for what’s important to them.

Story’s Soundtrack

Each of the stories in this volume evoked certain themes and emotions that can sometimes be approximated with music. The below video is the editor’s best interpretation of the feelings and themes that this author’s story evoked. Please note that this is only the editor’s interpretation. The author did not know this portion of the blog post existed until the editor published it.

Order Weird World War III Now

Amazon
Kindle
NOOK Book
Barnes & Noble
Indiebound
Powell’s
Walmart
Baen
Bookstop
Books Inc.

2020-10-06T00:00:00

  days

  hours  minutes  seconds

until

Weird World War III Release Date

4

Erica Satifka

Erica Satifka’s short fiction has appeared in Interzone, Clarkesworld, and Daily Science Fiction. She is the author of the British Fantasy Award-winning Stay Crazy (Apex Publications) and the ruralcyberpunk novella Busted Synapses (Broken Eye Books). If you want to read more of her stories, catch ‘em all at ericasatifka.com.

Her story, “Where You Lead, I Will Follow: An Oral History of the Denver Incident”, appears in the Weird World War III anthology.

Tell me about yourself. Where are you from? What’s your background?

I’ve been publishing science fiction since 2007 (with frequent hiatuses). My first pro-published story was “Automatic” in Clarkesworld Magazine, and since then I’ve also been published in Lightspeed, Interzone, Shimmer, and many other places. In 2016 Apex Books published my urban fantasy (or so people tell me) novel Stay Crazy, the story of a schizophrenic teenage stocker at a big-box store who is contacted by a mysterious force… or is it just all in her head? This novel won the British Fantasy Award for Best Newcomer the following year, which is probably one of the top three moments of my life. Sometime soon (likely in 2020) Broken Eye Books will publish my “rural cyberpunk” novella Busted Synapses, which is set in a near-future West Virginia. I’m originally from Western Pennsylvania and my work definitely reflects that, for better or for worse. I currently and permanently live in Portland, Oregon with my husband and four strange cats.

Which of your short stories is your favorite? Why?

They are all my children and I love them equally! But the one I’m probably proudest of is my novelette “The Goddess of the Highway,” which was published in Interzone in 2017. The protagonist is a long-haul trucker with a poorly-functioning brain implant who meets up with a young woman with a well-functioning brain implant. That’s not a coincidence; in the world of the story the brains of everyone in North America got scrambled by a mysterious fog, which is implied to be the work of rich elites. It’s a political story, but also kind of a funny story, although keep in mind that I have a strange sense of humor. The titular goddess might be real, or she might be a hallucination caused by trucker speed, but either way people are losing fingers and fomenting revolution. (This makes sense in context. Probably.)

What’s the craziest thing you’ve ever done?

In 2014 my husband and I moved across the country to Portland, Oregon, without any jobs and three cats in tow. That’s pretty crazy! We’d moved to Baltimore for a job that didn’t work out, and while we considered returning to where we came from, we had the feeling that there was something else out there. I’d always wanted to live on the West Coast (despite having never been to the West Coast until the previous year), and we had some money saved up, so why not try it? I don’t know if I really expected to stay here permanently when we first moved out, but we did, and I’m glad we did.

What author has had the greatest influence on your writing? Why?

Without a doubt, Philip K. Dick. I “discovered” him in college (he had already been dead for twenty years at that point) and his work clicked with me immediately, there was just something about the style of writing that I found so compelling. Of course the technological and drug-related aspects of his writing are important (especially these days, where “social credit” and facial profiling and algorithms threaten to doom us all), but beyond that I really felt a strong connection to his characters. They’re flawed individuals, all of them, and in a way you don’t often see in science fiction. Some of his lesser-known novels, like Dr. Bloodmoney or We Can Build You, are basically literary novels set in future societies with a commercial writing style, and there’s few things like them. I like his more SFnal novels too, but working-class schlubs just trying to get through their tedious days in the future is my ultimate jam. (Cross-promotion time: I have an essay about PKD coming out in a book by PM Press later this year, with special attention to the politics in his work.

Many of your stories, including your story in Weird World War III, involve the sinister side of technology. How concerned are you about real-world technology?

Extremely concerned! I keep thinking about something said in passing on Twitter about how anonymity will soon be a thing of the past due to facial recognition programs, cameras being in everything, and the cashless economy, and it makes me really anxious. Not because I necessarily want to fall off the map, but sooner than we think it won’t even be an option. Combine this with social credit and you get a dystopia of our own making, and none of the political parties in any country seem like they want to take this problem on at all. And it doesn’t feel like anyone really benefits in the long run; sure, there’s money to be made, but the people who designed and profit from these systems have to live in them too. The Internet is possibly the greatest thing humans ever made, but it opened a Pandora’s box of unintended consequences. I don’t know how this can be fixed without deliberately nerfing technology, and who decides what technologies are nerfed and how? In my story, catastrophe happens because people aren’t skeptical enough about technology. Hopefully, we can turn the tide before something similar happens in real life.

Story’s Soundtrack

Each of the stories in this volume evoked certain themes and emotions that can sometimes be approximated with music. The below video is the editor’s best interpretation of the feelings and themes that this author’s story evoked. Please note that this is only the editor’s interpretation. The author did not know this portion of the blog post existed until the editor published it.

Order Weird World War III Now

Amazon
Kindle
NOOK Book
Barnes & Noble
Indiebound
Powell’s
Walmart
Baen
Bookstop
Books Inc.

2020-10-06T00:00:00

  days

  hours  minutes  seconds

until

Weird World War III Release Date

6

Blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑