SHORT WORK

LIKE MANY WRITERS, my publishing career started in the magazines. Modern American science fiction traces its roots primarily to the early adventure magazines and SF mags like the originals, Astounding and Amazing (read James Gunn's Road to Science Fiction anthologies for an excellent history of SF). Over time, the SF field has been influenced more and more by novels, and now by the media (that's a different discussion). But without Hugo Gernsback's first effort, we might never have had our genre.

I love writing short SF - especially now that I have such a demanding day job - because I can sit down and not come up for air until I've finished writing. Sometimes that means a solid day of writing, but that's how I transfer my short stories to paper. Of course, I've already reached what I call my "critical mass" by then - the plot is outlined, I've gotten to know the characters well, and I have a good feel of the setting and stuff involved. I usually start with an idea, say, "what if our relationship with aliens is like our relationship with dogs?" Then I start to flesh out that idea, find out who's most affected by its implications or applications, where they live (to reinforce the theme - oh, yeah, and come up with a theme in here somewhere), and so on. Only when it's more work to hold all the material in my head than to write the thing do I turn on the computer and start typing. But I've learned to never hit the keyboard until I'm confident with as much as I can possibly know about the cool idea, technology, second- and third-level effects, characters, civilizations, etc.

Here's a list of short work for which I managed to pull all these elements together enough to sell 'em:

The Empty Utopia

RUINS: EXTRATERRESTRIAL, available now! October 2007 from Hadley Rille Books

In the Clouds of Jupiter

VISUAL JOURNEYS: A TRIBUTE TO SPACE ART, available now! July 2007 from Hadley Rille Books

The Enlightenment

SYNERGY, September 2004

Lost Dogs

OUTLANDERS eBook, available soon from Scorpius Digital

Lost Dogs

ANALOG, September 2001

The Web

ARTEMIS, Summer 2000

Under Observation
Worlds of Tomorrow
City of Tomorrow

CAPTAIN PROTON, Pocket Books, November 1999

What Lurks in a Man's Mind

ANALOG, October 1999

Biolog

ANALOG, October 1999

Circles of Light and Shadow

ANALOG, February 1999

A Scientist's War

E-SCAPE, December 1998

A Plague of Mannequins

E-SCAPE, October 1996

The Recursive Man

TOMORROW SF, #20 (April 1996)

A Call to Arms

ANALOG, January 1996

Paving the Road to Armageddon

ANALOG, Winter 1995

James Gunn and The Dreamers

EXTRAPOLATION, Winter 1995

The Myth of Sephoön

NOTA, Spring 1991

Martians and Others

NOTA, Winter 1990

Forty Minutes

OHS BLACKBOARD, May 1985 (the only story my high-school paper published, and my first publication!)