Bibliography
Adam, Unwilling- Jim Baen’s Universe, Issue 19: Vol 4 Num 1, June 2009
The idea- A lot of science fiction focuses on what changes technology will bring to culture. Take mind uploading- that’s a gift that keeps on giving for sci-fi. When your characters can load their brains like software into a network, it opens up a world of possibilities.
An author can go two ways with this. They could focus on the problems this new tech could solve. Like making generation ships possible. Or they could focus on the problems this tech could create. Like how long will it be before someone decides to go all HAL on everyone else in the network?
Most of the time, like in this story, it’s best to do both.
The Farthest Born- Writer’s of the Future Anthology XXV
The idea- I liked the idea of a setting where space travel was stuck at sub-light speeds, but there was faster than light communication. Earth’s first extra-solar colony could be a mix of the poor schmucks who had gone through the long slog all the way there and a bunch of gawkers from Earth who popped in over the communications system. My initial idea was to try this as a strange form of long distance romance between a colonist and a researcher whose physical presence was that of the robot she was running from Earth. Nice idea, never really went anywhere.
Then I remembered something I had watched as a kid, about the biologists who were rebuilding the California Condor population. They were taking condor eggs and incubating them, and then raising the chicks in a safe setting. To keep them somewhat attuned to a natural state, they fed them using puppets that looked like adult condors.
Mix these two ideas, add some teenage resentment and an alien predator, and the story gels.
Mayfly-Warrior Wisewoman Three-Forthcoming
And the Blood of Dead Gods Will Mark the Score-Fantasy Magazine-Forthcoming
Sympathy of a Gun-Intergalactic Medicine Show-Forthcoming