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Free Stuff

I've made my first novel, Ventus, available as a free download, as well as excerpts from two of the Virga books.  I am looking forward to putting up a number of short stories in the near future.

Complete novel:  Ventus

 

To celebrate the August, 2007 publication of Queen of Candesce, I decided to re-release my first novel as a free eBook. You can download it from this page. Ventus was first published by Tor Books in 2000, and and you can still buy it; to everyone who would just like to sample my work, I hope you enjoy this free version.

I've released this book under a Creative Commons license, which means you can read it and distribute it freely, but not make derivative works or sell it.

Book Excerpts:  Sun of Suns and Pirate Sun

I've made large tracts of these two Virga books available.  If you want to find out what the Virga universe is all about, you can check it out here:

Short Stories

I'll be adding new stories here periodically.  First of all, you can try my Aurora-award nominated short story "Hopscotch."  The year this was nominated, another of my stories was also nominated:  "The Toy Mill," which I wrote with David Nickle.  "The Toy Mill" won the award; but I've always been fond of "Hopscotch."  Here it is, in its entirety excerpted from my collection The Engine of Recall.

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short stories

Oct 13, 2008

Download first Metatropolis story for free

by karl — last modified Jan 28, 2008 07:52 AM

The story is Jay Lake's excellent "In the Forests of the Night"

You can try out Metatropolis, the shared world anthology from Audible.com, before buying.  There's a sample from my own story, "To Hie from Far Cilenia", or if you want you can listen to Jay Lake's excellent story, "In the Forests of the Night" in its entirety.  

Audible and I have been collaborating on other projects as well.  In fact, you can now download the first three Virga books, unabridged, in audiobook format from Audible.  I've been having a rollicking good time listening to them myself--it's quite an experience when your own words come back to you through someone else's voice! 

 

 

Jun 18, 2008

My story "The Hero" will be in Eclipse 2

by karl — last modified Jan 28, 2008 07:52 AM

...And yes, it's a Virga story

I'm actually engaged in writing several stories set in my world of Virga (the setting for Sun of Suns, Queen of Candesce, and the forthcoming Pirate Sun).  "The Hero" is the first--thanks to Jonathon Strahan for choosing it for Eclipse 2!

I'm in pretty amazing company with this anthology; here's the lineup:

The Hero, Karl Schroeder
Turing’s Apples, Stephen Baxter
Invisible Empire of Ascending Light, Ken Scholes
Michael Laurits is: Drowning, Paul Cornell
Elevator, Nancy Kress
The Illustrated Biography of Lord Grimm, Daryl Gregory
Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, David Moles
The Rabbi’s Hobby, Peter S. Beagle
The Seventh Expression of the Robot General, Jeffrey Ford
Skin Deep, Richard Parks
Ex Cathedra, Tony Daniel
Truth Window: A Tale of the Bedlam Rose, Terry Dowling
We Haven’t Got There Yet, Harry Turtledove
Fury, Alastair Reynolds

I won't say anything about what "The Hero" is about, except to say that it does have to do with one of the major plotlines running through the first three Virga books; and it doesn't have any of the characters from those books in it.

Feb 04, 2008

I'm writing short stories again

by karl — last modified Jan 28, 2008 07:52 AM
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Toby Buckell and I have just sold one; another comes out next month

Kickass space opera master Toby Buckell and I just blitzed a story ("Mitigation") and sold it to Pyr's next anthology, Fast Forward 2.  It's a gonzo, post-cyberpunk romp through an open arctic ocean about twenty years hence.Solaris New SF 2

Also, my short story "Book, Theatre, and Wheel", will appear in the Solaris Book of New SF #2, which will be on sale in March!  (Actually, you can order it now; it'll be in the stores in March.)

These are both going to be fantastic anthologies, featuring some of the finest of the current generation of SF writers (and, for some reason, me).  They're also triumphal examples of the new generation of SF publishing houses--neither big presses nor small houses, but something in between:  medium-sized publishers, an animal that was never able to survive in the wild before.  Both Pyr and Solaris are surviving--and thriving!--which signals a new era of choice and flexibility for both readers and authors.  All in all, a very good time for science fiction.