David Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer have chose the short story Toby Buckell and I wrote last spring, "Mitigation," to be in their annual Year's Best collection.  For me, this is a chance to shine with one of my favourite authors of SF's new generation.  It's also flattering that, of three short stories I wrote last year, two of them have chosen as Year's Best entries (the other being "The Hero" which Gardner Dozois has picked up for his collection).

Writing this story was a blast.  Toby came up from Ohio and crashed on my couch for a weekend, and I wrote at the desktop while he had his laptop open on said couch.  We played literary hopscotch, with him writing one scene while I wrote another that preceded or followed it.  Coffee, lots of laughs, and blasting electronica from my stereo (most Delerium, which I often use while writing) completed the scene.

Thanks to David and Kathryn for choosing this story for their anthology.  And special thanks are due to Lou Anders for believing in Toby's and my vision, and accepting "Mitigation" for Fast Forward 2 in the first place.

Here's the official word:

The judges of the 2008 Philip K. Dick Award and the Philadelphia SF Society, along with the Philip K. Dick Trust, are pleased to announce six nominated works that comprise the final ballot for the award:

• EMISSARIES FROM THE DEAD by Adam-Troy Castro (Eos Books)
  

•  ENDGAME by Kristine Smith (Eos Books)

• FAST FORWARD 2 edited by Lou Anders (Pyr)
  
• JUDGE by Karen Traviss (Eos Books)
  
• TERMINAL MIND by David Walton (Meadowhawk Press)
  
• TIME MACHINES REPAIRED WHILE-U-WAIT by K. A. Bedford (EDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing)

First prize and any special citations will be announced on Friday, April 10, 2009 at Norwescon 32 at the Doubletree Seattle Airport Hotel, SeaTac, Washington.

Gardner Dozois has posted the table of contents for his 26th Annual Year's Best SF collection.  He's selected my short story "The Hero" as one of the featured stories, which puts me in fine company indeed. 

"The Hero" is the first short story I've set in the world of Virga (setting for my last three novels) and it's a pretty intense little romp through some of the stranger places in that world.  It was published originally in Eclipse Two, edited by Jonathon Strahan; in fact, it leads off that collection.  "The Hero" is peripherally connected to the grander plot of the novels, but as with the books themselves, it's also a stand-alone piece that doesn't require familiarity with the rest of the series.

Needless to say I'm thrilled--enough so that I've started on a couple more Virga short stories.

The review talks about all the pieces in the anthology, and reinforces the widely held impression that this has been a very good year for science fiction short stories.  When it comes to the story "Mitigation" written by Tobias Buckell and myself, Futurismic has this to say:

“Mitigation” by the potent double-act of Karl Schroeder and former Futurismic staffer Tobias Buckell takes the best of both writers. Buckell’s instinct for fast-moving action drives the plot, while Schroeder’s concern with (and deep knowledge of) the impending ecological crisis provides the set and setting for a classic double-bluff. It’s a good balance; the bleakness of the impending future is mitigated by the snappy pace, so you take on board the underlying message without being drowned in it.

There's a lot more in this rich and detailed review, so head on over to Futurismic and check it out. 

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! 

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.

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.

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.