Original Short Fiction

“The Melody Lingers”

A tale of magic and grief filtered through music in an industrial-age fantasy world. This story appears in Galaxy’s Edge Magazine #39, July 2019. “Interesting idea, well-executed.” — Sam Tomaino, SFRevu

Though I’m usually a hard science fiction writer, I’ve always felt I should be willing to stretch myself and broaden my range. So I’ve been dabbling with a fantasy world called Thayara for more than two decades now. I was influenced by other writers who’ve worked in both SF and fantasy, primarily Larry Niven, who’s mainly known for SF like Known Space, but who also did a series of fantasy stories collected in books like The Magic Goes Away, The Magic May Return, and More Magic in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Niven’s approach was of the kind called “logical fantasy,” basically applying hard-SF thinking to a fantasy premise: If magic existed as a law of nature, how would it plausibly work and interact with other physical laws like conservation of energy?

The other part of SF thinking I wanted to apply to a fantasy universe was futurism. I looked at the standard medieval setting of fantasy worlds, with kings and knights and feudalism and swords and horses and so forth, and I kept wondering: Why are they always medieval? What happens a thousand years later when one of these worlds starts to industrialize? How would magic and technology interact? That was the period I wanted to explore, and it’s been the focus of the few Thayara stories I’ve taken a stab at writing.

I wrote the first of those back in 1996, for the same story contest to which I also submitted the first version of “Abductive Reasoning.” I tried to pack too much worldbuilding into one story, so one of the judges noted that it “needs a novel for its scope.” I did develop a novel idea around 1997, but it never came forward from the back burner. And over the years, I decided I needed to revise my ideas for Thayara. Initially, since my original plan was to project a standard fantasy universe forward into the industrial age, the other species I featured were slight variations on stock fantasy races like elves and dragons. As an outsider to fantasy, I didn’t realize how cliched that was, and once I read complaints about the repetitive nature of the fantasy genre at the time, I decided I should try to make my universe more distinctive than that. I wrote two short stories in this reworked Thayara in 2009-10, but one of them didn’t quite work, since I pretty much wrote it from the wrong character’s viewpoint. I’ve kept meaning to go back to it and try again, but other projects have always taken precedence.

“The Melody Lingers” was the other story, originally written for submission to an open-call anthology with a musical theme. I don’t recall the thought process that led to the specific idea, but it wasn’t long after I’d written Star Trek: Titan – Over a Torrent Sea, which involved an aquatic alien species with a very musical culture and worldview, so my ideas there might have fed into this. The story turned out to be one of those that a lot of editors basically liked but that didn’t quiiiite work for them structurally or that was too unconventional a fantasy to fit their needs. I kept revising and submitting until finally Mike Resnick (a fellow Cincinnatian and a social acquaintance of mine) acquired it for Galaxy’s Edge last year. Ironically, my revisions had included expanding the story to give it more depth and better plot flow (I thought), but Mike asked me to cut it back considerably, so I ended up basically reverting to the story’s original structure, although incorporating the improvements I’d made along the way.

Spoiler discussion and notes

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“The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of”

An adventure of the founder of Only Superhuman‘s Troubleshooter Corps in his heroic prime. Can one lone Troubleshooter prevent war from breaking out over an alien artifact with untold powers? “There’s only one war.” This story appears in the anthology Footprints in the Stars (eSpec Books, July 2019). “The author creates a richly imagined future and an intricate, suspenseful plot. One notable feature of this story is the way in which it uses the notion of a superhero in an unusually plausible way.” — Victoria Silverwolf, TangentOnline

“The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of” is my third published tale in the Troubleshooter series (with the fourth, “Conventional Powers,” on the way in Analog), and the only one to date that doesn’t center on Emerald Blair/the Green Blaze, instead flashing back two years before Emerald’s birth to the height of the Troubles (as I’ve retroactively but logically named the period of strife during which the Troubleshooters arose). Instead, the story centers on Yukio Villareal, aka Troubleshooter Shashu, the Archer of the Asteroids — the man who embraced the “superhero” image of the early Troubleshooters and turned it into a functional reality. I’ve tried to make him suitably suave and swashbuckling. (Imagine a cross between Cesar Romero and Toshiro Mifune in their prime.)

To readers of Only Superhuman and its prequel “Aspiring to Be Angels,” introducing alien technology into the backstory of the Troubleshooters may seem incongruous. But this is an idea I conceived before OS was published, so it’s always been part of the intended backstory. It began as a flashback within a possible novella or novel revolving around the alien artifact and the Troubleshooters’ connection to it. Since no novel sequels to OS have ever happened to date, the idea went onto the back burner.

But when Danielle Ackley-McPhail of eSpec Books invited me to pitch to Footprints in the Stars — an anthology on the theme of humanity’s discovery of the first evidence of alien life (as opposed to direct contact) — I realized that the Shashu flashback from that outline was the perfect fit for its premise, and could easily work as a self-contained short story. (And that doing so would not preclude telling the larger story at some later date.) I was pleased to be able to contribute, since Footprints is the first non-Star Trek anthology I’ve ever appeared in.

Spoiler discussion and notes

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“Conventional Powers”

A tale of Emerald Blair (the Green Blaze) set after Only Superhuman. Visit a superhero convention… in a world of actual superheroes! Appearing in the September/October 2019 issue of Analog Science Fiction and Fact.

The idea for “Conventional Powers” was inspired by my trips to New York Comic-Con in its first several years. I remember mentioning it to fellow authors or editors at one NYCC – possibly even the 2012 one where Only Superhuman debuted, though I think it may have been the one before that, or even the earlier one where I first pitched the novel to its editor Greg Cox. Anyway, somewhere along the line, I got to wondering what a superhero/comics/sci-fi type of convention would be like in the Troubleshooter milieu where superheroes actually exist as a profession, and where the lore of superhero comics has been embraced as a sort of foundational mythology by the transhuman Strider culture of the Main Asteroid Belt. I figured it would be a hybrid of a sci-fi convention and an industry trade show where professionals got together to discuss their methods and learn from each other, or where new technologies were offered to potential investors. Merging the two types of convention was too fun an idea to pass up.

Originally, a simpler version of this story was part of the sample chapters I wrote as a pitch for an Only Superhuman sequel novel. The book didn’t perform well enough for Tor to commission a sequel, though, and eventually I decided to rework the convention scenes into a standalone story. I tried to cover a lot of aspects of the convention experience, including allegories/parodies of some of the controversies that the fan community has seen in the past few years. But at the same time, I took the opportunity to explore the larger community of transhuman “mods” and superpowered crimefighters in the Strider community of the Main Asteroid Belt, beyond the Troubleshooters. I also got to delve more into the behind-the-scenes workings and support staff of the Troubleshooter Corps itself. I’m pleased by how much worldbuilding texture this story adds to the Troubleshooter setting.

Spoiler discussion and notes

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“Abductive Reasoning”

A humorous tale of a first contact between a UFO believer and a real alien, which doesn’t go at all the way either one expects. This story appears in the September/October 2017 Analog Science Fiction and Fact. “Clever and very funny.” — Greg Hullender, Rocket Stack Rank “Hilarious!” — Sam Tomaino, SFRevu “‘Abductive Reasoning’ dissects the classic secret alien abduction narrative and exposes it for all its flaws and fluff while at the same time poking at our complicated human way of explaining and interacting with the unknown.” — Nicky Magas, TangentOnline

“Abductive Reasoning” is a first for me in a couple of ways. For one, it’s the first actual short story I’ve ever sold! Everything else I’ve done has been at least novelette length (my previous shortest, “The Weight of Silence,” was 7600 words), but this one’s a cozy 4100 words. It’s also my first Analog story, and my second original work after “No Dominion,” that belongs to neither the Only Superhuman universe (for want of a better term) nor the Hub universe. It’s a completely standalone tale, for now. (Well, technically there’s no reason it couldn’t share a universe with “No Dominion,” but they don’t exactly go together stylistically.)

Like my previous three original sales, this is another story I wrote ages ago, abandoned for years, and then revived. And this one’s a record-setter — I wrote the first version nearly 21 years ago for a story contest, my longest interval yet between writing a story and getting a version of it published. That story was called “An Update from the Flying Hubcap Front,” in which a real alien encounters a UFO cultist and systematically demolishes his beliefs. But it was little more than a self-indulgent polemic, and when I revisited it, I recognized the need to give the main character more motivation and investment in the core debate of the story. I ended up rewriting it from top to bottom, injecting a number of new scientific concepts I’d picked up in recent years, adding more emotional and philosophical depth, and completely changing the climax and resolution. It’s essentially a whole new story, and I was pleasantly surprised to sell it on my very first try.

I changed the title because the original seemed too labored and snarky, though I was never too happy with “Abductive Reasoning” as an alternative. I intended it merely as a pun on alien abduction and deductive reasoning, but Ina Rae Hark informed me that there actually is such a thing in logic as abductive reasoning, in which you “take away” (abduce) a best-guess conclusion from an observation, draw an inference that may or may not be correct but seems likely given your understanding of things. It’s actually one of the most common forms of reasoning, the way we determine the likely cause of an observed result. It’s how detectives determine who to charge with a crime, how doctors arrive at diagnoses, how scientists form hypotheses.

However, abductive reasoning is only as good as the assumptions you make, and doesn’t guarantee a correct result — which is why hypotheses and diagnoses need to be tested and criminal charges need to be proven in court. Two people observing the same situation with completely different worldviews will probably abduce completely incompatible inferences. In that sense, I suppose, the title actually has more relevance to the story than I’d intended.

Spoiler discussion and notes

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Among the Wild Cybers: Tales Beyond the Superhuman

When the line between life and technology blurs, humanity must adjust its understanding of the universe. From bestselling author Christopher L. Bennett comes Among the Wild Cybers, eight tales portraying a future of challenge and conflict, but also of hope born from the courage and idealism of those heroes willing to stand up for what is right.

• An intrepid naturalist risks her future to save a new form of life that few consider worth saving.
• An apprentice superhero must stand alone against an insane superintelligence to earn her name.
• A cybernetic slave fights to save her kind from a liberation not of their choosing.
• A seasoned diplomat and mother must out-negotiate fearsome alien traders to save a colony’s children.
• A homicide detective serves in a world where curing death has only made murder more baffling.

These and other heroes strive to make their corners of the universe better—no matter how much the odds are stacked against them.

Includes the brand-new tale, Aspiring to Be Angels, prequel to the novel Only Superhuman.

Available in trade paperback and e-book from:

• Amazon
• Barnes & Noble
• iTunes

Includes:

“Aggravated Vehicular Genocide” (Analog Science Fiction and Fact, November 1998)

“Among the Wild Cybers of Cybele” (Analog Science Fiction and Fact, December 2000)

“The Weight of Silence” (Alternative Coordinates, Spring 2010)

“No Dominion” (DayBreak Magazine, June 13, 2010)

“The Caress of a Butterfly’s Wing” (Buzzy Mag, November 13, 2014)

“Murder on the Cislunar Railroad” (Analog Science Fiction and Fact, June 2016)

“Twilight’s Captives” (Analog Science Fiction and Fact, January/February 2017)

“Aspiring to be Angels” (original to Among the Wild Cybers, August 2018)

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The Hub series

Hub Space: Tales from the Greater Galaxy

The Hub is the most important place in the galaxy — the single point through which all interstellar travel must pass. Yet no one in the galaxy understands how it works. David LaMacchia, an unimportant man from an unimportant planet called Earth, is determined to change that. He’s got no qualifications and no skills. His only friends are a cynical, sharp-tongued space pilot named Nashira Wing and a smugly philanthropic alien named Rynyan, and they both think he’s crazy. On top of that, the powers that profit from the Hub might just be trying to kill him. Still, that won’t stop David from trying to prove that humanity can make a difference to the greater galaxy.

Now the tales of the Hub from the pages of Analog are collected for the first time in one volume, newly revised and expanded! Includes “The Hub of the Matter,” “Home is Where the Hub Is,” and “Make Hub, Not War,” plus exclusive bonus material!

• “No hard core science fiction fan could resist the premise…  The characters are irresistible too.  So is the humor.  Biting dialog is icing on the cake.  Intrigue.  Misadventures.  Culture clash.  Sexual clash.  Personality clash.  Very few science fiction stories are this much fun.” — Carl Slaughter on “The Hub of the Matter,” Tangent Online

Published by Mystique Press.

Now in trade paperback! Available from:

• Crossroad Press
• Amazon

And as an e-book from:

• Barnes & Noble
• Amazon
• Smashwords
• iTunes
• Kobo

Includes:

• “The Hub of the Matter” (Analog Science Fiction and Fact, March 2010)
• “Home is Where the Hub Is” (Analog, December 2010)
• “Make Hub, Not War” (Analog, November 2013)

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Crimes of the Hub

The hapless heroes of Hub Space return with new jobs, new allies, and new adventures at the heart of the galaxy, in a novel expanded and revised from stories originally appearing in Analog.

Just when cynical space pilot Nashira Wing has finally started to enjoy helping David LaMacchia with his clueless quest to crack the secrets of the Hub Network, he’s hijacked by a crew of kittenish thieves and trapped in the treasure vault of a far older civilization. What he finds there gives Nashira a shot at the score of a lifetime—but changes David’s life in ways that threaten their friendship. To keep the devious masters of the Hub from getting their tentacles on Nashira’s prize, she and David must mend frayed relationships and navigate new ones, all while facing adventures in larceny, sex, bureaucracy, hyperspatial geometry, and radical body modification. Can they come through it all with their hearts, their identities, and their dignity intact?

Available as an e-book from:

• Amazon
• Barnes & Noble
• Google Play

Includes:

• “Hubpoint of No Return” (Analog, May/June 2018)
• “…And He Built a Crooked Hub” (Analog, September/October 2018)
• “Hubstitute Creatures” (Analog, November/December 2018)