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It's been a bit of a long strange road, but I'm delighted to announce that the Gristle Cli-Fi Contest has now pupped an anthology, The Flesh Of Your Future Sticks Between My Teeth, which has been accepted by a publisher and will be going into editing shortly. Flying pugs everywhere, rejoice! For those readers who are new to this particular outburst of Ecosophian weirdness, the contest was inspired (if that's the right word) by a contest hosted by the upscale ecology mag Grist, which called for short stories in "positive" futures -- that is to say, dogmatically woke imaginary worlds in which today's comfortable classes get everything they ever wanted while saving the world. That contest gave rise to a blog post of mine, then to a tentative wondering whether there was interest in a competition, then to the competition itself, announced here last autumn. Writers flung themselves to their keyboards, stories came in, and as usual I had the welcome task of sorting through a range of good stories to pick the best.
So I'm pleased to announce the lineup of stories for the new anthology:
"The Penitent Lands" by Daniel Crawford
"Tell It to the King of Sweden, Honey" by Simon Sheridan
"A Modest Contribution" by John Michael Greer
"Kathy vs. the Barbarian Horde" by E.E. Hills
"Human-Derived Product" by Roger Arevalo
"A Chi Town Doctor" by Justin Patrick Moore
"How the Conspiracy Theory Generator Saved the World" by Linda Peer
"Atlanta is Broken" by Lester J. Bear
"The Recalcitrant Saviour" by Shane Simonson
"Scions of the High Road" by Ian Duncombe
"The Merchant of Progress" by Ron Mucklestone
"Power to the People" by Mark White
These are all satiric stories -- that's what the contest called for, of course -- but satire is a very broad realm, stretching from raucous humor to gut-punch intensity and beyond. This collection has a good sample of all of these.
The Flesh Of Your Future Sticks Between My Teeth: Stories From The Gristle Cli-Fi Contest will be published later this year by Looseleaf Publishing, the same firm that produces the magazine New Maps. Those of you whose stories were selected, congratulations, and you can expect an email from the publisher in the not too distant future with edits and contract terms. Those of you whose stories were not selected, thank you very much for your submissions, and I encourage you to consider placing your pieces elsewhere. And on the off chance that anyone from Grist Magazine is listening in, don't worry, I've arranged for you to receive a complimentary review copy...
These are all satiric stories -- that's what the contest called for, of course -- but satire is a very broad realm, stretching from raucous humor to gut-punch intensity and beyond. This collection has a good sample of all of these.
The Flesh Of Your Future Sticks Between My Teeth: Stories From The Gristle Cli-Fi Contest will be published later this year by Looseleaf Publishing, the same firm that produces the magazine New Maps. Those of you whose stories were selected, congratulations, and you can expect an email from the publisher in the not too distant future with edits and contract terms. Those of you whose stories were not selected, thank you very much for your submissions, and I encourage you to consider placing your pieces elsewhere. And on the off chance that anyone from Grist Magazine is listening in, don't worry, I've arranged for you to receive a complimentary review copy...
