Alex Shvartsman's Speculative Fiction

I have two very different short stories releasing in exciting anthologies this month.

First up is “Ambassador to the Meek” in The Sum of Us anthology from Laksa Press, edited by Susan Forest and Lucas K. Law. This anthology celebrates caregivers and a portion of the proceeds will be donated to charity. The editors have done a great job promoting this book, with blog posts recently appearing on John Scalzi’s blog, Mary Robinette Kowal’s blog, and many other places. There are some excellent writers involved, and the book is available currently.

“Ambassador to the Meek” is a dystopian story set in the world where instantaneous transportation has become available (think Star Trek teleporter), but while scientists initially discovered no ill effects, it was later discovered that any living being that used such a teleporter was going to die from the damage to their cells after about twenty years from initial use. And since these were phased in over time, this creates a sort of gradual apocalypse with most of the Earth’s population doomed to die over the course of several years.

The story follows a woman whose job it is to find homes for the orphaned children born after the discovery and thus bound to survive. She’s reaching out to communities that have never used the teleporter for religious or other reasons — the Amish, the orthodox, and various groups mistrustful of modern technology. In this story, she must return to the compound of the cult her mother and her had escaped from when she was a child.

My other story is very different. It will appear in OCEANS: The Anthology, edited by Jessica West and published by Daniel Arthur Smith, releasing late this month. You can pre-order it on Amazon for only $0.99 prior to release! “The Hunt for the Vigilant” is a Lovecraftian humor story with a twist. Here’s the marketing blurb for it from the book:

Magic is real – and it’s programmable. Eldritch gods exist but can be held at bay by consuming coffee and playing YouTube videos of warding chants. And now the whole world knows this.

An eccentric billionaire sees this as a business opportunity. He recruits the man responsible for revealing the existence of magic to the public for a mission to the bottom of the South Pacific that is more dangerous than either of them realize.

#SFWApro