My story “Repairs at the Beijing West Space Elevator” was nominated for the Canopus Award for Excellence in Interstellar Writing! This story originally appeared in Chinese as part of the FAA Lunar New Year Gala and was published in English at Analog.
Congratulations to my fellow nominees (that’s an impressive list and I really don’t expect to win my category!) Results will be announced at the 100YSS conference in Nairobi this coming February.
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Acceptances & Publications | Tagged: Analog, Canopus, Canopus Award, FAA | 
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Posted by Alex Shvartsman
There’s a fabulous review of THE MIDDLING AFFLICTION over at Publishers Weekly and I’m so very stoked. It’s a treasure trove of great pull quotes to paste onto books, marketing materials, and possibly my forehead:
“Shvartsman delivers a laugh-out-loud, snarky adventure, throwing out pop culture references and wry observations with dizzying frequency.”
“Shvartsman takes a kitchen sink approach to urban fantasy, packing enough plot into this volume to span a whole series.”
“His supernatural New York City is vibrant and authentic, and Conrad fits right in with wisecracking fan favorite heroes like Harry Dresden and Simon Canderous.”
“A thoroughly satisfying romp.”
At the moment, my grin can be seen from space.
Meantime, the audiobook is now available for preorder from all the usual platforms, and you can preorder it for as little as $11, which is super inexpensive for an audiobook! Or just throw a credit at it on Audible. Both paperback and audio can be found here, and I expect the ebook preorder will join them soon.
Meantime, my translation of another century-old Yefim Zozulya story, “The Living Furniture” is live in the current issue of F&SF. And a new translation of “Incommunicado” by Andrej Kokoulin will appear in a forthcoming issue of Analog.
Finally, a new issue of Future Science Fiction Digest is now live. It features the following stories, as well as my editorial on the invasion of Ukraine.
“A Friend on the Inside” by Will McIntosh (USA)
“Four-Letter Word” by Alexy Dumenigo (Cuba), translated by Toshiya Kamei
“Rat’s Tongue” by Xing Fan (China), translated by Judith Huang
“Vagrants” by Lavie Tidhar (UK)
“The Sweetness of Berris and Wine” by Jo Miles (USA)
“Paean for a Branch Ghost” by Filip Wiltgren (Sweden)
Cover art: Oleksandr Kulichenko (Ukraine)
Cover design: Jay O’Connell (USA)
Comments Off on Publishers Weekly Reviews AFFLICTION, and Other Good News | Acceptances & Publications | Tagged: Analog, Conradverse, F&SF, Future SF, Publishers Weekly, The Middling Affliction | Permalink
Posted by Alex Shvartsman
Current issues of Analog and Galaxy’s Edge magazines contain my science fiction stories!
“Repairs at the Beijing West Space Elevator” was written for the Future Affairs Administration Lunar festival prompt in late 2017 and originally published in Chinese. Analog has the English language version out now.
“Royalty of Apartment Complex 417” is, at its heart, a YA story, but I think older readers will appreciate it as well. It’s free to read at the Galaxy’s Edge website.
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Posted by Alex Shvartsman
This past Tuesday I had a thyroidectomy performed at Mt. Sinai hospital. They removed half my thyroid and a large goiter that grew from it into the chest under the sternum. This is an outpatient procedure and I was able to go home the same evening, but I’ve been pretty useless and staying off the internet for a few days as I recovered from the surgery The good news is that the procedure went well, and even better news is that the growth they removed was benign. I’m still going to take it easy for a few more days, but at least I feel capable of doing some work on the computer. Which is good timing as I have a number of cool links to share today:
1. Rick Liebling interviewed me at his Medium blog, The Adjacent Possible, about Future SF, translation, and international SF/F. There’s some great content there and I wholeheartedly recommend checking the blog out for more than just my interview. I especially enjoyed this Q&A with Nick Farmer, a linguist for The Expanse TV show.
2. On the Analog blog today there’s an interview with Alvaro Zinos-Amaro and me where we delve a little deeper into our story “The People v Craig Morrison” — this is the second and different post from the one I shared about a month ago, and I truly appreciate Analog giving us so much bandwidth to talk about our writing as well as other stuff we really like!
3. Quick Sips by Charles Payseur has a wonderful and in-depth review of “Copy Cat.” If you haven’t read this quirky story co-written by K. A. Teryna and me, it’s free to read online at Strange Horizons.
4. The kickstarter campaign for Unidentified Funny Objects 7 is ongoing, but we’re falling a bit behind, and even more so due to my lack of promotion and activity this week. Please consider supporting this project and/or sharing it with other interested readers!
#SFWAPro
1 Comment | Acceptances & Publications | Tagged: Analog, Charles Payseur, K. A. Teryna, kickstarter, Quick Sips, Rick Liebling, strange horizons, The Adjacent Possible, UFO7 | Permalink
Posted by Alex Shvartsman
The Analog blog features a brief write-up by Alvaro Zinos-Amaro and me about driverless cars, our story “The People v. Craig Morrison,” and a famous Fred Pohl quote.
I’m also extremely pleased to have had another story accepted by Analog this week. “Repairs at the Beijing West Space Elevator” will appear in the magazine sometime in the not-so-distant future, probably in early 2019.
#SFWAPro
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Posted by Alex Shvartsman
A story I co-wrote with Alvaro Zinos-Amaro is live in the July/August 2018 issue of Analog. While self-driving cars are around the corner, in this story we imagine the social and civil dilemmas that will come up when regulators decide it’s time to get the imperfect, error-prone human drivers off the roads.
You can subscribe to Analog here or pick up a single issue. It’s out as of June 14.
#SFWAPro
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Posted by Alex Shvartsman
Alex Shvartsman's Speculative Fiction 