My latest translation of one of Zozulya’s fablesque stories, “Cain and Abel” is live in the latest issue of Galaxy’s Edge. Two more translations of his works — “The Tale of Ak and Humanity” and “The Living Furniture” appeared in Tor.com and F&SF respectively last year.
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Acceptances & Publications | Tagged: galaxy's edge, translation, Yefim Zozulya | 
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Posted by Alex Shvartsman
The latest issue of Galaxy’s Edge includes my dystopic novelette, “Choice of the Conquered.” You can read it for free on the GE website until the next issue launches, so don’t wait too long!
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Posted by Alex Shvartsman
I have a new story out, and it’s bittersweet.
It was the last story of mine acquired by Mike Resnick before he passed. Mike has been a friend and a mentor. I’ve edited and published his work, and he bought and published a number of my stories in his magazine. I had the honor of appearing in the very first issue, and a number of times since. This is now issue #43 of a bi-monthly magazine going into its eighth year — a huge rarity in the SF/F zine field. And it’s still there. It’s still going strong.
Publisher Shahid Mahmud and the new editor-in-chief Lezli Robyn will keep things going. Lezli is not so new — she’s been there, behind the scenes, from the beginning, tirelessly working on loads of magazine-related stuff and other Arc Manor projects. And Shahid is as professional and committed as any publisher I’ve ever worked with. But this magazine has always been Mike’s baby. His spirit permeates it. His name will remain on the cover as the creator, which is very cool. Every issue going forward will be a small tribute to Mike, from those of us writing for it, editing it, or reading it.
This issue also has dozens of appreciations written about Mike by people whose lives he’s touched. I wrote one of those as well. Check them out.
And when the mood strikes you, check out my story. It’s about trickster gods from different cultures getting together to play Texas Hold ‘Em. It will be available online for free for the next two months, until the next issue replaces it, and thereafter available wherever the magazine is sold.
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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
The latest issue of Galaxy’s Edge magazine includes my short story “Small Fortune and the Perpetual Luck Machine.” This is the third Magic Pawn Shop story (the fist two were “Explaining Cthulhu to Grandma” and “High-Tech Fairies and the Pandora Perplexity.”) It’s the first new Pawn Shop story in years and I hope everyone likes it as much as the first two! I keep meaning to write more in this setting but other projects interfere.
The story will be free to read at Galaxy’s Edge website for the next 60 days. Afterward (or even now, if you like) you can purchase the entire issue for five bucks.
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Posted by Alex Shvartsman
My latest short story is out in the current issue of Galaxy’s Edge magazine, which means it will remain free to read online for the next two months. After that you will need to purchase an issue in order to access the story.
“Diamonds in the Rough” is the tale of alien contact set in the chaotic days of post-Soviet Union Russia circa early 1990s.
In other news, submissions are now closed for UFO7. We received 790 stories and are reading through the last of them over the next couple of days. After that I’ll be re-reading the second look pile and making final decisions. As is the case each year, there’s already more good material than we can use, so it’ll be a matter of balancing the TOC. I’ll post updates on Twitter so those still in convention know the status of the subs.
Also, I recently sold a pair of reprints to new anthologist Eric Fomley, who’s seeking to promote flash- and micro-fiction (goals I find to be quite worthy!) Timeshift will be an anthology of time-travel and time-dilation flash fiction forthcoming later this year (and featuring some excellent writers that I’m aware of!) but first up is Drabbledark: an anthology of dark drabbles. A drabble is a story that’s exactly 100 words. This project is currently on Kickstarter and has a modest funding goal, so take a look at it here. That’s a whole lot of tiny stories for only three bucks.
ETA: Oh hey, this totally snuck up on me, but the new issue of Intergalactic Medicine Show is also out! It includes my humorous flash tale, “Customer Service Support Ticket at All-American Wizardry Supply and Custom Floor Mat Emporium” in print and audio, however you have be a subscriber to access it currently.
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Posted by Alex Shvartsman
This story is what it sounds like. It’s about golf. With aliens. Played to the death. What’s not to like?
“Golf to the Death” takes place in the same universe as “The Dragon Ships of Tycho” and “The Sgovari Stratagem,” except neither of those stories are at all funny, whereas this one is humorous and should hopefully remind readers of the Retief yarns by Keith Laumer.
I’m also proud to tuckerize awesome writer Ferrett Steinmetz as one of the characters. Ferrett lamented that due to his unusual name he doesn’t get written into stories, so I rose to the challenge. 🙂
It’s free to read at the G.E. website for the next 60 days. After that – or at any point, really – you can purchase the issue!
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Posted by Alex Shvartsman
It’s been a busy month. I traveled to Worldcon in Kansas City where I had a wonderful time, followed it up with a family vacation to Costa Rica where I also had a wonderful time, except I came back with a bad ear infection in both ears. (Bright side: the infection didn’t kick in while we were on vacation, only after.) I’ve been on two antibiotics and it’s finally clearing up enough to where I can write and work. Let me tell you, those things aren’t fun.
Meantime, two of my brand-new stories have been published! “Dante’s Unfinished Business” was released on September 1 in Galaxy’s Edge magazine. It’s free to read for two months, and available via subscription/purchase thereafter. As I enjoy experimenting with all forms and styles of humor, it occurred to me that I’ve never written a pot humor story in the style of Cheech and Chong (well, sort of.) So I decided to try my hand at it, blatantly ignoring the fact that I’ve never actually smoked any pot. Making sure my references were authentic meant getting an entirely different set of beta readers in addition to the ones I normally use. But I’m told I mostly got the references right, so I hope you’ll enjoy the tale. I also wrote it after binge-watching two seasons of Rick and Morty and I think a lot of the humor in the story was also influenced by that. Plotwise, it’s a loose retelling of Dante’s Inferno, except Dante is a 21st century pothead and instead of Virgil he is shown around hell by the ghost of Bob Marley.
The second story was just published online today, and will be in this week’s issue of the journal of Nature. “A Perfect Medium for Unrequited Love” is about artificial intelligence, love, and embedding communications “in the most interesting of media.” I wrote a more detailed “the making of” for the Nature Futures blog and you can read it here. I enjoy writing about artificial intelligence. Another story that explores its themes is forthcoming from Amazing Stories in the coming months or weeks.
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Posted by Alex Shvartsman
The July issue of Galaxy’s Edge is now live, and you can read my novelette, “Islands in the Sargasso”, for free — but only for the next couple of months, until the September issue is released and then you’ll have to buy the issue. So, read now! It has alien invasion fleets, a galaxy-spanning conspiracy, and drug addiction.
I always love being published in Galaxy’s Edge — not only because it’s edited by Mike Resnick, whom I greatly admire, but also because I get to share the table of contents with all kinds of cool people. Just look at the above!
At 8000 words, “Islands in the Sargasso” will briefly become the longest piece of my fiction available — but only briefly. The H. G. Wells, Secret Agent novella is coming out very soon! In fact, July 2015 will have more new words written by me released into the world than any month prior. I’m super excited!
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Posted by Alex Shvartsman
This is not what I wanted to write about today.
Terry Pratchett, best known for his series of Discworld novels, was one of the most important voices in speculative humor. His work had a profound influence on generations of writers, and brightened lives of millions of readers worldwide. I never personally met him or got an opportunity to work with him, and feel there is little I can say to add to the loud chorus of voices more eloquent and more relevant on this subject than my own, but I will say this: whether you are a long-time fan or are learning about him now, should you wish to honor his memory, the best way to do so is by reading (or re-reading) one of his books.
A few years ago I reached out to Mr. Pratchett to see if I might be able to acquire a reprint (or, who knows, even an original story!) for one of the UFO volumes. His agent got back to me and declined to sell me a reprint, because there would be a short story collection coming out soon and he wasn’t interested in shopping short story reprints around, at least not at the rates UFO could afford. And so I didn’t get to publish Terry, but although this collection took longer than expected, it is actually coming out in less than a week.
I’ll be picking up a copy of “A Blink of the Screen” and humbly suggest that you do so as well.
There is a number of much happier news I’d like to share as well:
* The Unidentified Funny Objects 4 Kickstarter campaign is going well. After three days, we have nearly 120 backers and are only a few hundred dollars away from 50% of the funding. There’s always a slow-down in the middle (offset by lots of activity in the first few and last few days of the campaign), but momentum counts, so if you plan on backing this book, please don’t wait for the last day!
* I accepted a flash story by Brent C. Smith titled “The Transformation of Prince Humphrey” for UFO4. I read an earlier version of this story in a contest we both participated in, and out of 200+ stories I read for that contest it was my favorite. So I reached out to him and, after a few rounds of edits, accepted the updated variant of the story for the book. Don’t worry though: there’s plenty of room for stories that will come in during the open submission period next month!
* Two of my own stories found new homes (well, the same home, actually.) Mike Resnick accepted both for publication in Galaxy’s Edge.
“Islands in the Sargasso” is an 8000-word space opera novelette in the shared world setting regular readers of Galaxy’s Edge are already familiar with. I had the pleasure of advancing the setting by 200 years and allowing humans to finally escape the confines of our solar system — but you’ll have to read the story to learn the details.
“Dreidel of Dread: The Very Cthulhu Channukah” is one of the silliest humor flash pieces I’ve ever written. It makes fun of saccharine Christmas specials, uses copious amounts of Jewish humor, quotes both Einstein and The Ghostbusters film… and, of course, there’s Cthulhu!
Both stories should be appearing in GE later this year.
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Posted by Alex Shvartsman
Alex Shvartsman's Speculative Fiction 