FitzJames and Moyo make the BSFA Award Shortlist (again!)

The BSFA Award Shortlist has been announced, and my FitzJames and Moyo story, “Things Can Only Get Better”, about a surgical bot repurposed as a taxi who cracks a gambling ring, is on it! This is their second time on the shortlist, after 2020’s “Jolene”, and what can I say but it’ll be an honour to lose to such amazing people.

You can read my story at the link to Abyss and Apex above, and vote at bsfa.co.uk.

The list:

Best Book for Younger Readers

The Raven Heir by Stephanie Burgis, Bloomsbury Children’s Books

A Snake Falls to Earth, by Darcie Little Badger, Levine Querido

Iron Widow, by Xiran Jay Zhao, Rock the Boat

Redemptor, by Jordan Ifueko, Hot Key Books

The Empty Orchestra, by Elizabeth Priest, Luna Press Publishing

Utterly Dark and the Face of the Deep by Philip Reeve, David Fickling Books

Best Novel

A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine, Tor

Blackthorn Winter by Liz Williams, NewCon Press

Purgatory Mount by Adam Roberts, Gollancz

Shards of Earth by Adrian Tchaikovsky, Tor

Skyward Inn by Aliya Whiteley, Solaris

Green Man’s Challenge by Juliet E. McKenna, Wizard’s Tower Press

Best Shorter Fiction

‘Fireheart Tiger’ by Aliette de Bodard, Tor.com

‘Light Chaser’ by Peter F. Hamilton, Gareth L. Powell, Tor.com

‘O2 Arena’ by Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki, Galaxy Edge Magazine

‘Things Can Only Get Better’ by Fiona Moore, Abyss & Apex

Best Non-Fiction

Cyberpunk Culture and Psychology: Seeing Through the Mirrorshades, by Anna McFarlane, Routledge

Diverse Futures: Science Fiction and Authors of Color, by Joy Sanchez-Taylor, Ohio State Press

The Anthropocene Unconscious: Climate Catastrophe Culture, by Mark Bould, Verso Books

Worlds Apart: Worldbuilding in Fantasy and Science Fiction, ed. Francesca T. Barbini, Luna Publishing

Octothorpe Podcast, by John Coxon, Alison Scott, and Liz Batty, Octothorpe

Science Fiction and the Pathways out of the COVID Crisis, by Val Nolan, The Polyphony

Best Artwork

Cover of Eugen Bacon’s Danged Black Thing, by Peter Lo / Kara Walker, Transit Lounge Publishing

Cover of Eugen Bacon’s Saving Shadows, by Elena Betti, NewCon Press

Cover of Suyi Davies Okungbowa’s Son of the Storm, by Dan dos Santos / Lauren Panepinto, Orbit

Cover of Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki (ed.)’s The Year’s Best African Speculative Fiction, by Maria Spada

Glasgow Green Woman by Iain Clark, Glasgow2024

Best of British 2020

For the fourth consecutive year, I’m in Best of British Sf! This year it’s with “The Lori,” my mil-SF story for Clarkesworld about trauma and forgiveness. And look at the company I’m in! Click this link to preorder.

November Special

To celebrate the re-launch of Driving Ambition as an independent publication, I’m selling the ebook at $2.99/local equivalent for the month of November. Click the link for a tale of murder, labour relations and self-driving cars at an unbelievably low rate!

Print copies are also available; contact me via the form on the left-hand side of the page for details.

Automotive Dreams

I’ve made a small chapbook of seven of my early short stories available as an ebook! Including the BSFA Award-nominated “Jolene”, and the origin story of the self-driving car mysteries, “The Little Car Dreams of Gasoline”.

If you enjoyed Driving Ambition (my novel! Available in print or electronic formats!), or if you want to get a sense of the sort of thing I write– well, it’s only the price of the proverbial cup of coffee!

Buy or download it here.

Live reading: “The Little Car Dreams of Gasoline”

Here’s a video of me doing a reading for the BSFA Vector Solidarity Salon reading series. The story is “The Little Car Dreams of Gasoline”, published in On Spec magazine in 2016.

And one of my cats gets involved.

 

BSFA Vector Solidarity Salon #7

I’m going to be giving a reading this Thursday in the BSFA Vector’s Solidarity Salon! I’m on at 8:45, following Chinelo Onwualu at 8:15. The Facebook event page is here, and I’ll provide a link to the video after the event.

I’ll be reading “The Little Car Dreams of Gasoline,” which is my first published self-driving car story, and is a stand-alone prequel to my novel Driving Ambition.

 

Praise for “Jolene”

Nicholas Whyte has kind things to say about “Jolene” in his BSFA rundown!

“Somehow this just ticked my boxes – the shortest of the stories on the list, a noir tale involving a near-future London woman detective and a rogue intelligent car; it achieves just what it has to do in the space it has to do it in. Gets my vote.”

You can read “Jolene” for free here.

(PS– book bundle)

 

 

Book bundle!

Exciting book news:

 

Driving Ambition is one of many great books in the Bundoran Buddies book bundle! For just $15, less than the price of a trade paperback these days, you get 12 books, by the likes of Robert Sawyer, Tanya Huff, Brad C Anderson and Madeline Ashby, and, well, I’m in there too.

 

Also, self-driving-car bonus: one of the anthologies in the bundle, Lazarus Risen, includes “Seal”, my story about sentient care-home robots going horribly wrong.

 

Beat the lockdown blues with books!

Link here:

 

https://storybundle.com/scifi

“Jolene” for free

You get a car, and you get a car, and everybody gets a car! I’m making my BSFA Award-shortlisted story “Jolene“, first published in Interzone 283, available for free online. Click the title to download it and read what really happens to a cowboy when his wife, dog and truck have all left him….

Jolene is shortlisted for the BSFA Award for Shorter Fiction