Sean Williams

Just heard via the most excellentjennyblackford that both my humongous novellas from last year were honorably mentioned by Gardner Dozois in his Year's Best SF 28. Woohoo! That's "The Spark (A Romance in Three Acts)" and "A Glimpse of the Marvelous Structure (and the Threat It Entails)". This makes makes me very happy.

The two novellas I have out this year are not only substantial (>20k) and therefore great bang for your buck, but two of the best things I’ve ever written. As if that weren’t enough, they also connect to existing stories--so if you want to know what finally happens to Ros and Adi, the two most famous lovers in the world of the Change, or if you want to learn more about the world of “A Map of the Mines of Barnath” and “Inevitable”*, then these stories are for you. (And if you don’t know what I’m talking about, never fear: they also completely stand alone.)

They are “The Spark (A Romance in Four Acts)” now out in Legends of Australian Fantasy and “A Glimpse of the Marvellous Structure (& the Threat it Entails)” from Godlike Machines, long-delayed but scheduled to be out in time for Worldcon.

The novella is such a wonderful length to write to in sf&f, and wonderful to read, too. I hope you enjoy these two, if you get the opportuity.


* From the Locus Award-winning anthology The New Space Opera 2. Yay, Jonathan Strahan! (Without whom neither of these novellas would have existed.)

I'm pleased to report that a novella "The Spark (a Romance in Four Acts)" joins several other large-ish pieces I have coming out in or around 2009. "Spark" clocks in at 20k and concludes one of the story arcs left hanging at the end of The Scarecrow (due March). The story picks up about five years after that book's end, with the characters facing challenges they never imagined as kids. I've just learned that it will appear in Australian Legends of Fantasy (edited by Jack Dann & Jonathan Strahan), and I'm very excited about that.

"Spark" is one of two stand-alone tales related to the Broken Land Series. The other is the 10k "Ungentle Fire", which is set just before "Spark" and due appear in The Dragon Book: Magical Tales from the Masters of Modern Fantasy (Gardner Dozois & Dann).

The other stories aren't fantasy. "The Inevitable" will appear in The New Space Opera II (Dozois & Strahan), while "A Glimpse of the Magnificent Structure (and the Threat it Entails)" is due in Godlike Machines (Strahan), both around the middle of the year. At 10k and 25k respectively, they're related to a new space opera idea I've been noodling with in the last few months. It's based on an old story, "A Map of the Mines of Barnath"--and you can expect a spoken word version of that work sometime in 2009 too, just to refresh your memory.

(While I'm talking about spoken word stuff, I've recorded "A Longing for the Dark", a stand-alone excerpt from Geodesica: Descent, for Terra Incognita, and that will be coming out in March too.)

The other big release in 2009 is The Grand Conjunction (May), which will wrap up the Astropolis series once and for all. I've just finished the page proofs and I'm very excited at how it turned out. If you thought the scale of the first two books was big, this might do your head in. Mine is still recovering from writing it.

So that's the year ahead. It's a little less hectic than 2008, for which I'm grateful. Unless you count all the deadlines looming ahead, of course...

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Listening to: Telomere - Idiochrome