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Critics, Science Fiction, Social Change, Oh My!

More than once my writing mentors have recited the quotation that “Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamppost how it feels about dogs.” The Internet tells me a fellow named Christopher Hampton coined the phrase. Regardless, having heard the quotation more than once, I’ve been dreading my first brush with critical opinion. Wrongly so, it seems. The Publisher’s Weekly reviews for Seeds of Change have come back:

This thought-provoking anthology of nine original stories posits near-future paradigm shifts in everything from race relations (in Ted Kosmatka’s vivid and moving “N-Words,” where cloned Neanderthals encounter violent hatred from Homo sapiens) to the morality of uploaded consciousness (in Blake Charlton’s clumsy but charming “Endosymbiont”), with varying success. The hero of Jay Lake’s “The Future by Degrees” invents an energy-saving thermal superconductor only to be pursued by corporations protecting their business, with predictable results. Pepper, the mercenary hero of Tobias S. Buckell’s Crystal Rain, refuses to assassinate a dictator in the morally contrived “Resistance.” Considerably more powerful is Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu’s “Spider the Artist,” which combines African folk tales and advanced robotics in a chilling story about a rising social conscience in the Nigerian oil fields. Despite weak spots, this anthology accurately reflects many of today’s most pressing political and social issues, and will give readers plenty to think about and argue over.

Considering the amazing authors in this anthology, I’m flattered the critic found my story memorable at all. True “clumsy but charming” does give me a slight fear that I might end up the Charley Brown of SFF (though to manage that I’d need to grow at least three hairs on my head). But I’ve consoled myself with the knowledge that this was the first short fiction I ever wrote–in fact, wrote it when I was supposed to be studying for neurobiology last fall. I’ve still got plenty of room for improvement. So, overall, the review has increased my humility and excitement. Can’t complain about that.

Also new in the ‘very exciting’ category is a quotation from io9.com, a super hot SFF blog. Though the stories have yet to be reviewed, my commentary caught someone’s eye:

Contributor Blake Carlton describes the anthology as dealing with how “fiction can be a mode of social change.”

You can read the original post here. More information about the anthology will be coming up soon. Our fearless editor, John Joseph Adams, is putting together a website, which will be posted here as soon as it comes to my attention. In the meantime, you can preorder the anthology via your favorite bookseller (e.g. Kepler’s, Amazon, B&N, Powels). Updates to follow.

Daily life now is good but unexciting. I’ve a solid 15k of book two done and about 40k of the final substantial edits of book one. Mostly I’m trying to keep my nose to the grind stone so I can get the final manuscript of book one done before WorldCon!