Seeds of Change
It’s late on a Wednesday night and I’ve insane amount of microbiology lectures to catch up on. Still, I’m smiling. Why? My novelette ENDOSYMBIONT just sold to John Joseph Adam’s SEEDS OF CHANGE Anthology. The idea behind the collection is fresh and appeals to my idea that fiction can promote social change. Here are JJ’s guidelines:
The stories in SEEDS OF CHANGE will focus on paradigm shifts-whether they be technological, scientific, political, or cultural-and how individuals and society as a whole deal with such changes. The idea is to challenge our current paradigms and speculate on how they might change in the future, either for better or for worse. The stories will deal with current topical (and hot-button) issues and will also show how the individual-how each and every one of us-can contribute toward bringing about great change.
ENDOSYMBIONT is the story of a foul-mouthed little girl who thinks she’s in the hospital for chemotherapy. It was inspired by my father’s struggle with cancer and written when I should have been studying for neurology.
Other authors I’ve heard of being onboard for the anthology are Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu, Jay Lake, Mark Budz, Ken MacLeod, and Tobias Buckell. SEEDS should hit the bookstores sometime in summer 2008.
Comments
5 Responses to “Seeds of Change”
Jack Kincaid
12:56 pm Jan-31-2008
Congrats and I suspect most great things are accomplished when we should have been doing something else.
blakecharlton
6:51 pm Feb-1-2008
Thank you, thank you, sir. And I agree entirely about the doing something else. Most of my twenties I spent feeling that I should have been doing something else. It’s a peculiar state of mind. It requires perhaps…dare I say it…negative capability?
Jack Kincaid
7:05 pm Feb-2-2008
I say if the presence of negative capability is not a foreign intruder and is an intrinsic quality of one’s nature, a cog of the machine, a peculiar state of mind would be that excludes it.
Unless I’m “zoned out”, I always feel as though as I should be doing something else, no matter what I’m doing. If I drop what I’m doing and then do that other thing, I’m then quite sure I should have stuck to the previous thing, even if returning to that thing will cast doubt on the matter
It’s a no-win.
Jack Kincaid
7:08 pm Feb-2-2008
Correction:
I say if the presence of negative capability is not a foreign intruder and is an intrinsic quality of one’s nature, a cog of the machine, a peculiar state of mind would be ONE that excludes it.
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There’s my most common error in manuscripts. Missing words.
Where do they all go?
blakecharlton
1:27 pm Feb-3-2008
That’s make an interesting story: a book where all the words accidentally left out of manuscripts end up.
And I don’t know about the strangeness of those minds that lack negative capability. So many of my classmates seem able to totally and completely zone in on the thalamus or B-cells or whatever. But then again, maybe I’m dealing w/ some selection bias. Maybe you’re right. It is a peculiar state of mind; I just happen to be hanging out w/ peculiar (in that good way) ppl.