If you’re looking for a short sci-fi read for your Kindle, check out my short story “The Butterfly Disjunct,” free on Amazon through November 30th.
Here’s a link: http://mybook.to/tbdis14
Month: November 2014
Original Fiction: “Little More than Shadows” at Daily Science Fiction
A weird little flash story of mine is available today at Daily Science Fiction.
Broadly speaking, it’s about dreams. Also paranoia, insanity, resignation, love, and a vaguely-defined beast which is eating the world.
You know, the usual stuff.
Intrigued? Perplexed? Read on at: http://dailysciencefiction.com/fantasy/parapsychology/stewart-c-baker/little-more-than-shadows
I’d also like to point out that DSF uses a rating system for their fiction—so if you like what you read, please leave a rating!
Sale! “Configuring your Quantum Disambiguator” to Nature’s Futures.
Very happy to announce that I’ve sold a story to Nature magazine’s “Futures” feature.
Nature, for those not familiar, is one of the leading scholarly science journals. More importantly for me, they also have a column that publishes sci-fi flash fiction. This is my first sale to them out of four submissions. The story is written in the form of an instruction manual, and balances absurdist humour with SFnal trope-based jokes and is generally quite weird. (There’s also a nod to Ren & Stimpy for the eagle-eyed.)
Huzzah!
Now on Amazon: The Butterfly Disjunct
My story “The Butterfly Disjunct” is now available on Amazon as a Kindle single. This story first appeared in Spark: A Creative Anthology, volume 4 (January of this year, their speculative fiction issue).
Here’s a teaser:
Butterflies
by Stewart C Baker
She was four when they furrowed her, opening holes in her skull and channels through her brain. She was four when they prepared her for the Tree.
Four, but not afraid—not really. Jeyna had known of the Tree, of course, and how important the guardian’s duties were, but fear was foreign to her, along with the words her parents had repeated the night before: honour, sacrifice, pride.
Her parents themselves she remembers mostly as a jumble of impressions, all tear-streaked faces and shaking hands. She can picture their clothes, though, crisp and orderly, their pristine white subtly emphasising the cream-coloured soulsteel curves of the Place’s inner halls.
Her father’s broken baritone still echoes through her mind: “It’s not right, Kel. Not right.”
Still, he left her there.
They both had, outside the surgery, but she had not been afraid. She was curious. What would it be like, this new life with the Tree? She turned to the doors to find them open, awaiting her.
Want to read on? Check it out at your regional Amazon with the following link: http://mybook.to/tbdis14
Contest Win! “Kuriko” at Spark: A Creative Anthology
Pleased to announce that “Kuriko,” probably my most favourite story of all I’ve written, placed second in the recent “Monsters and Marvels” contest for Spark: A Creative Anthology. I’m not 100% clear whether the win includes publication, but will follow up on that when I am.
The story—essentially a “historical science fantasy” of sorts—tells the tale of a sentient mechanical doll in late 1800s Japan. There’s intrigue, danger, samurai and daimyo, and any number of other exciting and interesting things.
I wrote this one way way back in late 2009 as a contest entry on Scribophile, a social community for authors I used to be fairly active in (where it didn’t come close to placing because it didn’t really fit the theme), then polished it up quite a deal for Writers of the Future back in mid-2011 (where it got a semi-finalist—still my highest score there), before sending it around to ALL THE PLACES, finally doing a bit more revision earlier this year that involved significant trimming (to the tune of 2900 words chopped out), and submitted it to the Spark contest a month or so ago.
Hurrah!