A few weeks ago, I got a call from the president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association to tell me that A Death in Hyperspace, the weird little interactive fiction game I co-wrote with nine other amazing authors, is a finalist for this year’s Nebula Award for Game Writing. (You can watch the official announcement on the SFWA YouTube channel.)
I’m super excited to share that nomination with my fantastic co-authors, Phoebe Barton, James Beamon, Kate Heartfield, Isabel J Kim, Sara Messenger, Naca Rat, Natalia Theodoridou, M. Darusha Wehm, and Merc Fenn Wolfmoor.
So to celebrate the good news, I want to shine a light on the great work the rest of the A Death in Hyperspace team are doing with their writing elsewhere.
First, though, a quick detour!
An Update on the SFWA Bylaws Petition
I’m not going to lie: the bad stuff right now is really bad, with supposedly democratic governments racing to erase human rights and eradicate (both literally or politically) those who they view as opponents.
I had a long-ass link round-up in here of various human rights abuses and vanilla abuses of power carried out in the last week alone, both in the US and elsewhere, but writing it made me tired and depressed, and I imagine reading it would make you feel the same.
Instead I’ll just say that if you want to stay informed about stuff without fascist apologia, I recommend going straight to the Associated Press or Reuters as sources of relatively objective reporting, rather than any of the US-based three-letter-acronym stations. BBC is usually decent as well.
In short, this timeline sucks and I hate it!
Last time, I mentioned a petition I was organizing for SFWA members in order to change the bylaws to clearly define “political activity”. I’m pleased to announce we did collect the required 182 signatures, ending up with around 189 full members in support of the petition.
The signature collection form is closed now, but you can see the text of the petition here.
I understand that the SFWA board has discussed the petition at their most recent meeting on the 19th of March, and if you’re a SFWA member you should expect to see some kind of update from SFWA President Kate Ristau soon.
A Death in Hyperspace is a Nebula Finalist!
At the risk of being repetitive A Death in Hyperspace is a Nebula finalist!
It’s a sometimes surreal, fairly short game about being a sentient spaceship, the impossibility of communication, what happens when reality breaks down, and also murder (sort of / sometimes).
Here’s the blurb!
As an embodied ship Intelligence and fugitive former warship, you’ve faced many challenges.
But when your captain dies suspiciously halfway through a hyperspace transit, you know you’re in trouble. Not because you need a captain — you can pilot yourself just fine — but because, as an aficionado of mysteries and detective stories, you know there’s only one explanation: murder most foul.
Investigate your rooms.
Interrogate your crew and passengers.
Solve the mystery.
Will you find your way back to reality — or be stuck in hyperspace forever?
If you haven’t checked it out yet, A Death in Hyperspace is free to play online.
The Nine Fantastic Stars of A Death in Hyperspace
One thing that becomes immediately obvious when you look at the byline for A Death in Hyperspace is exactly how many people worked on it. Ten, in fact, including myself!
All of my co-authors brought their own unique style and voice to the project, and that’s a big part of what makes it so interesting—and what makes it work as a game that explores the breakdown of consensus reality between a number of distinct characters.
What better way to celebrate A Death in Hyperspace landing on the Nebula finalist list, then, but to highlight the other great work my co-authors have done?
I’ve sorted these alphabetically by last name, for lack of a better way!
Phoebe Barton
Phoebe Barton is a queer trans science fiction writer. Her short fiction has appeared in venues such as Analog, Lightspeed, and Kaleidotrope, anthologies from Neon Hemlock and World Weaver Press, and she wrote the interactive fiction, Nebula Award-finalist game The Luminous Underground for Choice of Games. Her story “The Mathematics of Fairyland” won the Aurora Award for Best Short Story in 2022.
Phoebe’s Luminous Underground is like Ghostbusters but about a million times cooler and more magical—because yes, there’s magic in the haunted subway, as well as robots, daemons, and giants. And (as the blurb notes) even a giant robot daemon.
You get to hunt down and zap spirits, Ghostbuster-style, but you can also travel to parallel realms, engage in shady business deals, and find romance. All in all, it’s fantastic!
If you’re in the mood for some fiction instead, I recommend “To Keep the Way,” a short, dark story about exoplanets and humanity’s tendency to privilege itself over every other form of life (Rosalind’s Siblings, Atthis Arts, 2023) and “The Mathematics of Fairyland,” which won the Aurora Award for short fiction in 2022 (Lightspeed, February 2021).
James Beamon
James Beamon has an unbelievable past, mostly because he uses his spare time writing down fabrications to sell to others. That said, he’s been in the Air Force, to Iraq and Afghanistan, a Nebula finalist, and in trouble more times than he cares to honestly admit. But he doesn’t even try to sell honesty, claiming it doesn’t have a believable character arc. Currently he lives with his wife, son and attack cat in Virginia and invites you all to check out what he’s up to on Twitter (@WriterBeamon) or on his blog, fictigristle.
As you can probably tell from his bio statement, James is a very funny man, as well as an excellent writer. (True to form, his character in A Death in Hyperspace is one of the funnier characters, too.)
Outside of his short fiction and game writing, James has a fine series of indie-published novels out.
The first in the series is Pendulum Heroes, and if (like me!) you’re into isekai anime or MMOs, you’ll want to give this one a read, folks.
The books follow four dudes as they get trapped in an MMORPG, and while it has all the trappings you’d expect from a game-based portal fantasy, it also subverts expectations wonderfully, as the four protagonists quickly learn that “I’m stuck in the game” is even worse than it sounds.
I was lucky enough for this to be my second collaboration with James, and my second Nebula-nominated collaboration with James! Our previous Nebula nominee was the cosmic horror / fantasy / baking / comedy extravaganza The Bread Must Rise, which you can find through Choice of Games, as well as on Steam, Google Play, and the App Store. (I’m not saying all the funny parts are James’s, but if you like wacky humour, you should definitely check out this game. We pulled out all the stops!)
Isabel J Kim
Isabel J. Kim is a Korean-American speculative fiction writer based in New York City. She is a Shirley Jackson Award winner, an Astounding Award finalist, and her short fiction has been published in Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, and Strange Horizons, among other venues. Her work has been reprinted in 2023 Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy and The Year’s Best Fantasy: Volume 2 and translated into Chinese and Japanese. When she’s not writing, she’s either practicing law or co-hosting her internet culture podcast Wow if True — both equally noble pursuits. Find her at isabel.kim or @isabeljkim on Twitter.
Isabel’s work is usually weird, and is always fantastic!
I was first introduced to her work back in my sub-Q days, when we published her short piece of iInteractive fiction, “Kingmaker.”
In “Kingmaker,” you want to take the throne and have only three actions you can use to achieve your ends: speak, study, or strike. You get 7 opportunities to take one of these actions before the game ends. It’s pretty neat!
More recently, you may have heard of Isabel’s latest Clarkesworld story, “Why Don’t We Just Kill the Kid in the Omelas Hole?”
This one is super dark (which, let’s be honest, you could probably tell), and explores Ursula K. LeGuin’s classic “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” through an accelerationist lens. It’s also a finalist currently for the Nebula award for short fiction and the BSFA award for short fiction.
Nice!
Kate Heartfield
Kate Heartfield is the author of several novels, including The Tapestry of Time (2024), about clairvoyant sisters in WWII; The Valkyrie (2023), a retelling of legends; and the Sunday Times bestseller The Embroidered Book (2022), about Marie Antoinette and her sister Maria Carolina. She has also written interactive fiction, and Assassin’s Creed novels. She has won the Aurora Award for Best Novel three times, and her fiction has been shortlisted for the Aurora, Nebula, World Fantasy, Crawford, Locus, Sunburst, Scribe and Ottawa Book awards. Kate is a former journalist who lives in Ottawa, Canada with a black cat named Minerva.
In addition to all those fiction awards (dang!), Kate has also written not one but two Nebula-nominated choicescript games, making this her third nomination for the game writing Nebula.
The first of those games is The Magician’s Workshop, which—like A Death in Hyperspace—has a murder at its heart.
Unlike A Death in Hyperspace, The Magician’s Workshop is set in Renaissance Italy. Kate has serious historical research chops, and writes excellent, engaging characters. Both of these skills are on full display in this fascinating, novel-length text game.
Rub elbows with the Medici family, chat up Machiavelli, and generally see the sights of 16th-century Florence. But also, master the arts of alchemy, engage in street brawls, or build flying machines. All that plus a murder mystery? What’s not to love?
The other of Kate’s game (and I admit the one that veers closer to my particulary historical interests) is The Road to Canterbury. If you don’t think an interactive fiction version of Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales sounds like a good time, (1) I suggest revising your priorities and (2) it’s a fantastic time! (I may be biased, as I think Chaucer is a lot of fun.)
Sara S. Messenger
Sara S. Messenger is a disabled East and West Asian writer-poet of the speculative. She is currently a Nebula finalist in the Game Writing category with her team, and she has been Ignyte- and Hugo-nominated as staff with PodCastle and khōréō magazine. She writes weird juxtapositions, sensuality, and abject/object ways of being. Her work has been published in Apex Magazine, Fantasy Magazine, PodCastle, Diabolical Plots, Strange Horizons, and Nightmare Magazine. Her second short story publication, “Potemora in the Triad,” was reprinted in The Year’s Best Fantasy, Volume 2.
Sara’s story “The Clown Watches the Clown” was published in Apex last May. As Sara herself decribes it, the story is cyberpunk masochist clown story—and how can you say no to that strange and enticing combination of words?!
The story is gripping, at times disturbing, but utlimately heartfelt and sincere. Go give it a read!
Sara also writes interactive fiction. In addition to her work on A Death in Hyperspace, she wrote a short Twine game called “Mothman Test” for ECTOCOMP in 2023.
As the name suggests, it’s a test about mothmen. As the game immediately makes clear, it’s really not either of those things. Also dark, this one has stuck with me since I played it a couple of years back.
Naca Rat
Naca Rat is a storyteller, game developer, and a dozen extra large rats in a trenchcoat, as well as the writer of Teahouse of the Gods from Choice of Games.
I’ve talked about Teahouse of the Gods before, and will reiterate here that it’s one of Choice of Games’ underrated gems.
In addition to the obvious appeal (tea! and gods!) one thing that this game does which really impressed me was how it treats the things in choicescript games that are usually window dressing—like your appearance and backgrond.
Many Choice of Games titles (mine included, to be honest) use these things just to add variation to the text, or at best to help the player see themself reflected in the game’s main character. Teahouse does that, but your appearance and your background are tied to your ethnicity and your nationality, and affects not just how people initially react to you but how much of the game is written in English and how much is written in hanzi.
That’s super cool, and I wish more games played with things like this! (The story and its characters are also memorable and great! Go play it!)
Natalia Theodoridou
Natalia Theodoridou is a queer writer, editor, and game designer. He is the winner of Moniack Mhor’s 2022 Emerging Writer Award, the 2018 World Fantasy Award for Short Fiction, and has been a finalist for the Nebula Award three times (Novelette and Game Writing categories). He is also a Clarion West Graduate (class of 2018) and holds a PhD in Media & Cultural Studies from SOAS University of London. Natalia’s debut novel, Sour Cherry, is coming from Tin House (North America) and Wildfire (UK & Commonwealth) in April 2025.
Natalia is another friend from my sub-Q days, and his work is always shockingly original. Also, his bio is outdated because—in addition to A Death in Hyperspace—he’s on the Nebula ballot for another game this year. That makes him a five-time Nebula nominee. Dang!
Sour Cherry, Natalia’s debut novel, is due out in just a couple of days. Even though Barnes and Noble shipped mine early, I haven’t managed to read it yet (because my TBR pile overfloweth) but based on the blurb—and the fact that Natalia is extremely excellent!—I know I’m going to love it.
The tale begins with Agnes. After losing her baby, Agnes is called to the great manor house to nurse the local lord’s baby boy. But something is wrong with the child: his nails grow too fast, his skin smells of soil, and his eyes remind her of the dark forest. As he grows into a boy, then into man, a plague seems to follow him everywhere. Trees wither at the roots, fruits rot on their branches, and the town turns against him. The man takes a wife, who bears him a son. But tragedy strikes in cycles and his family is forced to consider their own malignancy—until wife after wife, death after death, plague after plague, every woman he touches becomes a ghost. The ghosts become a chorus, and they call urgently to our narrator as she tries to explain, in our very real world, exactly what has happened to her. The ghosts can all agree on one thing, an inescapable truth about this man, this powerful lord who has loved them and led them each to ruin: If you leave, you die. But if you die, you stay.
If you’re more into games, or want something great to try right now, I can heartily recommend Restore, Reflect, Retry, Natalia’s other Nebula-nominated title this year. It’s a sort of metafictional creepypasta that might not seem out of place in the episodes of Dark Mirror, and I loved every word. (Bonus points for the way the game changes subtle but important details on subsequent playthroughs—something that’s easy to spot since it’s on the short side for a choicescript title!)
M Darusha Wehm
M. Darusha Wehm is the Nebula Award-nominated and Sir Julius Vogel Award-winning author of the interactive fiction game The Martian Job, over a dozen novels, several poems, and many short stories. Originally from Canada, Darusha lives in Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand after spending several years sailing the Pacific.
The Martian Job is part heist, part SFF romp, part “bring the team together” montage, and part union-rousing commentary on capitalism and the value of the human life.
It’s also a damn good time!
Darusha has written lots of other amazing things, but one of my favourite books by them is Hamlet: Prince of Robots. It is exactly what you would think from that title, and it had me grinning in my seat as I read.
Darusha is also one of the authors behind the composite pseudonym Darkly Lem, whose first book Transmentation | Transience: Or, An Accession to the People’s Council for Nine Thousand Worlds just came out! I haven’t gotten to this one yet, but it has a glowing review from Publisher’s Weekly and sounds fascinating.
Merc Fenn Wolfmoor
Merc Fenn Wolfmoor is an ace/aro ADHD/autistic non-binary author from Minnesota. Merc is the author of several short story collections and the novella The Wolf Among the Wild Hunt. They have had short stories published in such fine venues as Lightspeed, Fireside, Nightmare, Apex, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Escape Pod, Uncanny, and more. They have been a Nebula Awards Finalist and have had short stories reprinted in several Year’s Best anthologies.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, everything Merc writes is excellent and lovely!
If you’re new to Merc’s work, I recommend starting with one of their short story collections, like So You Want to be a Robot.
The rereleased version of the book (linked on the right!) contains 22 science fiction short stories, each of which is better than the one before—I promise.
Inside, you’ll find robots and cyborgs exploring their own forms of personhood; lose yourself in wildly imaginative landscapes and dystopian worlds; follow assassins, sentient shadows, sorrowful ghosts, and all forms of monsters.
(I’m partial to the cover pictured here, but if you need a more neutral one for your safety, Merc has you protected with this alternative cover!)
If you haven’t already read “This is Not a Wardrobe Door,” which was a finalist for the Nebulas in 2017, definitely do. It’s a seriously lovely, heartwarming story about not giving up on your dreams and working to achieve them—and also portals. (Bonus points for the dig at C.S. Lewis!)
Writing Update
For myself, I’m close to wrapping up the last chapter (finally!) of my upcoming Choice of Games title, Spire, Surge and Sea, which is science fantasy epic inspired by Studio Ghibli movies like Laputa: Castle in the Sky and Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, as well as the Final Fantasy series of video games.
In a far-future seascape cursed by the ancients, will you make mankind’s last home a haven or a fortress?
You can wishlist Spire, Surge and Sea on Steam or play the demo for free online.
In addition to the good news about A Death in Hyperspace, I’ve also had a few fiction releases and sales:
- “The Square Root of Forever,” forthcoming in Lesbians in Space: Where No Man Has Gone Before (Space Wizard Science Fantasy)
- “You Who Sought the Stars’ Distant Light,” forthcoming in Analog (whaaaaaaaaaat, really?! yes, really!)
- “Forest Hills,” forthcoming in This Exquisite Topology (Angry Gable Press)
- “Meeting at the Nijitatsu Nursery” and “Cogs and Wheels and Burnished Bronze”, two related drabbles in Manawaker Studio’s 100 Words Project series.
Finally, if you’re the sort of person who’s read my collection The Butterfly Disjunct and if you enjoyed it, I’d be deeply grateful if you would consider nominating it for the Locus Award using this link. (Anyone can vote for the Locus award, although you do need to sign up. There are tons of other great collections from 2024 also eligible, as I mentioned last year. Check some out and vote for the ones that move you!)
That’s all for this time. Take care of yourselves out there, folks!