Fiction and Essays

Short Fiction

I’ve been writing songs, poetry, and fiction for as long as I can remember, but I didn’t start taking it seriously until I submitted “The History Of Chan’s Journey To The Celestial Regions” to Analog in 2001. It sold, and was nominated for an AnLab award that year; it didn’t win, but that was a great start. It was followed by more stories in Analog and appearances in anthologies. I have uploaded a few of these, and you can click through the titles to read them.  I’m not a hugely prolific fiction writer, but I hope and expect that this list will grow in time.

Note: Many of these links went to the Curious Fictions website, which went dark in August of 2021. The only link to my fiction that is still currently viable is to “Incarnation in the Delta”, but I hope to get new links up soon.

The History of Chan’s Journey to the Celestial Regions” (Analog Magazine, April 2002, AnLab award nominee, Honorable Mention in “Year’s Best Science Fiction 2003.”) – A story of a very different space program…

Compadres” (with S.M.Stirling – Alternate Generals II Anthology, Baen Books 2002, story republished in Stirling’s “Ice, Iron, and Gold” anthology 2008.) – An alternate history in which two great leaders come together in the dawn of the 20th Century.

Counterspy” (Analog Magazine, January 2003) – Many people have written stories of alien invasions, but their invaders were usually competent…

Just An Average Guy” (Analog Magazine, October 2003) – In the same universe as “Just an Average Guy,” another tale of an alien invasion and budget cuts…

Keeping Track” (Analog Magazine, November 2005) – The Mayas discover a minor problem with their new invention…

Ripples” (The Enchanter Completed, an L. Sprague de Camp tribute anthology, Baen Books 2005) – In which two great thinkers come to opposite conclusions when theory is put into practice…

To Leap the Highest Wall” (Analog Magazine, Jan./Feb. 2009) – A story about several kinds of moral courage.

Madman’s Bargain” (Analog, March 2009) – Thinking about thinking about thinking…

Incarnation In The Delta (Abyss and Apex January 2009) – A story set in Mississippi in 1932, which I have been assured is not blasphemous to devout Buddhists.

At Last The Sun” (Analog Magazine June 2010) – In which explorers meet in a very unlikely place.

Essays & Interviews

Science Fiction’s Big Show” – An article about the World Science Fiction Convention in 2003

Musings with Harry Turtledove” – An interview of science fiction’s best known Byzantine scholar.