StarShipSofa is proud to present all four nominees in the “Best Short Fiction” category of the British Science Fiction Association! You can vote for the BSFA awards here by Monday, April 14.
Part 2 coming next week!
Main Fiction 1: “Saga’s Children” by E.J. Swift 2:30
You will have heard of our mother, the astronaut Saga Wärmedal. She is famous, and she is infamous. Her face, instantly recognizable, appears against lists of extraordinary feats, firsts and lasts and onlys. There are the pronounced cheekbones, the long jaw, that pale hair cropped close to the head. In formal portraits she looks enigmatic, but in images caught unaware – perhaps at some function, talking to the Administrator of the CSSA or the Moon Colony Premier; in situations, in fact, where we might imagine she would feel out of place – she is animated, smiling. In those pictures, it is possible to glimpse the feted adventurer who traversed the asteroid belt without navigational aid.
We knew her only once, on Ceres.
E.J. is a writer of speculative fiction, represented by the Zeno Agency (zenoagency.com).
She’s inspired by writers who bring the extraordinary to the ordinary, and for as long as she can remember she’s been making up stories, from the ridiculous to the epic. Although her work has always contained elements of the fantastical, she came to writing science fiction almost by accident.
Her debut novel Osiris (Del Rey UK and Night Shade Books) is set in a far future ocean metropolis, a failed utopia whose inhabitants believe they live on the last city on earth. The second in the trilogy, Cataveiro, expands the series to explore the world beyond Osiris. The series will be completed in a third volume to be published in 2015.
Her short fiction has appeared in Interzone magazine and in anthologies including The Best British Fantasy 2013 and Pandemonium: The Lowest Heaven.
Main Fiction 2: “Boat in Shadows, Crossing” by Tori Truslow 28:00
Narration created by, and appears with permission of, “Beneath Ceaseless Skies” podcast.
Come, let me whisper you a tale of the city where I was born, the Town Where Salt-Plums Grow. A summer tale: dark and succulent, with a bite of chill—the kind we love to tell on warm thick nights.
Tori is a writer of strange fiction, currently living in the East of England. She was born in Hong Kong, grew up in Bangkok, and has since moved back and forth between here and there.
Tori is a graduate of the Warwick MA in Writing, and her stories and poems have appeared in a number of magazine and anthologies, including Clockwork Phoenix 3, Stone Telling, Penning Perfumes and Beneath Ceaseless Skies. Her work had been a finalist for the James White Award and the Parsec Award.
As well as being a writer, she also wears a number of other (related) hats. With Claire Trévien, she’s the co-editor of Verse Kraken, a magazine for experimental, multimedia and cross-genre art of all kinds. She was Writer-in-Residence at Shrewsbury International School from 2008-2010, and has continued to run workshops and offers creative writing tuition since then. Currently, she’s running the Queer Fandom track at London’s coolest new convention, Nine Worlds GeekFest.
When she was four, Tori wanted to be a professional diorama-maker when she grew up; these days she thinks she’d like to be a genderfluid cyborg on Mars.
Narrators: Trendane Sparks and Rajan Khanna, Folly Blaine, Michael J. DeLuca, and Tina Connolly
Born in Texas and transplanted to California, Tren has had jobs ranging from Army medic to veterinary technician, freelance clown to kids’ show puppeteer. Nothing has ever made him so happy as voice acting. From video games to narrating stories, voice performers are conduits of magic and imagination.
Rajan Khanna’s short fiction has appeared in Shimmer, Abyss & Apex, and The Way of the Wizard, among others, and his podcast narrations can be heard at Podcastle, Lightspeed, and Beneath Ceaseless Skies.
Folly Blaine lives in the Pacific Northwest. She has narrated fiction for Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Wily Writers, and Every Day Fiction, as well as through the Amazon Platform, Audiobook Creation Exchange.
Michael J. DeLuca’s short fiction appears in Apex, Clockwork Phoenix, Jabberwocky, and Bibliotheca Fantastica, among others, and his podcast narrations at Beneath Ceaseless Skies and Small Beer Press.
Tina Connolly’s stories have appeared in Strange Horizons, Fantasy Magazine, and Beneath Ceaseless Skies. Her debut fantasy novel, Ironskin, was a finalist for the Nebula Award, and the sequel, Copperhead, was released by Tor Books in Fall 2013. Her flash podcasting venture Toasted Cake is a two-time Parsec Award finalist for Best Magazine Podcast.
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