From January 25 to 27, Barnes & Noble is taking 25% off the price of all pre-orders: dead-tree books, audiobooks, and ebooks.

This includes my next novel, Dual Memory, available May 16. The coupon code for checkout is PREORDER25

Soon, my novel will have cover art. I’ll explain the delay later. Meanwhile, it’s a good time to pre-order all the books you’re waiting for if B&N is your bookseller. You can find a listing of some great upcoming books here.

By the way, Dual Memory is included in The Most Anticipated Chicago Books of 2023 by Chicago Review of Books!

The Apex Book of World SF 5 by Cristina Jurado
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

For me, the strength of an anthology is in its variety as well as its quality. These eighteen stories cover a variety of countries, cultures, and nations; a variety of story-telling styles; and a variety of speculative fiction — which includes science fiction, fantasy, and horror. The editor, Cristina Jurado, and I have worked together on other projects, and I can see her hand in the choices. A fair number of stories show her fine sensibility toward horror, not with blood and gore, but with dread.

I’ve checked some other reviews, and different readers have loved a story that others found meh, and I think the variety of reactions means that there’s something in the anthology for a wide variety of readers. Here are my favorites, but you may have different choices:

“A Series of Steaks” by Vina Jie-Min Prasad: The story has fun with technology, and it could only have taken place in China.

“Violation of the Truenet Security Act” by Taiyo Fujii: I admit I didn’t follow all of the technicalities of a computer programmer falling afoul of a dystopian internet failure, but I understood the plot. The story could only have happened in Japan.

“Ambiguity Machines: An Examination” by Vandana Singh: Three accounts of unnerving encounters with impossible machines. It ends with a haunting twist.

“An Evolutionary Myth” by Bo-Young Kim: This tale about something like a shape-shifter is steeped in Korean culture.

“You Will See the Moon Rise” by Israel Alonso: A war turns out to be something else. As an aside, I knew the translator, Steve Redwood, and delighted in his anarchic humor; he died in 2022.

“The Seventh” by Eliza Victoria: Truly creepy horror.

“Screamers” by Tochi Onyebuchi: A series of murders leads to a transcendent conclusion.

“Ugo” by Giovanni de Feo: An odd romance takes a philosophical turn that subverts genre expectations.

Again, you might enjoy different stories, but they’re all worth reading. More than ever, speculative fiction plays out on a world-wide stage, and language barriers and national borders give us only glimpses. Here’s a chance to take a closer look.

View all my reviews

In my novel Dual Memory, which comes out in May, the main character is illiterate (he had a rough childhood), but he lives in a society much like ours: everybody reads, and he’s surrounded by writing. Some beta readers of the manuscript thought he couldn’t survive if he couldn’t read. I ignored that advice.

I knew better. A long time ago, I taught reading to adults at Literacy Services of Wisconsin, where I learned a few things about reading and about people who can’t read.

People can’t read for many reasons. Some never get much education. I remember an elderly Black man who grew up in the South when people who looked like him were barred from quality schools. Some people fall through other cracks in the educational system. Many, though, can read, but not English.

These are people just like you in that sense. Can you read Chinese, Russian, and Arabic? I can’t even read German, and it uses a familiar alphabet. Drop me in Japan, and I will be utterly illiterate. Of course, your phone and computer have AI programs that can help by translating and reading aloud, but first you have to figure out the software.

So, how do non-readers survive? Often they face frustration, but they find work-arounds. A friend or family member can read for them. They might memorize facts and procedures, like recipes, that readers would look up. In addition, the world offers subtle help.

The photo with this post shows some packages of food with the words describing the content erased. Can you guess what’s in them? Yes, because the artwork, photos, and clear panels tell you. Manufacturers know that not every customer can read, but they want every customer’s money.

I once worked in an ice cream store, and at first I got annoyed at some old ladies who would come in, point, and say, “What’s that? And that?” Then I realized they couldn’t read the labels on the tubs of ice cream. They spoke with an accent, so maybe they came from somewhere with limited education, at least for girls. Maybe they just never learned to read English. But they enjoyed ice cream, and my job was to get them what they wanted.

That elderly Black man had made his living as a professional tap dancer, and he was one of the most charming people I’ve ever met. He was hard to teach because rather than get to the reading lesson, I would have rather listened to his stories about his career and all the fun he’d had. He’d made it through life with his extraordinary people skills.

You meet illiterate people all the time, and they manage to survive.

My novel Immunity Index opens with a quote from the Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset: “Yo soy yo y mi circunstancia y si no la salvo a ella no me salvo yo.” I am myself and my circumstance, and if I do not save it, I do not save myself.

If you know nothing else about José Ortega y Gasset, remember that sentence, his most famous, written in 1914. The Spanish philosopher died in Madrid on October 18, 1955, at age 72. He was active in the Second Republic and went into self-exile at the outbreak of the Civil War, although after 1945 he returned frequently to Spain.

For him, “Yo soy yo y mi circunstancia” expressed the constant conflict between every person and the time and place where they are born: the drama and tragedy between necessity and freedom, of living with a reality that “forms the other half of myself.”

For him, freedom meant “being free inside of a given fate,” with a necessity to act: “if I do not save it, I do not save myself.”

 “Life is what we do and what happens to us.” Within fate, we can choose our destiny and create “a project of life.”

Some may find their philosophy of life in religion, existentialism, or nihilism. He created a philosophy based on pragmatism:

“Living is a constant process of deciding what we are going to do.”

What are you going to do?

José Ortega y Gasset, from The New York Review of Books

I have a book coming out in 2023: Dual Memory, on sale May 16 (and you can pre-order it now). What’s it about?

Antonio Moro stops running from the people who killed his family and friends, and he starts fighting — but he has no home, no job, no money, and no clothes. He doesn’t even know much about where he is. But when he gets an ally as powerful as it is naive, they find an efficient strategy: lies and deceit. If they can avoid arrest, they can create a fighting force of unbeatable strength that no one must ever detect.

 I’ll have a lot more to say about the novel in the coming months.

Meanwhile, I’m writing the third book in the trilogy that began with Semiosis and Interference. This book, Usurpation, tells what happens to the rainbow bamboo on Earth — or rather, what happens to the Earth because rainbow bamboo is growing there. It should be published in May 2024. I’ll have more to say about that, too.

(Just a reminder, my novel Immunity Index is still available.)

A book I helped translate is coming out soon — Canyonlands: The Ballad of a Quarantine. It is a fictional and deeply lyrical account of the Covid-19 quarantine in Madrid, Spain, by JB Rodríguez Aguilar. It will be published in the first quarter of 2023 by Olympia Publisher, and I’ll keep you posted.

A short story, “The Virgin Who Rescued Dragons,” will be published this fall in the Best of NewMyths Anthologies Volume 4, The Cosmic Muse. When I have more details, I’ll let you know. Yes, there are fire-breathing dragons! It was fun to write.

As always, I’m working on other short pieces, and as there’s news, you’ll find it here. I love to write, and I’m not good at New Year’s Resolutions, but I’ll try to write even more in 2023.

I also enjoy going to science fiction conventions.

From February 3 to 5, I’ll be at Capricon, one of two major Chicago-area science fiction conventions. It will be held downtown, and I’ll be on some panels. At one of them, you’ll be able to watch me write! Tammy Coxen is the panel’s moderator, so it may not sound like fun, but she’ll make it fun for all of us.

I also plan to virtually attend SFWA’s Nebula Awards weekend conference, which will be held from May 12 to 14. Details are coming.

The World Science Fiction Convention will be held this year in Chengdu, China, from August 16 to 20. I love Worldcons, but I don’t expect to attend in person this year due to scheduling conflicts. Because I voted in the 2023 Worldcon site selection, though, I’ve been granted automatic virtual membership, so I might visit online.

I’m likely to attend Pemmi-Con in person, July 20 to 23, in Winnepeg, Canada. This is the North American Science Fiction Convention, which is held whenever the Worldcon takes place outside of North America.

Windycon, Chicago’s other major science fiction convention, will be held in Lombard, a western suburb, on November 10 to 12. I hope to be there.

Finally, I plan to be on the staff of the Speculative Fiction Novel-in-Progress Bootcamp August 13 to 19 at the Siena Retreat Center in Racine, Wisconsin. It’s a supportive but rigorous week-long retreat to help early-career novelists improve their craft and their business savvy.

By the way, all these events are open to everyone, although there may be registration requirements. Check the websites for more information. I’d love to meet you there.