Category: Fiction

Forthcoming: DUST Horizons, Chisel and Chime, Anthropocene Rag

Next week the podcast series DUST Horizons debuts, including an audio adaptation of my story “Peter Skilling.” If you didn’t catch it on Salon.com or F&SF when it was originally published, here’s your chance to hear what happens when an ordinary person is resurrected in a totalitarian future and finds out that new laws have put him in a frightening Catch-22. Check out the DUST website for more info — and a ton of cool short films!

Not too long after that, my short novella “Chisel and Chime” will appear in the Jan/Feb 2020 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. It’s about art, power, magic, and desire, and it’s set in Borea, the location of two previous F&SF stories, “Wizard’s Six” and “Dragon’s Teeth.” (But not a part of Borea seen in those stories.) Also, you should subscribe!

And of course I’m not going to stop waving the flag for Anthropocene Rag, a short novel coming from Tor.com in March 2020!

AnthropoceneRag_Cover

More announcements coming soon…!

Anthropocene Rag Cover Reveal

Feast your eyes on this beauty:

AnthropoceneRag_Cover

From the Tor.com announcement:

In the future United States, our own history has faded into myth and traveling across the country means navigating wastelands and ever-changing landscapes.

The country teems with monsters and artificial intelligences try to unpack their own becoming by recreating myths and legends of their human creators. Prospector Ed, an emergent AI who wants to understand the people who made him, assembles a ragtag team to reach the mythical Monument City.

In this nanotech Western, Irvine infuses American mythmaking with terrifying questions about the future and who we will become.

Coming your way next March!

Pub Date and Preorder Links for Anthropocene Rag

We have a pub date for Anthropocene Rag: March 31, 2020. Preorder links have appeared. Beat the rush and get your order in now!

Here’s the listing on IndieBound, to order through your local bookstore.

Or if you’re not close to a bookstore, here’s the Amazon link.

You can also get it straight from the publisher.

(Also I’ve seen a draft cover, which is great and I’ll share it as soon as I can.)

Anthropocene Rag, Coming in 2020

I am thrilled to link to this freshly posted Tor.com announcement of my upcoming novella Anthropocene Rag…along with two other novellas by Carrie Vaughn and Eddie Robson! I’m looking forward to reading them.

Anthropocene Rag is my first original book-length fiction in (gulp) a long time, and I want to thank Jonathan Strahan and the editorial team at Tor.com for getting behind it. They asked me to say a little something about the book, and although I find summarizing my own work agonizing, here’s what I came up with:

Anthropocene Rag is the confluence of two different ideas that I started thinking about years apart. One was a lunatic scheme to save the world’s monuments in the face of ongoing disaster, putting them all together in a secret location that becomes a Willy Wonka-esque myth to the outside world. The other was a question: When emergent digital intelligences appear, what stories will they tell themselves about their origins? How will they respond to the myths of their creators, and what myths will they create in turn… especially about their creators? Once those two things simmered together for a while, what came out was this story.

Can’t wait to see this book out in the world next year! I think you’re going to dig it.

2018 Roundup, 2019 Forecast

It’s that time of year, when we freelancers look back at what we accomplished and take a minute to feel good about everything instead of being stressed over what comes next. If you’ve read any of these things, thank you. (And if you haven’t, it’s not too late!)

Forthwith:

Things I published in 2018

Things I finished in 2018 that will appear in 2019

  • The Division: Broken Dawn, a novel linking the first and second Division games and expanding the lore beyond New York and Washington DC
  • “Isla Tiburon,” a short story in Asimov’s
  • A kids’ picture book adaptation of Avengers: Infinity War
  • A picture book adventure about Shuri and the Avengers
  • More stuff I can’t announce yet

 

Happy New Year! And thanks again for reading!

The Division: Broken Dawn

With The Division 2 coming up in March, Ubisoft is launching several related books, including a comic series, a lore book, and a prequel novel: Broken Dawn, written by yours truly. I’d always wanted to continue April Kelleher’s story after New York Collapse, and that’s part of what Broken Dawn is about. But there’s more! The book also sets up the narrative of The Division 2, while showing what the rest of the virus-ravaged United States looks like beyond New York and DC.

Broken Dawn is out March 26 in the US! Here’s the cover and jacket copy:

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Months after the outbreak of a devastating global pandemic that started in New York City on Black Friday, traces of rebirth are spreading across the United States. Spring has come to the nation, and with it a glimmer of hope as civilians band together in settlements, trying to carve out a better life.

Amidst a ruined government, a shattered infrastructure, and an eroding civilization, The Division – an autonomous unit of sleeper agents activated when all else fails – is all that protects the people from predators who would harm them, scavengers who would take from them, and oppressors who would exploit them.

Aurelio Diaz is one of those agents. A man of great honor, he is on the hunt for one of his colleagues who inexplicably abandoned his duty and caused the death of multiple civilians. This trail leads him to April Kelleher, a resourceful civilian who traveled out of New York into a troubled American Midwest. There, she hopes to understand why her husband was murdered and if an antiviral to the deadly disease exists.

Together, Agent Diaz and April soon uncover an imminent threat to the future of the country. They must act to preserve civilization’s last hope to stop a new virus and save itself from a final collapse.