Not gonna lie. I will never get tired of seeing my name on the cover of F&SF. I love this magazine.
If you read my earlier F&SF stories “Wizard’s Six” or “Dragon’s Teeth” — or the PS novella Mare Ultima, which is an expansion of both — you’ll recognize the milieu of “Chisel and Chime,” but the characters and the story’s setting are all new. Hope you enjoy it!
We’re about four months out from Anthropocene Rag appearing in the world on March 31, but you can save yourself the worry and hassle of having to remember that date. How, you ask? I’ll tell you: by pre-ordering now!
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!
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.