Well, the time has come. I have just recently delivered the manuscript for my latest anthology, Infinity Wars. It’s the sixth book in the ‘Infinity Project’ and while I’m waiting on copyedits for this one I’m already pushing ahead on the seventh.

Infinity Wars will be out in the world in September of this year, so you’ll be hearing plenty about it from me in the coming months. For the moment, here’s the table of contents:

• Introduction, Jonathan Strahan
• Evening of the Span of Their Days, Carrie Vaughn
• The Last Broadcasts, An Owomoyela
• Faceless Soldiers, Patchwork Ship, Caroline M Yoachim
• Dear Sarah, Nancy Kress
• The Moon is Not a Battlefield, Indrapramit Das
• Perfect Gun, Elizabeth Bear
• Oracle, Dominica Phettaplace
• In Everlasting Wisdom, Aliette deBodard
• Command and Control, David D. Levine
• Conversations with an Armory, Garth Nix
• Overburden, Genevieve Valentine
• Heavies, Rich Larson
• Weather Girl, E.J. Swift
• Mines, Eleanor Arnason
• ZeroS, Peter Watts

And here’s the cover text:

We have always fought. Tales of soldiers and war go back to the very roots of our history, to the beginnings of the places we call home. And science and technology have always been inextricably linked with the deadly art of war, whether through Da Vinci’s infamous machineries of war or the Manhattan Project’s world-ending bombs or distant starships fighting unknowable opponents.

Oppenheimer once wrote that “the atomic bomb made the prospect of future war unendurable. It has led us up those last few steps to the mountain pass; and beyond there is a different country.” But unendurable or not, future always comes. War was integral to science faction at its birth and remains so today, whether on the page or on the screen.

Infinity Wars asks one question: what would Oppenheimer’s different country be like? Who would fight it? Because at the end of it all, it always come down to a soldier alone, risking life and limb to achieve a goal that may never really make sense at all. How would those soldiers feel? What would they experience?

Infinity Wars tells the tale of soldiers, on the ground and fighting, in the near future and in the farthest reaches of space, using the latest technologies and facing the oldest of fears. New original military science fiction from Eleanor Arnason, Elizabeth Bear, Indrapramit Das, Aliette de Bodard, Nancy Kress, Rich Larson, David Levine, Garth Nix, An Owomoyela, Dominica Phettaplace, E.J. Swift, Genevieve Valentine, Carrie Vaughn, Peter Watts, and Caroline M. Yoachim that will leave you on the edge of your seat.

My sincere thanks to all of the fabulous authors who have written such great stories and agreed to be part of the whole Infinity madness.

Pre-order

You can pre-order Infinity Wars here.

It’s awards season and the judges of the 2017 Philip K. Dick Award and the Philadelphia SF Society, along with the Philip K. Dick Trust, have released the first major ballot of the year. The nominated works for the 2017 Philip K. Dick Award for ‘distinguished science fiction published in paperback original form in the United States during the previous calendar year’ are:

• Consider, Kristy Acevedo (Jolly Fish Press)
• Hwarhath Stories: Transgressive Tales by Aliens, Eleanor Arnason (Aqueduct Press)
• The Mercy Journals, Claudia Casper (Arsenal Pulp Press)
• Graft, Matt Hill (Angry Robot)
• Unpronounceable, Susan diRende (Aqueduct Press)
• Super Extra Grande, Yoss (trans. David Frye) (Restless Books)

First prize and any special citations will be announced on Friday, April 14, 2017 at Norwescon 40 at the DoubleTree by Hilton Seattle Airport, SeaTac, Washington.

At midnight tonight Barrack Obama will end his term as the 44th President of the United States. He is, in my opinion, unquestionably the greatest president of my lifetime. I have no real memory of Lyndon Johnson’s presidency. I do recall Richard Nixon’s fall from grace, which I consider the most damaging thing done to the office. Ford and Carter are a blur. Reagan was a cartoon nightmare, and then there was Bush 1, Bush 2, and Bubba Clinton with all of his flaws. Obama has been relentlessly intelligent, classy and, damn it, presidential. He is a wonderful orator, and seems smart and decent and all you could hope for in a world leader. It’s been incredible to be alive for his presidency.

But, when midnight strikes and we begin our march towards the dead of night, Donald J. Trump will assume office as the 45th president. For all that there are many, many things surrounding his presidency that are deeply concerning – even from here in Australia – it’s probably fair to say the most stressful thing about it right now is the unknown. No one really knows what he will do, how we will attempt to do it, or what affect it will have. I confess that I am deeply pessimistic. I feel that he will leave the US and its allies fundamentally worse off than how he now finds it. I think people I care about, and many people I’ll never meet, will suffer as a result of his ascending to office, and that Australia’s economy will likely suffer too. We shall see. I earnestly hope I’m wrong.

In the meantime, strictly by coincidence, my own first act of the Trump Presidency will be to go to the Perth Arena on Sunday evening and watch Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band live in concert for just the seventh time. I’m pretty excited about. How about you? What will you be doing?

Friday morning. Up at 4.30am and out for a 5km walk before breakfast and heading in to work. Construction on the nearby freeway continues to make the local neighbourhood foreign and noisier. No coffee with mum this morning, because she has to get ready for some tests, so instead coffee and bagel at Max while reading a new novella submission for Tor.com. Copyedits bounced on to one writer, while making plans for more edits and getting ready to send out invitations for a new book project.

With three Bruce Springsteen shows coming up this week (Sunday, Wednesday, and Friday), all with Stephen and one with him and Jessica, the week ahead looks full. Exciting even! It’s also Marianne and my eighteenth wedding anniversary on Tuesday, so we’ll be out for dinner that night. What else? A Fringe show tonight with M (Jewish-ish), and some other commitments ahead. May even spend some time with mum setting up her new phone.

With the week ahead away from the day job include editing and writer invites, holiday planning(!), and more. Busy times. Oh and I should be reading.