Tag Archives: Publication day

Cathedra

April 13, 2018 Mike 18 Comments

“‘Cathedra’ is beautiful, realistic, fun to read.” Alice Osborn, author of Heroes Without Capes.

My story “Cathedra” is featured in the latest issue of Metaphorosis. It’s free online all week.

Ben Kaplan is a loner who considers himself the best astrogeologist in the Asteroid Belt. But when he’s blamed for the deaths of two miners on Enceladus, Saturn’s most mysterious moon, he confronts more than a threat to his reputation. When a previously unknown species that rules the moon’s sub-surface ocean captures Kaplan, the only way to save himself is to stop the creatures from destroying the entire colony.

In a wondrous yet deadly setting of underground oceans, organic atomic reactors, and sunlit geysers shooting into space, “Cathedra” is a tale about the individual’s quest for identity and purpose within society, as well as one’s connection to the universe. The title and theme came from this beautiful anecdote:

A man came upon a construction site where three people were working. He asked the first, “What are you doing?” and the man replied: “I am laying bricks.” He asked the second, “What are you doing?” and the man replied: “I am building a wall.” As he approached the third, he heard him humming a tune as he worked, and asked, “What are you doing?” The man stood, looked up at the sky, and smiled, “I am building a cathedral!”

This is my first appearance in Metaphorosis, which bills itself as “a magazine of science fiction and fantasy. We offer intelligent, beautifully written stories for adults.” “Cathedra” is hard sci-fi inspired by an article in Astronomy magazine about Enceladus, one of the most promising sites for life in our solar system. (That’s a NASA photo of Enceladus on the cover.)

I want to express thanks to my wife Julie and to my comrades-in-critique at the Charlotte Writer’s Club for their invaluable suggestions and insights. I hope you enjoy “Cathedra.”

Modern life, Publication day, SciFan

Fate’s Daughters

August 31, 2017 Mike 19 Comments

SciFan Magazine has published my latest story, “Fate’s Daughters.”

The protagonist, Dr. Thomas Lear, delves into Scottish mysticism to master the secrets of da-sheallahd, or second sight, and uses that knowledge to prove the existence of spin-off “daughter” universes, the most profound and disturbing theory in quantum mechanics. Lear discovers how to find and observe alternate versions of his life, and learns what would have happened if he hadn’t made choices he has long regretted.

He also learns all choices, good or bad, have repercussions — and that even what we think are good choices can have shocking consequences.

An instructor leading an improv workshop I attended at Queen City Comedy in Charlotte inspired this story. E.B. urged everyone to “let go” and react honestly to the scenes they were acting out. At one point she said, “We’ve forgotten how to focus! The only thing that matters is happening in the place and moment you’re living in right now.” Her words hit me, and I kept thinking about them after the workshop was done. That advice is just the medicine we need in our distracted age.

BTW, if you want to know more about daughter universes and quantum mechanics, Space.com has this short, helpful article, one of the pieces I read researching the science behind the story.

I am indebted to several beta readers for their invaluable insights as this piece evolved, including the Dark & Stormy Plotters League, which is the sci-fi/fantasy critique group of the Charlotte Writers’ Club. But I want to give special thanks to Cathleen Townsend for her inspired suggestions, all of which I incorporated into the manuscript. I salute l’artista migliore!

Nature, Publication day, Science fiction, Wendell Berry

Unbound II: Changed Worlds

January 31, 2017 Mike 9 Comments

Award-winning DAOwen Publications has just released its latest anthology, Unbound II: Changed Worlds.

It features my story “Hunting Ground,” which is set in a brooding wetland in rural North Carolina. I grew up in the country, and the farm next to ours had a two-acre marsh where I stomped and rambled and dreamed away many an afternoon. It teemed with exotic plants, frogs, copperheads, and dark, mysterious pools. Now those were the days …

In my story, police discover the body of a fracking engineer buried near the marsh where he’d been working, and they arrest an anti-fracking activist who’d threatened him. Buddy Vuncannon, the defendant’s attorney, discovers the marsh hides a bizarre secret that could clear his client — if there were a way he could prove it in court.

My fascination with all things swampy and a Science Alert article about a mysterious stretch of land near Lake Michigan inspired the story. “Hunting Ground” is lively and entertaining, but its topic is serious. Fracking involves pumping a cocktail of chemicals and water deep underground where it cracks open layers of shale to unleash natural gas. The threat to the local water supply is profound.

Exposing the truth about fracking is all well and good, but the real goal is to renew respect and appreciation for nature. No one understands this better than poet/novelist/activist Wendell Berry. In his fiction and essays, Berry argues that the excesses of industrialism, from environmental piracy to the over-concentration of wealth, can be countered only by a rebirth of affection for the local, by which he means love and loyalty for the land we live on and for the people we live with.

Here’s how the National Endowment for the Humanities describes Berry’s literary/political mission:

In the debate that set Thomas Jefferson against Alexander Hamilton—and rural farms against cities, and agriculture against banking interests—Berry stands with Jefferson. He stands for local culture and the small family farmer, for yeoman virtues and an economic and political order that is modest enough for its actions and rationales to be discernible. Government, he believes, should take its sense of reality from the ground beneath our feet and from our connections with our fellow human beings.

And it is my passionate belief that one way we can strengthen or even restore those connections is through a good story. I hope you enjoy “Unbound II: Changed Worlds.”