(This seems to be my week for recommending books for science fiction writers.)

Last night, Nomi and I went to the Museum of Science to hear a talk by Dr. Michio Kaku.

Dr. Michio Kaku, Michael A. Burstein Photo copyright ©2008 by Nomi S. Burstein. All rights reserved.

Kaku is a theoretical physicist who has written a few very popular books on physics and what he thinks the future will bring. His current book is Physics of the Impossible, in which he discusses a variety of technologies that most of us think of us as science fiction, but which Kaku speculates will happen for real, some of them very soon.

In the book, he lays out three different classes of impossibility, as follows:

Class I Impossibilities, such as teleportation, telepathy, and invisibility, are consistent with the laws of physics as we know them and might become real within the current century.

Class II Impossibilities, such as time travel and travel faster than the speed of light, lie at the edge of known physics.

Class III Impossibilities, such as perpetual motion machines and precognition, defy the laws of physics as we currently understand them.

His talk skimmed some of the topics in his book, including invisibility and teleportation. He also discussed robots and artificial intelligence, and my favorite topic, time travel. He showed a few clips from a BBC series he's hosting, Visions of the Future, which is supposed to be broadcast in the United States sometime in 2009, but I'd love to track down a copy earlier if I can.

Kaku is clearly a fan of science fiction; his lecture slides were sprinkled with pictures from Star Trek, 2001, Terminator, and other media SF, and the cover of his latest book clearly shows a TARDIS as the time machine plunging through the wormhole. At one point, in an attempt to explain the paradoxes inherent in time travel, Kaku described a scenario that I quickly realized was the plot of Robert A. Heinlein's short story "All You Zombies–" (F&SF, March 1959). I wish he had identified it as such, though, as that might have inspired people in the audience to track it down.

When discussing the rise of the Internet and the shrinking of the computer chip, Kaku showed an artist's representation of a pair of contact lenses with chips that would give you immediate access to the Internet directly in your field of vision. The lenses would also help you identify people's faces, and I started to think about a former student of mine who has prosopagnosia, the inability to recognize faces. With contact lenses such as these, no one would ever have to know.

One thing Kaku mentioned does have me a little worried. Over the past few decades, astronomers have observed many gamma ray bursts (GRBs), short-lived bursts of high-energy photons, the most energetic events occurring today. GRBs are often caused by two energetic stars orbiting each other, occasionally emitting a burst of these photons across the sky. (For more information on gamma ray bursts, check out NASA's website on Gamma-Ray Bursts.)

Why did Kaku bring these up? Well, apparently, one of the potential gamma-ray bursters out there, WR 104, is only 8000 light-years away and, um, pointed right toward us. Should it send a burst of gamma rays in our direction, it could conceivably fry the planet we live on. Since I'm the type of guy who already worries about collisions from near-Earth asteroids and the eventual heat death of the universe, now I have something else to worry about. Thanks a lot, Dr. Kaku. :-)

Like "The Coming Convergence" by Stanley Schmidt, which I recommended earlier this week, "Physics of the Impossible" is a great read for both science fiction writers and people interested in what the future will bring.

Tags: books, science, science-fiction

This past week, I got hold of a copy of Stan Schmidt's new book, "The Coming Convergence," and I'm delighted to recommend it to others.

Just to remind those of you who might not remember, Stan is the editor of Analog magazine and therefore the editor who has published most of my stories. He's also writing an introduction to my book, "I Remember the Future." As editor of Analog, Stan has had a chance to see a lot of other writers imagine the future, but he's also a writer who has done his own share of imagining where current trends might lead. And he's done this before, in both his fiction and nonfiction.

In this case, the convergence he refers to in the title of the book is the convergence of technologies. Stan points out that a lot of technologies that originally seemed unrelated ended up working together to create something new. A few examples include the Internet and 3-D medical imaging. Stan looks at the way technologies converged in the past to speculate on how they will converge in the future; throughout the book, he explores subjects like biotechnology and nanotechnology, and he posits a variety of "metaconvergences" that will lead to dramatic changes.

If you're a science fiction writer like me, I suspect you'll come up with a lot of neat ideas for stories from reading the book. And even if you're not a writer, I think you'll find the book thought-provoking. We're going to be living in the future Stan describes, and reading his book is a good way to prepare yourself for it.

Tags: books, science, science-fiction

Friends,

I'm pleased to announce that Apex Books is now ready to take pre-orders for "I Remember the Future: The Award-Nominated Stories of Michael A. Burstein," which will be published in September. The book can be pre-ordered on the Apex Books website catalog at its own URL (http://www.apexbookcompany.com/cart.php?m=product_detail&p=30). You can pre-order either the hardcover or trade paperback edition, and although the paperback is slightly cheaper, I can give you two good reasons to order the hardcover.

First, all pre-ordered hardcover copies of the book will be autographed. If you want one of the original autographed copies of the book, that will be the only way to get one.

But second, we decided to sweeten the pot a little for those of you willing to step up to the plate early and order a hardcover copy of the book. And so we are announcing the "I Remember the Future" Tuckerization contest.

Everyone who pre-orders a hardcover copy of the book by June 15 will be entered into a raffle. Two lucky winners will have their names used as names of characters in the two new stories, "Empty Spaces" and "I Remember the Future."

For those of you who have never heard of Tuckerization, it means the naming of characters in stories for real people. The tradition is credited to Wilson Tucker, who named many of the characters in his books for his friends. More information on the practice can be found at the Wikipedia page on Tuckerization (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuckerization).

So...think about it. If you pre-order the hardcover book by June 15, not only are you guaranteed to receive an autographed copy of the first bound collection of my fiction, including two brand-new stories and afterwords for each story, but you'll also have a chance to have a character in a story named after you. (You can still pre-order the autographed hardcover after June 15, but the contest deadline is June 15.)

Pre-order "I Remember the Future: The Award-Nominated Stories of Michael A. Burstein

Tags: announcements, books, i remember the future, personal, science-fiction

For those of you helped me out when I was trying to determine a final Table of Contents for "I Remember the Future," thank you. Apex Books has posted the ToC on their blog at Apex Book Company » Final ToC for “I Remember the Future”. I repost it here:

“Kaddish for the Last Survivor” (Analog, November 2000)
“TeleAbsence” (Analog, July 1995)
“TelePresence” (Analog, July/August 2005)
“Broken Symmetry” (Analog, February 1997)
“Absent Friends” (Analog, September 1998)
“Reality Check” (Analog, November 1999)
“Empty Spaces” (original to the book)
“Spaceships” (Analog, June 2001)
“Decisions” (Analog, January/February 2004)
“Time Ablaze” (Analog, June 2004)
“Seventy-Five Years” (Analog, January/February 2005)
“Sanctuary” (Analog, September 2005)
“I Remember the Future” (original to the book)
“Cosmic Corkscrew” (Analog, June 1998)
“Paying It Forward” (Analog, September 2003)

There is a possibility that I might switch the order of the stories "I Remember the Future" and "Paying It Forward," but for the moment, the order you see above is the one I expect to use.

My reasoning is as follows. I'm opening with my most well-known and highly regarded story, then following with my first published story and its sequel, which appeared exactly ten years later. The four "Broken Symmetry" stories come next. followed by four "unthemed" stories in chronological order.

The last three are recursive science fiction stories, that is, science fiction stories about science fiction. In particular, they're stories about science fiction writers.

Each story will have an afterword; and Apex Book is going to start taking pre-orders in just two weeks, on April 7th. Furthermore, there'll be a little surprise in store for those of you who choose to pre-order the hardcover, which I'll announce in two weeks time.

Tags: books, i remember the future, personal, science-fiction

So, as most of you are probably already aware, Apex Books will be publishing my short story collection I Remember the Future: The Award-Nominated Stories of Michael A. Burstein in September. The cover has already been put together; my new user icon is a miniature version of the cover, which I'll probably try to use for book-related posts.

Pretty soon, we're going to have an announcement about pre-ordering the book, including a special possibility for people who pre-order the autographed hardcover edition. In the meantime, though, I've been thinking about some of the mechanics of the book, and I thought I'd throw out my question to the world and see if anyone wanted to share their thoughts.

The book will consist of 15 stories, thirteen previously published ones and two new ones. Here's the list, in chronological order:

1. "TeleAbsence" (Analog, July 1995)
2. "Broken Symmetry" (Analog, February 1997)
3. "Cosmic Corkscrew" (Analog, June 1998)
4. "Absent Friends" (Analog, September 1998)
5. "Reality Check" (Analog, November 1999)
6. "Kaddish for the Last Survivor" (Analog, November 2000)
7. "Spaceships" (Analog, June 2001)
8. "Paying It Forward" (Analog, September 2003)
9. "Decisions" (Analog, January/February 2004)
10. "Time Ablaze" (Analog, June 2004)
11. "Seventy-Five Years" (Analog, January/February 2005)
12. "TelePresence" (Analog, July/August 2005)
13. "Sanctuary" (Analog, September 2005)
14. Empty Spaces (original to the book)
15. I Remember the Future (original to the book)

Now here's the question. How should I order the stories?

One school of thought suggests that I should set the Table of Contents to be chronological. That way, people reading the book from beginning to end could track my growth (or possible lack thereof) as a writer.

But another school of thought suggests grouping the stories more thematically. For example, "Empty Spaces" is the fourth story in the "Broken Symmetry" series, and it might make sense to place it directly after "Absent Friends" and "Reality Check" (and to move "Cosmic Corkscrew"). And how should I open and end the book? I could bookend the collection with "TeleAbsence" and "TelePresence," since they are a story and a sequel that represent my first ten years in Analog. Or I could open the book with "Kaddish for the Last Survivor" and close with "Paying It Forward," which seem to be my most popular stories.

At the moment, I'm leaning towards keeping the chronological order, especially since I'm writing an original Afterword for each story. But the thematic grouping calls to me as well.

Tags: books, i remember the future, personal, science-fiction

As promised, here are some of the answers to questions people have asked me about "I Remember the Future: The Award-Nominated Stories of Michael A. Burstein" (Apex Books, September 2008). Note that the answers to any and all of these questions are subject to change.

When is the book scheduled to be released?

September 2008.

What will the book contain?

The book will include all twelve of my stories that were nominated for the Hugo and Nebula Awards; "Absent Friends," which was not nominated for either award but is part of the "Broken Symmetry" series; and two new stories: "Empty Spaces," which is the fourth story in the "Broken Symmetry" series, and "I Remember the Future." It's a total of 15 stories at about 130,000 words.

Wow! That's a big book.

Thanks, but that's not a question.

Will there be a hardcover edition?

The current plans are for a simultaneous release in a hardcover and a trade paperback edition.

How much will the book cost?

No idea at this point.

Where can I order it from?

The book will be available from all the usual sources. If you're in the Boston area, it should be available from Pandemonium and Brookline Booksmith as well as the chain stores. The book will also be listed at Amazon. And Apex Publications will be taking direct pre-orders on their website, at http://www.apexbookcompany.com.

How can I get it autographed?

Aha! If Apex follows their usual procedure, all hardcover copies that are pre-ordered from their website will come pre-autographed. You'll even be able to request personalization of the signature by contacting me.

The trade paperback edition will not come pre-signed; however, I plan to schedule autograph sessions at conventions throughout 2009.

I don't want to buy a copy of the book, but I do want to read the two new stories you've written. Will you send them to me?

Um, no. The point of including two new stories is to encourage people to buy the book.

What if either of those stories gets nominated for the Hugo or Nebula?

Talk to me then. :-)

Will the book include any of your essays?

The book will not include any of my essays. However, for those of you interested in the writing process, I do plan on writing a brand-new afterword for each story.

Who are you dedicating the book to?

My parents.

Will I be in your Acknowledgments?

That depends. Are you Stanley Schmidt, Jennifer Pelland, Bob Eggleton, Andrew Greene, Jason Sizemore, or Nomi? If so, yes. If not, convince me you belong. :-)

Seriously, though, it's hard for me to remember all the people whose help I want to acknowledge, given that we're talking about a time period of over a decade. If anyone reading this remembers my mentioning anyone who played a vital role in helping me develop some of the stories in the book, please let me know. (I'll also do my best to acknowledge people in the various afterwords who helped with specific stories.)

Are the stories any good?

The stories in this book are the best stories ever written in the universe, bar none. (Seriously, what kind of question is that? I think they're pretty good, and obviously a bunch of other people agreed, or else they wouldn't be my award-nominated stories. Also, I've got a few writers lined up to provide the book with blurbs; if you don't trust me, trust them.)

OK, I'm convinced. I want to buy the book when it comes out, but I'm afraid I might forget about it between now and September.

If you keep reading here regularly, there'll be plenty of reminders, don't worry. Or, if you haven't yet, you might consider signing up for my yahoo mailing list at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mabfan/ . It's for announcements only, and I promise it won't clutter your mailbox.

Tags: announcements, books, i remember the future, personal, science-fiction, writing

First of all, I would like to thank everyone for their birthday wishes and their congratulations.

Secondly, I've already had a bunch of people ask me questions about the book, in both email and on LiveJournal. Rather than try to answer those questions individually, I plan to post a FAQ about the book here sometime tomorrow. So consider this a request for questions: if you have one, post it here and I'll do my best to answer it.

As for some of the ones I've already received: the book will have simultaneous hardcover and trade paperback editions, it will be possible to pre-order the book directly from Apex, and it will be available in bookstores as well.

Any other questions? Here's the place, now's the time.

Tags: books, i remember the future, personal, stories, writing

For release February 27, 2008

Apex Publications and award-winning writer Michael A. Burstein are pleased to announce that in September 2008, Apex will be publishing the book "I Remember the Future: The Award-Nominated Stories of Michael A. Burstein."

"I Remember The Future" will be the first bound collection of Burstein's fiction. It will contain all of Burstein's Hugo and Nebula nominated stories, plus two new stories: "Empty Spaces," the fourth, never-before-published story in the "Broken Symmetry" series; and "I Remember the Future," which lends its title to the collection. The book will contain Burstein's two most well-regarded stories, "Kaddish for the Last Survivor" and "Paying It Forward," as well as his two Analytical Laboratory Award winners, "TeleAbsence" and "Sanctuary."

The cover art will be a piece by Bob Eggleton that also served as the first ever cover art for a Burstein story. Stanley Schmidt, long-time editor of Analog magazine (where all of the reprinted stories in the collection first appeared), will provide an introduction.

Michael A. Burstein, winner of the John Campbell Award for Best New Writer, has been publishing award-nominated and award-winning science fiction stories since 1995. He has been nominated for the Hugo Award ten times and for the Nebula Award three times.

For more information on Apex Publications, see http://www.apexbookcompany.com. For more on Michael A. Burstein and his work, see http://www.mabfan.com.

Tags: announcements, books, i remember the future, personal, science-fiction, writing

There's an old saying: once is heresy, twice is tradition, three times is sacred tradition. With that thought in mind, welcome to my list of the top ten movies of 2007!

As you can remind yourself by clicking on the above links, Nomi and I don't usually manage to see a lot of new movies in the theatre in any given calendar year. In 2005, we saw only thirteen films, and in 2006, we only caught ten. And yet, I revel in the absurdity of making a top ten list based on such a small sample. So the magic number for 2007 was again thirteen, and out of those thirteen, here are what I consider the top ten films of the year.

[Warning: There might be minor spoilers in the discussion. If you want to be safe, just read the titles, which are in boldface.]

( Michael A. Burstein's Top Ten Movies of 2007 )

And the three that didn't make the list? Spider-Man 3, Shrek the Third, and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. Hm. The three movies that didn't make the list are all the second sequels to a previous film. Hollywood, I bet there's a lesson in there for you.

(ETA: I completely forgot that I went to see Transformers this year, sans Nomi. I frequently joked that it was the greatest movie ever made, but if I even forgot to mention it when I first posted this... well, I guess that tells us something about the impact that movie made.)

Tags: books, comics, movies, personal, politics, science-fiction, television

There's been a recent brouhaha bubbling up over with the Mystery Writers of America, and I thought it would be instructive to bring it to a wider audience, because it also points out something that I think that the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America do right.

Also, at the center of the storm is one of my best friends from high school, Charles Ardai, and I unabashedly feel like giving him even more publicity for his fantastic novel Songs of Innocence. So there.

The facts are these:

A few years ago, Charles co-founded a publishing company, Hard Case Crime, which has done a successful job of bringing back old pulp mystery novels and publishing brand new ones with the old pulp sensibilities. If you peruse the mystery section of any bookstore, you've probably seen their books, with the distinctive yellow ribbon on the upper left corner of the covers. Hard Case Crime has also been featured in many news stories; CBS News Sunday Morning did a piece on the company and on one of the artists from whom they were commissioning new cover paintings.

Charles is not only a publisher, but also a published author in the field of mystery and science fiction, whose first story, "The Long Day," appeared in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine when Charles was only 18 years old. His first novel, Little Girl Lost, was published in hardcover by Five Star, and then brought out in paperback by Hard Case Crime. Charles published it under the anagram pen name Richard Aleas (read the surname aloud if you don't get the joke) but never hid the fact that he himself was Aleas.

This year, Charles published a sequel to Little Girl Lost, the aforementioned novel Songs of Innocence. This time, rather than find a publisher to bring out a hardcover edition, Charles chose to bring it out directly in paperback from Hard Case Crime. I've read both books and found them powerful, well-written, and entertaining, and I wasn't surprised when Publishers Weekly chose Songs of Innocence as one of the 100 best novels of the year.

But because Charles brought out the book under his own publishing company, the MWA has ruled it ineligible for consideration for the Edgar Award. According to Lee Goldberg, who is the arbiter for this particular decision, the book is self-published and therefore ineligible for the award. Sarah Weinman brought this ruling to the attention of many more people on her blog, and the discussion on both Goldberg's and Weinman's blogs have been fascinating to read.

The MWA lays out its rules for Edgar eligibility at Edgar Award Information page. The key sentence, I presume, is the one that reads "While the author does not need to be a member of MWA, the work itself must make the author eligible for active status."

As a former officer of SFWA and someone who has served as chair of a Nebula awards jury for many years, I find this fascinating. Because with this one rule, the MWA has decided that Charles's novel cannot be considered for the Edgar, despite the fact that Charles is already an Edgar Award-winning author and that no one questions the quality of Songs of Innocence. Not only has the book been published by an actual, legitimate publisher, but it's garnering kudos from many critics, including, as I noted above, Publishers Weekly.

So why won't the MWA consider the book for the Edgar? Is it fair for them to deem it self-published and then rule it ineligible?

Well, I think they're half-right. Since Charles himself does co-own Hard Case Crime, I would probably agree that the book could be considered self-published. Even though this is a special case of a legitimate publisher bringing out the book, as opposed to Charles just printing copies on his own in his attic.

But just because the book might be considered self-published, why in the world would that render it ineligible for the Edgar? Why should Edgar eligibility be tied into the rules for membership eligibility?

Before I go further, let me note that I completely agree with both MWA and SFWA that self-published works should not be eligible criteria for membership. Both organizations exist to help professional writers, and "professional' has to be defined somehow. Furthermore, by creating a definition of what constitutes a professional publication, both organizations manage to have some influence on things like payment rates, which is to the benefit of the membership.

But when it comes to award criteria, why should it matter? Let's leave aside the fact that Charles, being an editor and publisher as well as a writer, is not going to publish a book that he thinks is of low quality or that will lose him money simply because he wrote it. If he writes something that he thinks is crap, he's going to bury it and never let it see the light of day. (Private message to Charles: I presume this is why I'm the only other person in the world who owns a copy of "The Dreams and Designs of Bartholomew Fitch"?)

But if someone who can't get a novel published decides to self-publish, and by a sheer fluke the novel happens to be brilliant, why shouldn't it be eligible for awards?

SFWA acknowledges this. If you check the SFWA Awards Rules and compare them to the SFWA Membership Requirements, you'll see that a work can be eligible for a Nebula even if it's not eligible as a credential for SFWA membership. Now, as far as I know it's never happened that a self-published work has made it to the final ballot, but I do recall a self-published work or two that made it to the preliminary ballot. SFWA acknowledges the possibility that quality might exist where MWA apparently does not.

So, while I can be pleased with SFWA and puzzled by the MWA, there's not much more I can do except encourage folks to pick up Charles's novel and see for yourself what the controversy is all about. I guarantee you'll have a great reading experience, if nothing else.

(If you're interested in reading more, Sarah Weinman's post about the controversy can be found at Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind: Is the MWA Going Too Far With Its Self-Published Definitions. Lee Goldberg's own post on the situation can be found at A Writer's Life: Playing Favorites II. Mediabistro weighed in at Mediaistro: Edgar-Winning Charles Ardai Ineligible for Edgar?. And finally, the New York Post even picked up the story for Page Six, at Case of the Conflicted Imprint.)

Tags: books, personal, sfwa