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

Over the past few days I've discovered that I've been mentioned a few times in various places.

First of all, I am somewhat flabbergasted to discover that I'm mentioned in the latest edition of the Encyclopedia of American Jewish History. The editors of that encyclopedia had asked shsilver to write their article on "American Jews and Science Fiction," which runs from page 507-511 of volume 2. shsilver has given me permission to quote the relevant passage here:

Similarly, "Kaddish for the Last Survivor" (2000), Michael Burstein's tale of a Holocaust survivor's granddaughter who is struggling with issues of assimiliation, reflects on what it means to be Jewish, perhaps as no other story since William Tenn's "On Venus Have We Got a Rabbi" (1974).

While the Holocaust is often at the core of stories of wish fulfillment, it has also been used to highlight questions of Jewish identity. Burstein's "Kaddish for the Last Survivor" indicates that the Holocaust has created a new urgency in the maintenance of Jewish identity, for, if Jews forget who they are, the Nazis will have won.

Burstein's "Kaddish for the Last Survivor" and Carol Carr's "Look, You Think You've Got Troubles" (1974) both take a serious look at intermarriage, one of the major issues of American Jewish identity. Both address the issue of a Jewish woman marrying a non-Jewish man, and, although they come to very different conclusions, both reaffirm a sense of Jewish identity.

I've known for a while that I had a Wikipedia entry, but to be mentioned in a print encyclopedia...it boggles my mind.

My second mention has little to do with me and much more to do with someone else. Yesterday's Boston Globe ran an article, True Stories by Kathleen Burge, all about the Boston paramedic who writes the blog Other People's Emergencies: Random Thoughts of an Urban Paramedic. I've been interested in the work of paramedics and EMTs for a long time, since my older half-brother Danny worked for many years as a paramedic on the night shift out of Harlem Hospital. The Globe reporter noticed that I'd commented a few times in the Urban Paramedic blog, and so she contacted me to ask why I read the blog. Here's what I said:

"I keep being fascinated by his stories," said Michael A. Burstein, a writer and editor from Brookline who says he reads Urban Paramedic nearly every day. "I'm probably one of his many readers who thinks that some publisher out there ought to offer him a book contract immediately."

Finally, the most personal mention I've had recently was by a good friend, scarlettina, who just published a brilliant story called After This Life in the science fiction webzine InterGalactic Medicine Show. She comments on the story over on the associated webzine blog, at Side-Show Freaks: "After This Life" by Janna Silverstein, and she notes the following:

It was science fiction writer Michael Burstein who led me to reading more thoroughly about the theory behind real teleportation. If I was going to write science fiction, he insisted (and quite wisely), the science had to be there. Part of me rebelled; I just wanted to write the story, dammit, and not bother myself with all that pesky research. He was right, of course. The reading was fascinating. In the end, the horror of what I discovered—that every teleportation would be a death—took me that last step toward making this story what it ultimately became when I submitted it to IGMS. Edmund’s insightful revision requests made me think about who would be willing to sacrifice lives to develop such technology.

So, all in all, it's been a good day for my ego. :-)

Tags: boston, jewish, personal, science-fiction, writing, writing-advice

I originally hadn't planned to discuss my thoughts on the "One Day More" story line that just concluded in Amazing Spider-Man 545 a few weeks ago, for two reasons. First of all, I didn't think anyone would be interested in my opinion. And secondly, I presumed that there would be so much discussion in the blogosphere that any of the points I might make would have been made already.

As it happens, though, I've actually been asked for my opinion, since I'm not just a reader of Spider-Man, but someone who grew up in Forest Hills, just like Peter did (cf. my essay "The Friendly Neighborhood of Peter Parker" in the book Webslinger). And as I ruminated over the story, I realized that my thoughts on the story go deeper and further than just this one story itself, into the realm of general thoughts on serialized fiction.

So even if you don't read comic books, or don't care about the adventures of Spider-Man, I think you might find something interesting in here about the writing of franchised characters and the writing of fiction in general. Because I also bring into the discussion Stephen King, William Goldman, and the TV shows Lost and Gilmore Girls. Read on, or just cut to the end, which is a good bit and has Marvin in it. (Well, to be honest, Marvin doesn't appear at the end. But I do reveal if I plan to keep reading Spider-Man.)

( What Would You Do If You Only Had One More Day? )

Finally, for those of you who didn't read through all my pondering, the answer to your question is yes, I will continue to read Amazing Spider-Man for the foreseeable future. I may not be happy about this current development, but I still want to keep up with the life of Peter Parker.

Tags: comics, movies, science-fiction, television, writing

Last summer, I had the opportunity to teach for one day at the Odyssey science fiction and fantasy writing workshop run by Jeanne Cavelos. At the time, Jeanne asked if they could tape part of my interaction with the students for an eventual podcast release, and I was delighted to say yes.

I'm pleased to note that my podcast, which is all about the plot skeleton, has now been released. Here's the description of the podcast:

Michael A. Burstein was a guest lecturer at Odyssey in the summer of 2007. Michael led the class in a lively question-and-answer session focused on the key ingredients of science fiction and fantasy and shared his experiences as a writer of short fiction. In this podcast, Michael explores plot and describes the plot skeleton. What is the appeal of an "unplotted" story? What are the advantages of a "plotted" story, and specifically of a story that uses the plot skeleton? Why is this basic construction so powerful? Michael leads you step by step through the plot skeleton, beginning with a character in a context with a problem and building as the character struggles to solve the problem. Michael also discusses how to make the reader care and how a character's reaction to a problem reveals his nature.

The podcast is about 15 minutes long, and if you want to learn a little something about plotting – or just how I do plotting – you might find the podcast of interest.

You can download the podcast at Odyssey Podcast #11: Michael A. Burstein on the Plot Skeleton.

Or, if you want to check out all the Odyssey Podcasts, which includes advice on writing from Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Robert J. Sawyer, and many others.

Tags: announcements, science-fiction, writing, writing-advice

Those of us who enjoy television shows and movies as more than casual entertainments are probably all aware that the Writers Guild of America has gone on strike today. The last time this happened, in 1988, the strike lasted five months and killed a lot of TV shows. (I myself bemoaned the loss of Probe, a new show that broadcast perhaps five episodes before the strike brought it to an end.)

Almost anyone who knows me is aware of the fact that I am a strong supporter of unions. I remember my father going on strike in the 1970s when I was a little kid, and how my family went for much of a year not knowing how it would turn out. But Dad stuck to his principles that the writers and editors of the Newspaper Guild deserved more than management wanted to give them. My father died in the strike offices of the Newspaper Guild seventeen years ago last Friday; it's not hard to see that I come by my support of unions honestly.

So it should not come as a surprise to anyone that I support the writers in their strike and hope that they succeed in negotiating a new, fairer contract.

However...

It may be perverse of me to say this, but in some ways I wouldn't mind seeing a long, drawn-out, protracted strike. It would give me a chance to catch up on both my reading and older entertainment options. Nomi and I have been watching old episodes of Doctor Who, and we're still in the middle of the DVD set of the series "The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr." We missed Veronica Mars during its three years of broadcast and have been meaning to catch up with it (again, via DVDs). It has not escaped my notice that the simple fact we have old TV shows and movies on DVD as an option to fill the empty hours of programming buttresses the WGA's arguments that their members deserve a share of residuals for the new media.

Of course, in the end what I hope for will have little, if any, effect on the final outcome. But if it weren't for the strike, we wouldn't have paragraphs such as this one, from the New York Times article "Screenwriters Picket as Strike Begins" by David Carr and Michael Cieply, describing the picket line outside Rockefeller Center in New York City today:

All of the trappings of a union protest were there — signs, chanting workers, an inflatable rat, and a discarded bag of wrappers and cups from Dunkin Donuts. The rat was borrowed from Local 79, an AFL-CIO laborers’ union, and commuted in from Queens.

I just wish they had published a photo of the inflatable rat.

Tags: movies, personal, television, writing

jimhines, editor of the upcoming anthology Heroes in Training, has been profiling the authors in the book once a week on his blog. I'm the author featured today, and if you want to read what I had to say about "The Wizard's Legacy," click here.


If you want to see all of the profiles he's done so far, plus information on the book, just click on http://jimhines.livejournal.com/tag/heroes+in+training.

Tags: books, personal, science-fiction, writing

It's posts like this one -- TexasBestGrok: Paying the Debt -- about my story "Paying It Forward" that keep me going:

...Burstein writes a tender little story of the relationship between a caring mentor and an attentive student. Highly recommended.

Tags: personal, science-fiction, stories, writing

It seems my fate in life to collaborate with linear writers, when I myself write in a nonlinear fashion.

As Bob Greenberger has noted in his latest blog post, The Floor Is Now Open, he and I have begun work on the "Things That Aren't" sequel. And, as he also noted, I've sent him some chunks of the first draft, which show him just how differently I write from him.

As I think I've mentioned before, I tend to be a nonlinear writer. From a practical standpoint, that means that when I sit down to write another, say, 500 words of a story, I don't start at the beginning and go to the end. I bounce around the document, writing bits and pieces of dialogue, description, and other stuff beginning with d. My drafts-in-progress are sprinkled with asterisks to mark places where I need to add more words, and notes to myself like "FIX THIS" and "CHARACTER NAME NEEDED." (As an aside, I learned to do this from studying one of John Kessel's manuscripts-in-progress at Clarion, so thanks, John, for helping me free my creativity like that. And I'd also like to thank the inventor of the word processor. This method of writing would be almost impossible on a typewriter.) I work this way until I've filled my word quota, and then I stop and switch to another project.

While Bob didn't state this explicitly in his post, he's more of a linear writer, so looking at what I've written is an interesting experience for him. The chunks I sent him are all in one document, so it's not like I've made it clear which scene is which. And yet, he still can see where the connections will be made. Eventually.

I'm reminded of the other significant collaboration I did, with Shane Tourtellotte, on a novella called "Bug Out!" (Analog, July/August 2001). Shane is most definitely a linear writer; he starts from the beginning of a story and keeps writing until he reaches the end. We had to figure out how we would put the story together, and in the end we came up with a workable method. We started with an outline, which we tossed back and forth until we had a plot document that described every scene. Then we divided the outline up. I took the odd-numbered scenes, and he took the even-numbered scenes (or maybe it was the other way around; it doesn't matter). And then we wrote. This way, he could start from his first scene and write all the way to the end of his last scene, and I could bounce around among the scenes as I wished. When we were done, we swapped the scenes. He rewrote mine, I rewrote his, and we did this once or twice more until the story was done.

Oddly enough, this worked out even better than we expected. For example, in one scene I was writing, I realized that I needed something to exist in the story which had to be set up in one of Shane's scenes. I wrote it in and figured I would add it when I got Shane's scenes to rewrite. Much to my surprise and delight, Shane had also figured that we needed this thing to exist, and he had set it up exactly where we needed it.

Bob and I are handling the sequel to "Things That Aren't" a little differently. We're essentially using the same method that we used for the original. I'm writing a first draft of the story, in my usual nonlinear way, and when it's finished I'll pass it to Bob. Bob, in turn, will rewrite the draft, adding all those things that I will probably leave out. (Like character, conflict, and plot. You know, minor things like that.) Then I'll take it back and probably yell and scream at him for all his changes to my deathless prose. No, but seriously, I'll make other changes, we'll make compromises on those things we disagree on, and then we'll send the new story to Analog, where it'll get the cover and be nominated for a few awards. (Or not, but writers like to dream.)

So, if you'll excuse me, I need to get back to work.

Tags: personal, science-fiction, writing, writing-advice