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Explore the backlist...

Keyboard Practice...

Visit F&SF on-line for print and electronic options.

The January 2005 issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction featured a novelette, Keyboard Practice, consisting of an Aria with diverse Variations for the Harpsichord with two Manuals. Set in a near-future with ubiquitous podcasting, the story chronicles a classical piano competition and borrows structural elements from from Bach's Goldberg Variations and American Idol. Oh, and there's an artificially intelligent piano, a canon, an NTSB transcript, and maybe — just maybe — a ghost.

This story was a finalst for the Sturgeon Award, appeared on the 2005 preliminary Nebula® ballot, and was a Locus Magazine recommended read. Have a peek here, or get it on-line. If you're a SFWA member, you can read it here.

Prefer audiobooks? You can now download it here. (It's a novelette, so even with good encoding, this two-hour clip is still about 60mb.)

You can read an interview with me on SciFiChannel.com: 'Keyboard' Channels Bach.

The Ashbazu Effect

Check it out at Amazon.com

A short story called The Ashbazu Effect appeared in the DAW Books anthology ReVisions in August, 2004. Edited by Julie Czerneda and Isaac Szpindel, ReVisions is a collection of alternate histories of technology, including stories by Cory Doctorow and Charles Stross, Mike Resnick, and Peter Watts.

Drawing on the work of media theorists Marshall McLuhan, Robert Logan, and Elizabeth Eisenstein, Ashbazu explores what might have happened if the printing press were invented somewhat earlier than 1456.

Read a sample here.

Uncle Buddy's Phantom Funhouse
One of the early hypertext novels published by Eastgate Systems, and reviewed in the New York Times, this work is currently available only for the Macintosh. However, work is progressing on an updated, Web-centric 2.0 version.
Read more »

Jigoku no mokushiroku
Winner of the 1996 Theodore Sturgeon Award for best sf short story, Jigoku has been translated into several languages. The title, which loosely means "the symbolic revelation of the Apocalyse" was suggested by the Japanese movie poster for Apocalypse Now

Read a sample here.

The Planes, a decoupled monomeric hypernarrative
Originally written as a series of lexia to be included in a collaborative hypertext in a special issue of the journal Writing On the Edge, the story is available on-line in a compilation of early hyperfictions.
Check it out in The New Media Reader »