My story “Truth is Like the Sun” about a non-binary trans popstar who performs a set from space and breaks the internet is out in this month’s Lightspeed Magazine. The issue also includes stories by Nancy Kress and Max Gladstone. Quick Sip Reviews had this to say about “Truth is Like the Sun”:

“Hopeful, a vision of a future where a trans person can find global acceptance and push real change, from inspiring others to push forward into space to spurring new ideas and norms surrounding gender and sexuality… [An] ambitious piece… [A] feeling of affirmation and hope even as other aspects of the world are difficult and broken… [A] shot of optimism in a sea of cynicism… [A] fascinating story… and one that plays with form and expectations so well, reaching for hope that I, too, want to believe in. It’s definitely a story to spend some time with!”

You can read the story for free on May 16, or purchase the issue to read it now.

One of the things I’ve discovered is that there are often no easy solutions to the multiplicity of injustices happening in the world, and the sheer enormity of the problems often makes me feel somewhat helpless. But one thing that I do (and I know it’s not a complete solution or maybe even a solution) is to do a small justice. Just do something good, whatever that might be, no matter the response I get or reward. Even better, if it’s anonymous and unknown. It’s the only way I know how to balance the many injustices I see. And I’m not naive enough to believe my little justice (if it even is a justice) will change the greater picture, will do anything to alter the course right for the rocks we as a species have set for ourselves. But it’s still, in my mind, a justice. And by that I mean it’s something positive for the world, something the world desperately needs, and so maybe, just maybe, my justice, and a thousand million other little justices all over the planet diminish, however slightly, the pervasive injustices committed hourly across this world. It may not amount to much, but it’s something.

Next Tuesday, I’ll be reading at NYRSF with Mercurio D. Rivera, with whom I wrote the novelette “The Walk to Distant Suns,” out in the current Analog Science Fiction & Fact. The reading will take place on March 5th at The Brooklyn Commons. Full details are available here.

Mercurio and I also have a blog post up on the Analog web site where we discuss how we fought violently worked swimmingly together in our collaborative novelette “The Walk to Distant Suns.” You can read that here.

Oh, and I finished my YA novel. But more to come later on that!

The cover for next month’s Analog Science Fiction & Fact has been revealed! The issue contains wormhole engineer immigration story I co-wrote with Mercurio D. Rivera, “The Walk to Distant Suns.” This is the first time either of us have appeared in the venerable magazine. I’m super excited!

Looking for something to listen to this weekend? You might want to listen to the latest Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast, where Rajan Khanna, Sara Lynn Michener, David Barr Kirtley and yours truly discuss the latest season of Doctor Who. Slight spoiler: we had a few nits, but overall we loved this new season and are excited to see where the showrunners take the new Doctor.

You can listen to the podcast here.

Hope you and yours had a happy New Year’s! We spent ours with close friends, ringing in the new year with much cheer and cheese. (And perhaps it was the cheese that prevented me from having too bad of a hangover the next morning.)

If you were busy over the holiday break, you might have missed the Geeks Guide to the Galaxy episode I participated in, reviewing the SyFy TV series Nightflyers, based on the George R.R. Martin novella of the same name. Erin Lindsey, Andrea Kail, myself, and host David Barr Kirtley discuss the show. And needless to say, we have opinions.

Here’s a quote from yours truly:

“The only way they can communicate with the [aliens] is by bringing along a psychic, which sounds perfectly reasonable, except the psychic is literally a psychopath—at least that’s how they present him from the get-go. And I’m like, ‘Why would they bring this completely unstable psychopath with them on this journey which is the last best hope of humanity? Can’t they find a more stable psychic?’ I didn’t quite get that. And then they bring him on board in this giant cage, and he looks through the window and messes with someone’s brain, so it’s like, ‘Well, what’s the point of the cage then?’ I don’t understand why they’re even locking him away if he can literally just ‘think outside the box’ and fry someone’s brain.”

You can listen to the full podcast here.