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“Weird Fruits” wins the Marooned Award/ “Droidtown Blues” available online

Ben Bova’s Mars Life wins the Marooned Award for best Mars novel, Gustavo Bondoni’s “The Elcano Syndrome” wins best Mars flash, and “Weird Fruits” wins best Mars short story!
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Here’s a snippet from the site: “…one of the least known stories of the year and the winner of the 2008 Marooned Award for Best Short Story: “Weird Fruits,” by Camille Alexa. […] Alexa shows a more serious side in “Weird Fruits,” a dehumanizing work of dark speculative fiction. More Bradbury than Bova or Burroughs, “Weird Fruits” grows from the ash of a volcanic eruption on Mars into an earthen tale about the rotten fate of humanity.”
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I’m overwhelmed (and pleased somethin’ fierce) by the Bradbury comparison. If you’d like to purchase the download from SpecFicWorld, it’s here. Otherwise you’ll just have to read it in my collection, Push of the Sky, forthcoming from Hadley Rille Books.
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Would this be a good time to mention “Droidtown Blues” went live over at SpaceWesterns.com last week? “Droidtown Blues” is a sequel to “The Clone-Wrangler’s Bride,” the most-read story of all time at the site.

[. . .] When the time came;
when everyone had to choose, to say:
Do I go or do I stay
here
on a dying world with smoke-choked skies,
degrees of highs and lows borne only
through the wonders of technology?
      When that time came,
I thought of you.  [. . .]
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Read my poem “Virgin Soil” in its entirely right now in OG’s Speculative Fiction #15.
Of course if you really, really love it, or would like to support a speculative fiction venue that pays its poets, you should buy it here.

Optimistic Sci-Fi Night!

I feel duty bound to report I’ll be reading tomorrow with the illustrious likes of Jessica Reisman, Don Webb, Stina Leicht, and the cast and crew of Space Squid. If you’re in the Austin area (or can get here between 4 pm and 8 pm tomorrow), meet us all at a place I’ve never heard of that moves 2,000 books per day, Frugal Media (5400 N. Lamar in Austin, Texas). Tasty refreshments* have been promised, and also optimistic SF/F. Knowing the local crowd I expect ‘optimistic’ to be interpreted broadly.

 

*FREE BEER!