SHINE podcast: ” Castoff World”

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An anthology of optimistic, near future SF

SHINE podcast: ” Castoff World”

November 15, 2010 at 11:59 pm · Filed under SHINE podcast, Uncategorized and tagged: SHINE podcast

As some of you may have noticed through io9, here is the wonderfully narrated podcast—by the phenomenal Kate Baker—of Kay Kenyon’s “Castoff World”.

Read the full story at io9.

Podcast:

Castoff World mp3

Enjoy!

Picture credits:

Dead Bird Plastic : via Naked Man in the Tree;
Garbage Patch: via Lindsay Hoshaw;

Kay Kenyon’s latest work, published by Pyr, is a sci-fantasy quartet beginning with Bright of the Sky, a story that introduced readers to the Entire, a tunnel universe next door. Publishers Weekly listed this novel among the top 150 books of 2007. The series has twice been shortlisted for the American Library Association Reading List awards. The final volume, Prince of Storms will appear in January 2010. Her work has been nominated for major awards in the field and translated into French, Russian, Spanish, Czech and audio versions. Recent short stories appeared in Fast Forward 2 and The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction, Volume Two. She lives in eastern Washington state with her husband. She is the chair of a writing conference, Write on the River, and is currently working on a fantasy novel. All of her work has happy endings, except for those with characters who, alas, must die.

Also, check out the exclusive interview Charles A. Tan did with her at SF Signal.

Review Quotes:

Kay Kenyon’s fantastic Castoff World chronicles the life of Child, a young girl whose entire existence has been spent on a garbage island adrift in the ocean. Her only companionship is a sickly grandfather and something she calls Nora — a Nanobotic Oceanic Refuse Accumulator that has continued its mission of collecting pollutants from the water, breaking them down, and transforming them into “good stuff.”

—Explorations: the Barnes & Noble SciFi and Fantasy Blog;

Likewise the events of the touching Castoff World by Kay Kenyon are restricted to a tiny stage — a makeshift Pacific raft — that nonetheless serves as an effective microcosm of broader ecological concerns.

—New Scientist;

Kay Kenyon’s wonderful story Castoff World of a young girl’s life aboard a floating reclamation centre;

—Catherine Hughes;

Castoff World by Kay Kenyon has an amazing dreamlike feel to it. It’s about a girl, her Grappa (older grandfather figure) and a boat called Nora drifting on the ocean. It’s about truth and having to fend for yourself. It’s a bit Big Blue in its feel and the ending made me well up and sigh that Child will now no longer be alone. Beautiful.

—SF Revu;

The last story I want to mention is Kay Kenyon’s Castoff World. The story is about Child and her Grappa floating around on a barge originally intended to clean up the Ocean of pollutants like plastics. The barge has long since lost contact with the people who designed and ran it and it is now floating freely on a dangerous ocean, collecting ever more rubbish. We see the story from Child’s perspective. It’s a very touching story, I particularly liked the subtle presence of artificial intelligence. Beautifully written. This one is probably my favourite in the entire collection.

—Val’s Random Comments;

A story about the “friendship” between the orphan Child and Nora, a “Nanobotic Oceanic Refuse Accumulator” aka “an ocean garbage eating artificial island” which is Child’s only known home. While a bit too short, this story hearkens back to the traditional lost in the world adventure and it’s wonderful.

—Fantasy Book Critic;

An interactive Google Map of story locations from the SHINE anthology:

US:

UK:

ELECTRONIC:

Independents:

Canada:

Germany:

India:

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OUTSHINE submission guidelines

OUTSHINE is A Twitterzine for optimistic, near future prose poems. They’re flash length, and look ahead: why not call them flashforwards?

What I’m looking for: prose poems of optimistic, near future SF that fit within the ‘tweet’ limits (check out Twitter); i.e. maximum 140 characters long.

prose poem: what the heck is that? Well, anything you think it is. Write what you believe fits the bill and let the editor sort it out. Don’t limit yourself and feel free to push the boundaries, like, e.g.:

--> Haiku –- written like this: Maybe a haiku/there in the twitterverse/would appear like this;

--> Prose rife with poetic elements both formal — such as rhyme, alliteration (which is easy to overdo!) and meter — and thematic such as syntax, tone and reference (images, symbols & metaphors);

--> Imbue it with a certain rhythm and a unique voice;

--> I’ll look at actual poetry, too (the boundary will be blurry, anyway);

optimistic: anything with an (eventual) positive attitude or upbeat tone;

near future: from next year up to about fifty years later;

SF: ditto as in prose poem: write what you believe fits the bill and let the editor sort it out;

One submission per person per week: I’ll be publishing one prose poem per week, and will be checking the submissions once a week. Don’t feel limited: this means you can submit up to 52 prose poems a year. I prefer people submitting their best rather than people submitting at will then hoping something will stick.

Submit by email to shineanthology@gmail.com , in the body of the email (and yes: anything longer than 140 characters will be rejected: this is, after all, for Twitter);

Payment: 5 dollars per prose poem, payable through PayPal (don’t have a PayPal account? Either get one, or don’t submit), on publication.

Accepted prose poems will be published once a week on Wednesday on Twitter, here: OUTSHINE!

Bio: a biography with author name will follow the published prose poem almost immediately. Bio must be shorter than 136 characters (as bio- will precede the actual biography). Hint: use a tinyurl to link to your website/blog/LJ or to your FaceBook/MySpace/Twitter account.

UPDATE 2: I have received a question about the rights @outshine is asking. Well, so far, none: I accepted tweets from submitters, published them on Twitter, and republished them on both the Shine and DayBreak Magazine websites. Otherwise, submitters are -- as far as I'm concerned -- free to republish their tweets (OK: 'prose poems') anywhere, anytime, and the rights revert to them rightaway. Why? Well, the moment someone likes a particular message on Twitter, it is 'retweeted' -- a tweet starting with 'RT @ XXX', where XXX is the source. It is *the* common practice on Twitter, and as a Twitterzine publisher I can either state that people are not allowed to retweet @outshine's prose poems -- which obviously won't work and is also counterproductive -- or just let Twitter be Twitter.

Therefore I never asked for rights, or sent out an actual contract. Sorry about that, but even as the highest paying Twitter market -- to the best of my knowledge, and do absolutely feel free to point me to a market that pays more than $5 a tweet: I'd be tempted to submit, myself -- I simply don't feel the need to put up a contract, define rights, and go through all the paperwork: even $5 a tweet isn't worth my time on that.

But after almost a year I did get the question, so here's my answer: I want *exclusive* Twitter rights for 6 weeks -- hey, gotta drive a hard bargain -- or the first retweet, whichever comes first (obviously, if you retweet your own submission, you've just liberated your own tweet, congratulations: it never happened before...;-). Otherwise, I want the *non-exclusive* rights to reprint your tweet at both the Shine website and the DayBreak Magazine website -- things I've been doing for over six months already, sorry about that, but I just assume you want your pieces to be read as widely as possible, and assuming the average word is 6 characters, then including spaces [which Twitter does], I'm paying about 25 cents a word, which is in line with the top paying online markets like Tor.com and Subterranean Press. Only difference is that I am open to unsollicited submissions...;-).

SHINE anthology guidelines

SHINE is an anthology of optimistic near-future SF, edited by Jetse de Vries, published by Solaris Books, and is planned for an early 2010 release.

Keywords:

Convincing and optimistic: Imagine that we are the biggest skeptics on the planet, then show us how things can change for the better, and persuade us.

Near-future: from now until 50 years later.

SF: we're not going to define it. Write what you think is SF, and convince us with the story.

The Gritty:

Length: up to 10k words (not hard, but anything longer than 10k should be mind-blowingly superb).

Payment: 5 cents a word, on publication (and probably a pro rata share of the anthologist's earnings: I'm working on that).

Genres: science fiction only. I greatly prefer original stories, but I will -- like Baen's Universe -- look at stories that have been published in markets that are not professional by SFWA standards, or markets with a relatively small reach. I also consider Interzone, Black Static, Postscripts, Futurismic, Apex Digest and Flurb to be either professional markets or markets with a wide reach (or both), so don't want to see stories published by them, either.

Rights: First World English Rights, non-exclusive world anthology rights, non-exclusive audio anthology rights, and further subsidiary rights specified in my boilerplate [author-anthologist contract], which I'll put up after I return from World Fantasy. NOTE: obviously, for eventual reprints the first world rights will become anthology rights, first if possible.

Reading Period: May, June and July 2009. (UPDATE: reading period extended until August 1)

Response Time: Most rejections will be sent out quickly, while I will hold over stories that I like until July 31, when a final decision is made. No multiple submissions, please: only one story per author, and only submit a second one if I expressly ask for it. Simultaneous submissions: at your own discretion, but keep in mind that I will not fight over a story, that is, if it's with another publisher I will drop it like a ton of bricks.

Submissions Instructions: send your story, preferably single-spaced and in rich text format (RTF) to shineanthology@gmail.com. Put Submission: "Title of your story" in the email's subject line.

Submission tips: Things to keep in mind when writing a story for Shine & An update on the Shine submissions, part 1.

About:

STATUS FROM OCTOBER 1 ONWARD:

The Shine anthology is a print anthology for Solaris Books, and is now closed to unsolicited submissions. Shine has been released in the US on March 30, and will be released in the UK on April 15.

Contact the editor at shineanthology@gmail.com.

Review quotes:

That’s why Shine is such a significant — dare I say, historic — anthology.

—Explorations: the Barnes & Noble SciFi and Fantasy Blog;

Overall, Shine is utterly worth reading.

—SciFi Wire;

It is to de Vries’ credit that all but the most hard-hearted of sci-fi readers should find their own brand of optimism represented somewhere among Shine’s array of bright futures.

—New Scientist;

But if we are to have some some influence over how that change unfolds, isn’t it important that our stories, whether they be in the news, on television screens or in the pages of science fiction novels, fully explore the optimistic possibilities that technology represents?

—The Guardian;

[...] Shine was a truly fascinating and enjoyable read. [...] because this one has genuinely broken down some preconceived ideas I’ve had about the genre.

—SF Revu;

For an anthology with a very tight remit — optimistic near-future science fiction — there is a huge variety in the stories themselves. It occurs to me that this book is the perfect introduction to SF for readers who wouldn’t normally venture into the genre.

—Catherine Hughes;

The diversity of the stories and the consistently high quality of this collection is testament to his passion for this project. [...] A shining example of what positive thinking can achieve.

—Val’s Random Comments;

Starting Friday October 16, 2009, DayBreak Magazine and DayBreak Magazine 2 have been launched (two faces of the same outlet): DayBreak Magazine will feature a positive, forward-looking story every second Friday until the print Shine anthology is released, or possibly even a bit beyond that date.

OUTSHINE is a picowebzine on Twitter that I set up for fun and as a way for both writers and readers to get a feel for what might be coming in the Shine anthology. OUTSHINE is open to submissions — that is prose poem tweets of 140 characters (incuding spaces), or less — until further notice. Feel free to submit!

	Science Fiction: Hav… on Why I Can’t Write a Near…
	Athena Andreadis on Intimations of Immortality: Ar…
	Tweets that mention… on Intimations of Immortality: Ar…
	Kathryn Cramer on Utopia: A Vindication?
	Athena Andreadis on Utopia: A Vindication?
	shineanthology on Should SF Die?
	Sven Damgaard Ørnstr… on Should SF Die?
	Body Pillow · on Optimism in literature around…
	P. Fitzpatrick on Should SF Die?
	Sheila Newton on The Week in Tweet, Week 4…
	Dylan Fox on The Elephant in the Room: a…
	New podcasted story:… on SHINE Podcast: “The Soln…
	Anil Menon on The Lost SHINE Interview: Lavi…
	The Lost Shine Inter… on The Lost SHINE Interview: Lavi…
	SHINE Reviews, part… on SHINE reviews, part 2: The Goo…

M	T	W	T	F	S	S
1	2	3	4	5	6	7
8	9	10	11	12	13	14
15	16	17	18	19	20	21
22	23	24	25	26	27	28
29	30

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