Beyond Reality discussion

As there was a good quantity of positive feedback for the idea of reading the freely available 2010 Nebula Nominees in the Short Story category (relevant discussion can be found in this thread), I'm going to move forward and lay out a reading schedule for the next few months.

We have 6 nominated stories that are available to read for free on the web (out of 7 total nominees), and the Nebula winners are chosen on May 21 this year. That gives us March, April, and most of May to read through and discuss the nominees, make our own assessments and predictions, root for our favorites, etc. With 6 stories to read in 3 months, we have a convenient 2 per month, which suits our standard story format perfectly.

For simplicity's sake, I'm sorting the stories alphabetically by author's surname. We won't designate stories as Day 5 or Day 20, etc., but will have a single thread dedicated to each story. Discussion can be ongoing through to the awards ceremony (and after, for that matter, if anyone joins in late.) (I would love to do nested folders, but the Goodreads interface doesn't allow for that.)

Please use this thread for general discussion of the nominated stories and authors, speculation, predictions, cheerleading, etc., as well as for questions, comments, feedback on the discussion process in general, etc.

So, on to the schedule:

MARCH 2011
”Arvies” by Adam-Troy Castro (Lightspeed Magazine 8/10)
”How Interesting: A Tiny Man” by Harlan Ellison (Realms of Fantasy) Note: This story is no longer available for free as of April 5. More details are in a follow-up post below.


APRIL 2011
”The Green Book” by Amal El-Mohtar (Apex Magazine 11/1/10)
”Ponies” by Kij Johnson (Tor.com 1/17/10)
”I’m Alive, I Love You, I’ll See You in Reno” by Vylar Kaftan (Lightspeed Magazine 6/10)

MAY 2011
”Ghosts of New York” by Jennifer Pelland (Dark Faith)
"Conditional Love" by Felicity Shoulders (made available by author, originally published in Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine 1/10) - Also available in formats: Escape Pod podcast / ePub / PDF


Please note that "Conditional Love" by Felicity Shoulders (published in Azimov's Science Fiction Magazine 1/10) is the 7th nominee but as of this moment is not available for free online. I will update this information if that changes. UPDATE: The story is available as audio via Escape Pod podcast here, and the author stopped by below to let us know Asimov's will be making the story available to read online soon. When they do, we'll add it to our schedule, as well, and then we'll have the full roster of nominees! SECOND UPDATE: Felicity Shoulders posted her story online herself, as well as providing download links in ePub and PDF formats, so it's now available for discussion, as well! (Thanks, Felicity!) This necessitates a bit of a schedule change-up. Vylar Kaftan's story is quite short, so we will move it up to discuss in April, giving us room to include Felicity's story in May before the awards on the 21st.


The offical Nebula announcement and more information on the Nebula Awards can be found at SFWA.org.

PLEASE NOTE: Due to this being a themed read with a specific time frame (until the awards ceremony), please don't feel limited by our usual date-based format, i.e. story discussions opening on the 5th and 20th. The stories are only divided up by months to keep us a bit organized and not overwhelmed, and discussion can happen anytime for the month's stories.

Nicely done Candiss. Thanks!

Are we going to have separate sections to discuss each story? I just read Ponies and know the author has daughters to understand how they interact with each other.

Thanks for this. I've grabbed the stories and put them on my phone to read each month.

Candiss, I just noticed a free podcast audio download of "Conditional Love".

http://escapepod.org/2011/02/11/ep279...

That's awesome, thanks Chris!

Hi -- I'm the author of the seventh nominated story, "Conditional Love." Chris is quite right, there is an audio version available from Escape Pod. I thought I'd post to let you know Asimov's is planning to put the stories up for free on their website, too! It should be soon, and I'll let you guys know as soon as I know a date, and as soon as the story's up.

It's very cool that your group will be reading all of the stories!

--Felicity Shoulders

Also awesome. "Thanks Felicity!"

That's great. Thanks for letting us know, Felicity.

I went to those links above, but could not findd a free download. I'm on slow dialup so cant really explore the sites for a link.

Could someone post the direct download links please.

Thanks

Chris - Thanks for the link!

Felicity - Welcome! And thanks for the information. I'm happy Asimov's is going to make your story available to online readers. As soon as they do, I'll add it to our reading schedule, too.

Kernos - I don't know that there necessarily are "direct download" links. So far, I've only found the stories available online, not as files for download. If someone finds any of them available freely and legally in that fashion, I'll be glad to add links here.

I found the story text available at each of the links. I just did a copy and paste into Word and used that to create a file I could read on my eReader.

Kernos, so long as it isn't illegal, I can send them to you as either epub or mobi files if that helps.

I've gone ahead and posted my short story "Conditional Love" myself. You can read it online here or download it in PDF or ePub file format.

I think this is a great idea and I'll be here, even if I feel too self-conscious to discuss my fellow nominees' stories much!

Felicity, that is absolutely fantastic. Thank you so much. I've downloaded it and will add it to my phone to read.

Felicity - Thanks so much for making your story available (and available for download, too!)

I'm going to update the original post of this thread to let everyone know, and I'll have to tweak our discussion schedule a bit. The simple alphabetical system puts this story in May, but May is already a "short month", due to the Nebula Awards ceremony taking place May 21. So, I'm going to scoot Vylar Kaftan's entry up to be a third story discussion for April, because it's actually a very short story. That makes Felicity's story fit into May so people will have plenty of time to read and discuss. :)

Thanks :)

I was being stupid - I found the text. Thanks

Felicity wrote: "I've gone ahead and posted my short story "Conditional Love" myself. You can read it online here or download it in PDF or ePub file format."

Thank you!

Everyone - Please note that the Harlan Ellison story, "How Interesting: A Tiny Man" is no longer available online for free. Either the publisher or the author pulled it down and put up a link to buy a copy as soon as the official voting period for the Nebulas was over. However, none of the other stories/authors seem to be following suit, and from what I can see browsing over their archives, none of the other publications involved seem to have a habit of locking stories down. I'll update if anything changes.

Thanks for checking Candiss

A threat of a TROJAN virus popped up when I tried to open "Ghosts of New York" through the link above. It's the only nominee I have note read yet. I will try later to get to it another way (googling).

Nick wrote: "A threat of a TROJAN virus popped up when I tried to open "Ghosts of New York" through the link above. It's the only nominee I have note read yet. I will try later to get to it another way (googling)."

Huh? Well, that's perplexing. I don't get any similar threat notice when I go to that link, and I'm running both up-to-date anti-virus software and an anti-malware program. I wonder if something untoward managed to wind its way into that particular page somehow.

I'll look around for another place hosting that story, as well. Perhaps the author's own site has it?

Thanks for the heads-up, Nick.

Edit to add: Nope, the author links to that same url from her personal site.

Incidentally, discussion threads for May's stories will be up either later today or tomorrow morning.

Candiss wrote: "Nick wrote: "A threat of a TROJAN virus popped up when I tried to open "Ghosts of New York" through the link above. It's the only nominee I have note read yet. I will try later to get to it another..."

I have a strange anti-virus program. I thought it was probably being extra careful and preventing me from accessing what is surely to be a wonderful story. I'll find it another way.

Thanks for setting the whole thing up for us all Candiss, as I've really enjoyed these stories, which I'm sure I wouldn't have read otherwise.

Are we by any chance going to have our own poll to see which one of these seven stories was our favorite. Might be interesting to see how our views compare with the Nebula results. It would also give us a forum to argue the relative merits of our personal favourites if anyone wanted to.

I'd like to see how everyone would vote on the stories. I'm all for a poll.