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Brief Announcement

My novella Missile Gap has just won the Locus award for best novella of 2006. (The entire thing is online here if you want to read it.)

I wasn't able to make it to Seattle for the award ceremony, so I asked Gardner Dozois to accept it on my behalf. Without him, this novella wouldn't have been written. He commissioned it for the anthology One Million AD. He's the one who kept badgering me to produce it when I was ready to throw in the towel; it wasn't an easy birth, and without his encouragement it wouldn't have made it out into the world. I'd also like to thank Bill Schaeffer of Subterranean Press for publishing it as a stand-alone novella. Finally, mad props to long-term fan and critic James Nicoll, who came up with the original insane setting — then kindly gave me permission to take his idea and run with it.

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26 Comments

1:

you would have been in seattle, darn. i would like to meet more sf writers, only seen john scalzi so far.

2:

Ian, from where I live -- Scotland -- it turns out that Seattle costs more to get to, takes longer to get to, and is near-as-dammit the same number of time zones away, as Tokyo. (The cost of the cheapest return flight I could find exceeded what I got paid for the novella.)

It'll have to be some other time ...

3:

Congrats on the award, you deserve it.

4:

Congratulations! It was crazy, in the most wonderful way.

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5:

Congrats Charlie!

James Nicoll deserves a round of applause for yet another contribution to SF. But wasn't the setting just a larger version of an Alderson Disk?

Speaking of the setting, what was in the middle of the disk? An Alderson disk has a bobbing sun in the middle, but reading the description of the "axle of heaven", I thought maybe they were seeing the gas jets of a black hole or a neutron star. Or I may have missed something reading.

6:

Michael: you guessed exactly right.

7:

My sincerest congratulations Charlie! :-) Any idea when it will come in paperback?

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8:

Also speaking of the setting: what kind of map projection did you have in mind ?

Andreas

9:

Funny old world. I just read "Missile Gap" yesterday, following the link to the online edition you provided way back in April. I loved it. It put me in mind of "A Colder War," obviously enough, which is probably one of my all-time favorite pieces of sub-novel-length fiction. And it beats a lot of novels, too.

Congratulations on the award.

10:

Zoid: when the next short story collection comes out. Almost certainly not before 2009.

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11:

Much-deserved congratulations!

12:

Andreas @8: I was thinking something like a Dymaxion projection, but with a much more fine-grained triangle mesh than Fuller used.

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13:

Well, damn. Congratulations! And, hey, think of it this way--you didn't have to deal with USCIS (otherwise known as "La Migra") and the TSA.

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14:

Congrats Charlie! That is awesome. My SO is now reading Missle Gap. I recently reread it after the amazing discussion here about it.

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15:

Congrats Charlie

I knew getting the 'numbered, signed, costs your soul' edition would be worth it :)

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16:

C.S., congrats. It's good to see that your work has earned this award. Now, please get back to work! Chop chop!

Jeff

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17:

I have copy #594--how many copies are their? And what lucky person got copy 523?

Jeff

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18:

OK pleading a bad brain day at work...523? What am I forgetting that makes this of significant importance?

Don't laugh to hard at me. Please.

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19:

Well, done - just finished "Glasshouse" - I lked some of the internal references, though I must have missed some.
Question, are some of the "Linebarger Cats" called, say: Melanie? Captain Wow? The Lady May?
And who, now, is fit to play the game of Rat and Dragon?

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20:

Serraphin @18: 5 and 23 are always showing up in occult stuff, at least that's what I've noticed. It could just as easily be copy 5 and 23, but I combined them. Granted, M.G. is not in the occult genre.

Jeff

21:

Congratulations, Charlie -- a well-deserved award. It was far and away my favourite story in the ONE MILLION antho. One must always listen to Gardner. Always!

Dario

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22:

Congratulations!

24:

Very good story. Too short, perhaps. (I think I would have liked to read a 500 page novel about the exploration of Maddy's continent. (Well, I know I would.))

Is it just me who think that the Maddy storyline has a 1930's feel about it, not a 1970's feel?
Anyways, great stuff. In some ways better than Accelerando.

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25:

Nice one, Sir Stross. I'm fast reading all your stuff (Four down, lots to go - Yeeehaa!) Haven't read this one yet, but I will soon. Considering the high level of your other works, I'm certain it will be more than well deserved. As I'm a liberian who is responsible for all sci fi buys in Ostend (Belgium), I have gladly interduced you to many new fans. And the honour is all mine! Great blog too by the way.

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26:

Accelerando was the bomb