Close Encounters with the Contributing Authors of Alien Contact!

This was the headline as it appeared on SFSignal.com on Tuesday, October 25, 2011, a few minutes past midnight. Actually, the words "Starting Today" prefaced that headline, but that was Tuesday, and today is Sunday -- nearly a week later....

In support of the release this week of Alien Contact from Night Shade Books, SFSignal is hosting a series of guest blog posts and interviews with a number of the authors who contributed to the anthology.

World Fantasy Award nominee Charles Tan conducts all the interviews, in which the authors answer questions like: "What's the appeal of alien contact stories for you?" and "What was the first alien contact story you read that made a lasting impression?" as well as a question or two specific to their story. The authors also discuss their current projects.

The guest blog posts revolve around each author's story in the Alien Contact anthology. Readers will gain some insight into the genesis of each of these stories.

The blog posts and interviews will be posted at approximately 2:00 PM (Central time) each weekday (well, almost), from Tuesday, October 25, through Monday, November 14. Here's the schedule; links have been provided for the first four entries, which have already been posted:

* Tue, 10/25: Nancy Kress, Guest Blog post: "Building a Story from Fortuitously Nearby Construction Materials"
* Wed, 10/26: Mike Resnick: The "Alien Contact" Interview
* Thu, 10/27: Mark W. Tiedemann, Guest Blog post: "It's Not About the Buttons"
* Fri, 10/28: Adam-Troy Castro: The "Alien Contact" Interview

* Mon, 10/31: Nancy Kress: The "Alien Contact" Interview
* Tue, 11/1: Ernest Hogan, Guest Blog post: "Once Upon a Time in SoCal: The Making of 'Guerrilla Mural of a Siren's Song'"
* Wed, 11/2: Paul McAuley: The "Alien Contact" Interview
* Thu, 11/3: Jack Skillingstead, Guest Blog post: "Thermalling"
* Fri, 11/4: Mark W. Tiedemann: The "Alien Contact" Interview

* Mon, 11/7: Ernest Hogan: The "Alien Contact" Interview
* Tue, 11/8: Barbara Hambly, Guest Blog post: "George Alec Effinger and the Aliens Who Knew Everything"
* Wed, 11/9: Jack Skillingstead: The "Alien Contact" Interview
* Thu, 11/10: Bruce McAllister: The "Alien Contact" Interview

* Mon, 11/14: Pat Cadigan: The "Alien Contact" Interview

Remember, you can check in with SFSignal.com at approximately 2:00 PM every weekday -- that's 3:00 PM on the east coast and 12-noon on the west coast -- or, you could just check back here at More Red Ink each weekday for the next two weeks and I'll provide each forthcoming link in a new, albeit very brief, blog post.

Alien Contact Anthology -- Story #14

As a way of promoting my forthcoming Alien Contact anthology (Night Shade Books, November), I posted a sort of introduction on April 25, and then beginning on May 6, I have been blogging about one story each week -- in the order in which the stories appear in the book. I've now revealed the first 13 stories in the anthology, which is the halfway point; 13 more stories and 13 more weeks to go. To date, the complete text of three of the stories have been posted here on this blog (with a link to a fourth story online elsewhere), with more to come. If you are new to these blog posts, you may want to begin here.

"Sunday Night Yams at Minnie and Earl's"
by Adam-Troy Castro

This story was originally published as the cover story in the June 2001 issue of Analog Science Fiction and Fact. This is the longest story in the anthology at approximately 20,900 words. (The cover artist for that June 2001 issue was none other than Frank Kelly Freas -- the "Dean of Science Fiction Artists" -- who passed away in 2005.)

When I first began my online research for this anthology, I found a blog, Variety SF, by Tinkoo Valia, from Bombay, India, that contained a post entitled "Stories about first human contact with aliens." There were 39 entries in the list. Some of the entries were for novels, which I couldn't use, and some of the short stories listed were oldies but goodies, by the likes of Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore, H. Beam Piper, and Eric Frank Russell. But a few of the stories were contemporary, and I followed up on all of them. One of those stories was Adam-Troy Castro's "Sunday Night Yams..." and, much to my delight, the blogger included a link to the full text of the story online. At the time [alas, the story is no longer available online], the story was hosted on Analog's website; I saved the file to read later; looking at that file now, the creation date was August 31, 2008, nearly three years ago, which is indicative of how long I have been working on this anthology.

In this story, Max Fischer, one of the last surviving astronauts who pioneered the terraforming of the Moon, returns to Luna in what he feels are his final days, determined to learn the whereabouts of Minnie and Earl, whom he lost contact with over the ensuing years. The story moves seamlessly between the present and the past -- Max searching the old Luna project archives, listening to recordings, trying to talk to others who might have just the piece of information he needs, while reminiscing about the past, including the first time he met Minnie and Earle. The story begins thusly:

Frontiers never die. They just become theme parks.

I spent most of my shuttle ride to Nearside mulling sour thoughts about that. It's the kind of thing that only bothers lonely and nostalgic old men, especially when we're old enough to remember the days when a trip to Luna was not a routine commuter run, but instead a never-ending series of course corrections, systems checks, best-and-worst-case simulations, and random unexpected crises ranging from ominous burning smells to the surreal balls of floating upchuck that got into everywhere if we didn't get over our nausea fast enough to clean them up.... But that's old news now: before the first development crews gave way to the first settlements; before the first settlements became large enough to be called the first cities; before the first city held a parade in honor of its first confirmed mugging; before Independence and the Corporate Communities and the opening of Lunar Disney on the Sea of Tranquility. These days, the Moon itself is no big deal except for rubes and old-timers. Nobody looks out the windows; they're far too interested in their sims, or their virts, or their newspads or (for a vanishingly literate few) their paperback novels, to care about the sight of the airless world waxing large in the darkness outside.