Author Ryan Schneider's Blog

This Author Spotlight features Lewis Shiner World Fantasy Award Winner and Author of Seven Novels Exciting news, gang: a brand new round of Author Spotlights is on its way, featuring a number of accomplished and talented writers. The first of these is Lewis Shiner. Lewis Shiner is the author of BLACK & WHITE, FRONTERA, and the World Fantasy Award-winning GLIMPSES, among other novels. He's also published four short story collections, journalism, and comics. Virtually all of his work is available for free download at www.fictionliberationfront.net . 1.How did you get into writing and why do you write? I've been writing fiction since I was four and started my first novel at seven, so it's hard to remember exactly what prompted it. I got uprooted a lot as a child (my father was in the National Park Service and we moved at least once a year), so books were one of the few constants in my life. I expect that's why I came to love them and w...

The historic day has come and gone. October 21, 2015. A long time in the making. It was a fascinating opportunity to compare science fiction with science fact. For example, no flying cars yet. But we're also not still using fax machines. Much. What are your predictions for the future? Thirty years from now? Humans routinely living and working on Mars? Jurassic World? With people bored by the run-of-the-mill T-Rex? The Singularity? aka the point at which Artificial Intelligence surpasses human intelligence? And if we apply the Turing Test, which asks you to discern whether you're communicating with a person or a computer A.I., we already have such machines. Refinement and evolution is inevitable. Such was my fascination that I wrote my novel Eye Candy. Inspired by the work of Isaac Asimov, it's a hoot. With an ensemble cast and an exciting story, as many Easter eggs as Ready Player One, and a bang-up ending, it's worth a read. Check it out: ...

Reclamation by Sarah Zettel (PKD Finalist) is in The Philip K Dick Award Storybundle Set in the far future, RECLAMATION centers on The Realm of the Nameless Powers, a world so ravaged by age that only a portion of deep canyons is habitable. The Realm has degenerated into a harsh caste system and Middle Ages technology. Their religion strictly enforces the castes who can marry, and which children are allowed to live. Eric Born is a lapsed priest and a son of one of the noble families. Like all members of the priesthood, he possesses very precise telekinetic abilities, but he also has the rare gift of healing. Stifled by the backward ways of The Realm, he escapes to make a new life among the stars. Since then, he has established himself as a freelance computer engineer. He is employed by the Rhudolant Vitae, space traders who travel between star systems trading their technological and management skills for raw materials and political influence. The Vitae...

Other Renowned Authors Who Have Won the Philip K Dick Award #SFWApro by Lisa Mason It should also come as no surprise that other renowned authors and their books have been Philip K Dick Award Finalists or Winners over the years since 1983. The list reads like a Who’s Who of Science Fiction, such as Carnival , Undertow , and Chill by Elizabeth Bear , At the City Limits of Fate by Michael Bishop , Mindplayers by Pat Cadigan , Voyager in the Night by C.J. Cherryh , Artificial Things by Karen Joy Fowler , Neuromancer by William Gibson , Neon Lotus by Marc Laidlaw , The Remaking of Sigmund Freud by Barry N. Malzberg , Memories by Mike McQuay (deceased), The Scar by China Mieville , The Wild Shore by Kim Stanley Robinson , Subterranean Gallery , Carlucci’s Edge , Carlucci’s Heart , and Ship of Fools by Richard Paul Russo , Green Eyes and Life During Wartime by Lucius Shepard (deceased), Leviathan, Vol 3 edited by Jeff VanderMeer , Millennium by John Varley...

Knight Moves by Walter Jon Williams is in The Philip K Dick Award Storybundle! A Philip K Dick Award-nominated novel. Eight hundred years ago Doran Falkner gave humanity the stars, and he now lives with his regrets on a depopulated Earth among tumbledown ruins and ancient dreams brought to life by modern technology. But word now comes that alien life has been discovered on a distant world, life so strange and impossible that the revelation of its secrets could change everything. A disillusioned knight on the chessboard of the gods, Doran must confront his own lost promise, his lost love, and his lost humanity, to make the move that will revive the fortunes both of humans and aliens . . . “ Knight Moves is an engrossing and evocative read, a tale of immortality and love and death rendered in a style that reminds me more than a little of the early Roger Zelazny. Williams’ people are intriguing and sympathetic, and his portrait of an Earth left transf...

Maximum Ice by Kay Kenyon (PKD Finalist) is in The Philip K Dick Award Storybundle! They thought Earth would always abide. But it hadn't, not at all . . . . Zoya Kundara has lived on the space vessel Star Road for 250 years. As Ship Mother, she is awakened from Deep Sleep in times of crisis, providing counsel to generations of its Romany crew. Now the starship has returned home, only to discover an Earth on the verge of extinction, blanketed in a crystalline substance called Ice. But it's not ice. This pearl-white mantle is a grand and mysterious ecology of information-bearing crystals. And it is relentlessly enclosing the last free lands. To find a home for her crew, Zoya must approach the denizens of this strange new Earth. She will discover the Ice Nuns, who seek sole control of the physics-defying crystals; people huddled like moles in underground techno-warrens; and the snow witches, creatures of Ice, both mad and prophetic . . . and one snow w...

Acts Of Conscience by William Barton is in The Philip K Dick Award Storybundle! This is the story of Gaetan du Cheyne, Class 10 Spatial Machinery Mechanic at the great spaceship refit station known as Stardock. Gaetan du Cheyne. No mother, no father, no children, no wife, no friends, no home, no nothing. Just a job. An empty man, a hollow man, paid well enough for his complex skills that, when he's not consuming a steady diet of net porn, he gets to play the stock market. Until, one fine day, he finds himself in possession of a prototype FTL starship, and goes out among the worlds in search of... something. Anything. Maybe only the lost, empty dreams that were all he had as a child, dreams that deserted him as an adult.  What he finds, in the end, if you can understand the man, if you can understand his lost dreams, may change you forever, if you're lucky. Amazon.com Review Science fiction and fantasy have antiheros aplenty. Think Thomas Covenant, Fr...

How I Chose the Books for The Philip K Dick Award Storybundle! by Lisa Mason As a 2016 PKD Award judge , I had access to the master list of Finalists and Winners going back to 1983, when the award was inaugurated. When Storybundle agreed  to do a Philip K Dick Award Storybundle comprised of Finalists and Winners , I researched the authors on that list. I chose these authors and books because they meet the following criteria: 1. They weren’t dead (that’s a joke); 2. They have an ebook of their Philip K Dick Award Finalist or Winner ; 3. They and their publishers were technically able to participate in StoryBundle’s DRM-free environment. You would be surprised how many authors going back to 1983 couldn’t meet those simple criteria, including the first. I’m delighted and thankful for this list. I’ve read all of the authors’ works, often first as magazine stories, and met several at conventions and parties. I truly encourage you to...

Frontera by Lewis Shiner is in The Philip K Dick Award Storybundle! The Cyberpunk classic and Nebula Award finalist in the revised, definitive edition. Ten years ago the world's governments collapsed, and now the corporations are in control. Houston's Pulsystems has sent an expedition to the lost Martian colony of Frontera to search for survivors. Reese, aging hero of the US space program, knows better. The colonists are not only alive, they have discovered a secret so devastating that the new rulers of Earth will stop at nothing to own it. Reese is equally desperate to use it for his own very personal agenda. But none of them have reckoned with Kane, tortured veteran of the corporate wars, whose hallucinatory voices are urging him to complete an ancient cycle of heroism and alter the destiny of the human race. ''Lewis Shiner's Frontera is an extraordinarily accomplished first novel . . . his pacing is brisk, his scientific extrapol...

How I Became the Curator of The Philip K Dick Award Storybundle by Lisa Mason A writer-acquaintance who was acting as the Curator of a Storybundle earlier this year invited me to participate in his bundle. I gladly did, having heard about Storybundle.com and all the good things the website does for readers and authors alike. I love the Storybundle website, how they’ve set things up and their commitment to all things writing. Storybundle is a major player in the new independent publishing revolution and works well with readers’ passion for ebooks. After the first bundle was done, and performed well, I began communicating with Storybundle, letting them know that I have an ebook backlist of previously published books and stories and that I’d been asked to serve as a judge for the 2016 The Philip K Dick Award. Storybundle, ever alert for new bundle opportunities, was curious about my role as a judge. We’re slowly working out the details of how I may curate...