"The Warm Equations" in Sunday Morning Transport!

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I'm in virtual print again! Well, almost. My latest story, "The Warm Equations" will be delivered by Sunday Morning Transport to subscribers' mailboxes this Sunday. 

So what the heck, you may well ask, is Sunday Morning Transport? Good question. It's sort-of-a fiction zine, kind-of-a streaming thingie that will deliver an original SF or fantasy story to your virtual mailbox every Sunday morning. Nobody's ever given me a noun describing what it is, so I can't be more specific than that. A service, maybe?

Anyway, when I agreed to participate I was given a rather short number of words to work with. So, contrarian that I am, I decided to see just how trad a work of science fiction I could create within that limit. Here's how it begins:

People who say that any landing you can walk away from is a good one have never crashed a hopper into the side of a mountain. On Mercury. During a major solar flare. Osbourne, who had just done all of that, lay motionless, eyes closed, savoring the amazing fact that he was still alive. Then, with an involuntary groan, he sat up.

So, yes, it's a space explorer in peril story. And a good one.

How good? Good enough that I named it "The Warm Equations." Nuff said. 

Meanwhile, if you want to know more, here's their pitch:

 

Sunday Morning Transport readers are authors, thinkers, scientists, artists, dreamers. With a single science fiction or fantasy short story each Sunday, we connect across space and time. We deliver, right to your inbox: a moment of whimsy; a deep dive into an unknown world; a single illuminating transformation; a vibrant community of readers and writers built around the best new speculative stories each week.

Free subscribers receive one story a month. Paid subscribers receive one story each week, fifty weeks a year.  For paid subscribers, there’s more: the opportunity to join in a conversation about story, to ask questions, and to help build a year’s worth of moments with authors including Max Gladstone, Karen Lord, Elwin Cotman, Kij Johnson, Kat Howard, Elsa Sjunnesson, Kathleen Jennings, Sarah Monette, Juan Martinez, E.C. Myers, Maureen McHugh, Tessa Gratton, Sarah Pinsker, Yoon Ha Lee, Michael Swanwick, Brian Slattery, Malka Older, and many more. 

You can subscribe here.

 

Above: I apologize for using one of the AI art programs that are probably going to do a serious violence to the careers of commercial artists as soon as they get a lot better than they are today.  I was curious as to how close to real art the thing could come. Scarily close and not at all both at the same time, as it turns out. I won't be doing this again. Artists need to be supported. With money.

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