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Excerpt
This is no place to raise kids, Jim thought, looking around at smooth canvas rocks and pathetic plastic trees. But for people like us, in love and on the run, with babies on the way, there’s no good place and no good time.
They’d managed to conceal their affair from prying eyes, even on the mercilessly public stage that was the Enterprise. If, as he expected, Uhura knew, she had kept their secret. But, with the twins’ gestation so near, there was nothing to do but jump ship, taking with them only the few props they could grab from the science officer’s kip and, at the last minute, McCoy’s black bag. Jim knew there was nothing in it but modernist pepper mills and hand-carved pieces of styrofoam packing material, but it would have to do in a pinch. Those weird bits of styrofoam had saved his own life in the past.
He looked over at Spock, who was sitting propped up against one of the fake rocks, breathing in short pants. (In short pants, he thought. Who writes this crap? They should read their damned scripts out loud.)
“Push,” he said. “Shouldn’t you push?”
Or should you not push? What did he know of these things? Where was Computer? Computer would know. Computer was on the ship
We should have used a glass tank, he thought....
From "No Place to Raise Kids," Flurb #3, 2007.
Bio
Eileen Gunn is a writer and editor, and a recipient of the Nebula Award in the U.S. and the Sense of Gender Award in Japan. Her collection Stable Strategies and Others (Tachyon, 2004) was nominated for the Philip K. Dick and World Fantasy awards and short-listed for the James Tiptree, Jr. Award. Her work has received additional Hugo and Nebula nominations and inclusion in various best-of-the-year anthologies. She was the editor and publisher of the late Infinite Matrix website and recently retired from the Clarion West Board of Directors after 22 years of service.
Publications
Fiction
"Zeppelin City," with Michael Swanwick, Tor.com, October 2009. Also in The Best Science Fiction of the Year #4, Jonathan Strahan, ed. [A Write-a-thon story]
"The Armies of Elfland," with Michael Swanwick, Asimov's SF Magazine, April 2009. [A Write-a-thon story]
"Shed that Guilt! Double your Productivity Overnight!" with Michael Swanwick, Fantasy and Science Fiction, September 2008. [A Write-a-thon story]
"Up the Fire Road." Eclipse, edited by Jonathan Strahan, Night Shade Books, 2007. Also in The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, 2008, edited by Ellen Datlow and Kelly Link & Gavin J. Grant. [A Write-a-thon story]
"Samuel R. Delany and Michael Swanwick at the Joyce Kilmer Rest Area, 2005," Foundation: The International Review of Science Fiction, Winter 2007.
"No Place to Raise Kids," Flurb #3, 2007.
"Speak, Geek." Nature, August, 2007. Also in Futures from Nature, edited by Henry Gee, Tor, 2007. [A Write-a-thon story, sponsored by Mary Kay and Jordin Kare, in memory of their cat Dominic.]
Essays
"Going to Narrative." Introduction to Narrative Power: Encounters, Celebrations, Struggles, L. Timmel Duchamp, ed., Aqueduct Press, 2010.
"Where Everything is a Bit Different." Introduction to Filter House, by Nisi Shawl, Aqueduct Press, 2008.
"Pleasures (and otherwise) of reading in 2008." Ambling Along the Aqueduct, December 31, 2008.
"Wit and Character: A Letter to Oscar Wilde." Talking Back, edited by L. Timmel Duchamp, Winter 2006, Aqueduct Press.
"Cranking the Wheel of Reality," introduction to Last Week's Apocalypse, by Doug Lain, Night Shade Books, 2006.
Poetry
"To the Moon Alice." Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet #22.
Interviews
"Ain't I a Woman?" Interview with Nisi Shawl, Fantasy Magazine, June 2009.
"The Humility of Listening." Interview with Geoff Ryman, What Remains, Aqueduct Press, 2009.
Books
The Wiscon Chronicles 2. Edited by L. Timmel Duchamp and Eileen Gunn, Aqueduct Press, 2008.
Stable Strategies and Others. Short stories. Introduction by William Gibson, afterword by Howard Waldrop, poem by Michael Swanwick,Tachyon, 2004.
Writing Description
I write by collage: I find a few ideas that don't go together, juxtapose them, and move them around until they make a kind of sense. Don't try this at home.
Goals
I will write 250 words every day during the Write-a-thon. What they will be I cannot say, nor whether they will be arranged in sentences.
