I'm really pleased to report that the Asimov's Science Fiction magazine Readers' Award winners were recently announced and my story, "The Hind," (co-authored with best-selling science fiction writer Kevin J. Anderson) won the award for best novelette. I'll paste in the complete winners' list below.
"The Hind" is a generation-ship story that follows a young woman aboard a damaged ship that is adrift in outer space. She's facing a personal dilemmas because of the ship's limited life support systems. Ultimately she finds some answers and some people who can help. It's a story of personal challenges, courage, hope and redemption. It also involves an older woman with dementia who just might have the key to saving everyone.
Kevin and I conjured up the outline of the story when we were on a long, mountain drive from Colorado Springs to Western Colorado University in Gunnison, CO, where we both are on the faculty of the very fine low-residency MFA in Creative Writing program at Western. Kevin then dictated the first draft of the story while hiking a mountain near Gunnison. Incredibly, this is Kevin's standard way to write, dictating the first draft of his best-selling novels and stories while hiking up one 14,000-foot peak or another in Colorado.
He then turned the story over to me, and a couple of months later I'd pushed and pulled and expanded it a bit and sent it back his way for the OK. We then sent it in to Asimov's Editor Sheila Williams, who bought it for the November/December 2020 issue of the magazine and now it's won the best of the year award for novelettes in that outstanding publication. Here's the complete list of winners, from the magazine's press release.
New York, NY—We are pleased to announce the winners of the thirty-fifth annual Asimov’s Science Fiction Readers’ Awards (the bold emphasis is mine). They are:
Best Novella: “Take a Look at the Five and Ten” by Connie Willis (11-12/20)
Best Novelette: “The Hind” by Kevin J. Anderson & Rick Wilber (11-12/20)
Best Short Story: “Go. Now. Fix.” by Timons Esais (1-2/20)
Best Poem: “Ode to Cassini” by Jane Yolen (5-6/20)
Best Cover Artist: John Picacio (3-4/20)
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