I am surprised and humbled that my story “A Sky and a Heaven” is sharing the 2023 Sidewise Award for Best Short Form Alternate History with “A Dream of Electric Mothers” by Wole Talabi. Thank you so much to this year’s Sidewise jury of Eileen Gunn, Matt Mitrovich, Olav Rokne, Kurt Sidaway, and Steven Silver. Here are the acceptance remarks that Nebula Award winning writer William Ledbetter delivered on my behalf at the 2023 World Fantasy Convention with one very important update in [square brackets]:
“If Bill Ledbetter is reading this at the Sidewise Awards, then I will be both astonished and honoured. I am sorry that I cannot be with you to give these remarks in person, and I thank Bill for accepting on my behalf.
“The threads of ‘A Sky and a Heaven’ have been coursing through my life for two decades. I was there in February 2003 at the Kennedy Space Centre when the Space Shuttle Columbia was lost. Thirteen years later, in July 2016, I was at the session of the International Space University in Israel and I was deeply moved by the enduring legacy of Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon and the strength with which his memory is being kept alive.
“But it was the invitation by Andrea Lobel and Mark Shainblum to their anthology Other Covenants that motivated me to weave these threads into a story, and for that I am very grateful to them. Thank you Andrea and Mark for bringing Other Covenants into our timeline. Their remarkable collection produced two of this year’s Sidewise Award short form finalists, ‘A Sky and a Heaven’ and Gillian Polack’s extraordinary story ‘Why the Bridgemasters of York Don’t Pay Taxes’. I am honoured to have shared the Sidewise shortlist with Gillian and Michael Cassutt and Paul Levinson, [and I am absolutely delighted that ‘A Dream of Electric Mothers’ by Wole Talabi is sharing this year’s short form Sidewise Award.]
“Thank you to the Sidewise Award judges for this tremendous honour. This recognition is particularly meaningful because it comes on top of feedback I have received from people at NASA, people who were involved in some of the events portrayed in the story that have told me what it means to them. The story also appeared in my collection Just Like Being There and for that I thank Angela Lahee my wonderful editor at Springer Nature.”
The watch I’m wearing belonged to my late dear friend Leslie Gelberger who first introduced me to the stories of that master alternate historian Harry Turtledove. I want to believe there is an alternate timeline in which Leslie is sharing all this with me.
