Category Archives: Anthologies

Hemlock on Mars” selected for Year’s Best Canadian Fantasy & Science Fiction: Volume Two

Thank you Stephen Kotowych for including me again in the second volume of Year’s Best Canadian Fantasy & Science Fiction. I am honoured that Volume Two will include my story “Hemlock on Mars” which was the opening story in the anthology Life Beyond Us edited by Julie Nováková, Lucas K. Law, and Susan Forest. Life Beyond Us is well represented in Volume Two as it also includes “Third Life” by Julie Czerneda. The book will be available in October. You can read the opening scene of “Hemlock on Mars” here.

Volume One of Year’s Best Canadian Fantasy & Science Fiction received a much-deserved Aurora Award and has been nominated for a World Fantasy Award. My Aurora nominated story “A New Brave World” appeared in the inaugural volume.

Summer of Sci-Fi & Fantasy: Volume Three is now available for summer reading!

Summer of Sci-Fi & Fantasy: Volume Three is now available, just in time for (northern hemisphere) summer reading! Edited by Dustin Bilyk with beautiful artwork by Emily’s World of Design, the anthology features 20 stories including Dustin’s new novella “The Mapmaker at the End of the World”, “The King of Dust” by Aurora Award winner Jean-Louis Trudel, “Never After” by Diana Olney, “Agnar and the Shadow Dragon” by Simon Kewin, “The Home of the Weird and Wonderful” by Sam Muller, and my Aurora Award nominated story “A New Brave World”.

Game On! and Year’s Best Canadian Fantasy & Science Fiction nominated for Aurora Award

Congratulations to Stephen Kotowych and Tony Pi for the double nomination of Game On! and Year’s Best Canadian Fantasy & Science Fiction: Vol. 1 for this year’s Aurora Award in the category of Best Related work, and congratulations to Marco Marin (Ulmo8) for his nomination in the Best Cover Art / Interior Illustration category for his work in Year’s Best Canadian Fantasy & Science Fiction. I am proud that my story “Random Access Memory” is in Game On! and my story “A New Brave World” is in Year’s Best Canadian Fantasy & Science Fiction.

Image Credit: Stephen Kotowych

Year’s Best Canadian Fantasy & Science Fiction is now available

The inaugural volume of Year’s Best Canadian Fantasy & Science Fiction edited by Stephen Kotowych is now available in trade paperback and ebook. The collection features 37 stories and poems including my Aurora Award nominated story “A New Brave World”.

Richard Graeme Cameron has written in Amazing Stories online a glowing review of the collection:

There is a lot of excellent genre fiction being written in Canada. May this series become the definitive annual sample. If all are good as this one, I can see them becoming textbooks for high schools and universities...You owe it to yourself to purchase it for your bookshelf.”

The praise for the collection is richly deserved, but what he said about “A New Brave World” put a lump in my throat:

Proof that the hard science genre is still capable of enjoyable originality, especially in the capable hands of excellent writers such as Eric Choi. I found the story exhilarating. It reminds me why I fell in love with science fiction in the first place.”

[Kobo] [Amazon Canada] [Amazon U.S.]

Life Beyond Us is no longer beyond us!

Life Beyond Us, the new astrobiology-themed science fiction anthology from the European Astrobiology Institute and Laksa Media Groups, has arrived on planet Earth! Edited by Julie Novakova, Lucas K. Law and Susan Forest, Life Beyond Us features twenty-seven stories, each accompanied by an essay written by a scientist in a relevant field. My new story “Hemlock on Mars” opens the collection with the accompanying science essay “Planetary Protection: Best Practices for the Safety of Humankind (And All Those Aliens Out There)” by Giovanni Poggiali of Observatoire de Paris. Also check out the latest post on John Scalzi’s Whatever blog in which Julie, Lucas, and Susan explore The Big Idea behind the anthology and discuss my story “Hemlock on Mars”.

Thank you Julie, Lucas, and Susan for the honour of being included in this ambitious and beautiful anthology!

Contributor copies of Life Beyond Us and Extraordinary Visions

My contributor copies of the anthologies Life Beyond Us and Extraordinary Visions, under the watchful visage of an extraordinary terrestrial lifeform.

Life Beyond Us is the new astrobiology-themed science fiction anthology from the European Astrobiology Institute and Laksa Media Groups, edited by Julie Nováková, Lucas K. Law, and Susan Forest. The book features twenty-seven stories, each accompanied by an essay written by a scientist in a relevant field. Opening the collection is my new story “Hemlock on Mars” with the accompanying science essay “Planetary Protection: Best Practices for the Safety of Humankind (And All Those Aliens Out There)” by Giovanni Poggiali of Observatoire de Paris. Life Beyond Us will be arriving to our planet on Earth Day (April 22).

Extraordinary Visions is the first-ever fiction anthology presented by the North American Jules Verne Society, edited by Steven R. Southard and Matthew Hardesty. The book featuring thirteen stories inspired by the writings of Jules Verne including my story “Raise the Nautilus” which closes the collection. Extraordinary Visions is available now in paperback and hardcover. Check out the review on the Nerds of a Feather website.

While their themes are different, these books have much in common. Both are beautiful, with gorgeous cover art by Dan O’Driscoll and Amanda Bergloff respectively, and vividly illustrated interior designs. Both are ambitious, with terrific stories brought together by visionary editors who are passionate about the respective themes of their books. I am grateful and proud to be a part of these anthologies.

Holiday Reading

For your reading pleasure this Holiday season.

Just Like Being There
My first collection of short fiction featuring fifteen of my hard SF and alternate history stories including the Aurora Award winning “Crimson Sky”.

Brave New Worlds
Edited by S.C. Butler and Joshua B. Palmatier featuring fifteen original stories that follow humanity’s long dream of travelling to the stars including my story “A New Brave World”. [Reading Copy (for SFWA members)]

Extraordinary Visions
The first-ever fiction anthology presented by the North American Jules Verne Society featuring thirteen stories inspired by Verne’s work including my story “Raise the Nautilus”.

Other Covenants
Edited by A.D. Lobel and Mark Shainblum, this alternate history collection features stories and poems by thirty authors and includes my novelette “A Sky and a Heaven”. [Reading Copy (for SFWA members)]

20% Discount on Orders of Just Like Being There

Until October 20th, use the promo code CHOI2022 and get a 20% discount when you order my short story collection Just Like Being There from the Springer Nature website:

https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978–3‑030–91605‑3

The collection features fifteen of my hard SF and alternate history stories including the Aurora Award winning “Crimson Sky” and the new novelette “A Sky and a Heaven”. Story topics include space exploration, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, cryptography, quantum computing, online privacy, mathematics (statistics), neuroscience, psychology, space medicine, extraterrestrial intelligence, undersea exploration, commercial aviation, and the history of science. Each story is followed by an afterword that explains the underlying engineering or science.

For more information, please visit the Just Like Being There page or download the brochure. Also check out my author Q&A on the Edelweiss blog, the review on AmazingStories.com, my interviews in Space.com and OverDrive: In the Know, or my conversation on the official podcast of the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering. 

Raise the Nautilus” to appear in Extraordinary Visions: Stories Inspired by Jules Verne

I am pleased to announced that my story “Raise the Nautilus”, which was first published in 20,000 Leagues Remembered edited by Steven Southard and Kelly A. Harmon, will be reprinted in the upcoming anthology Extraordinary Visions: Stories Inspired by Jules Verne from the North American Jules Verne Society. This will be the first collection of short fiction ever sponsored by the Society.

Raise the Nautilus” describes an attempt by the Royal Navy to salvage Captain Nemo’s submarine and retrieve an artefact that could turn the tide of the First World War. You can read an abridged excerpt from the story here.

Seasons Between Us

I am delighted to have received my contributor copy of the new anthology Seasons Between Us edited by Susan Forest and Lucas K. Law and published by Laksa Media Groups Inc. featuring new stories by Maurice Broaddus, Vanessa Cardui, C.J. Cheung, Joyce Chng, Divya Srinivasan Breed, Alan Dean Foster, Bev Geddes, Maria Haskins, Tyler Keevil, Rich Larson, Karin Lowachee, Brent Nichols, Heather Osborne, Y.M. Pang, Karina Sumner-Smyth, Amanda Sun, Patrick Swenson, Bogi Takács, Hayden Trenholm, Liz Westbrook-Trenholm, Jane Yolen, Alvaro Zinos-Amaro, and yours truly.

This picture is of course totally posed. The cat cared less for the book than the box it came in.