Short story sale announcement: my near future science fiction story “A Living Planet” has sold to Analog Science Fiction and Fact! Publication date not set, but I’d expect late 2021.
This story has an unofficial second title: “The Martian’s Husband.” It’s inspired by the year I spent from summer 2015 to summer 2016, while my wife was on the crew of a year-long NASA-funded simulated Mars mission, with all our communications on a twenty-minute delay. This story means a lot to me, and it took me three years to get it ready to my satisfaction, and I’m so glad it found a home at a great magazine like Analog.
The spacecraft Hawai’iloa has fallen silent, halfway to Mars. Ethan’s wife is up there, receding and unreachable. But he still has a boss to win over, a job to keep. There’s nothing glamorous about his spot on the mission control team of an uncrewed orbital-cleanup spacecraft, but Ethan needs that simplicity. It keeps his eyes on the solid Earth and everything that might keep him sane, instead of raised to the emptiness above.
He’s waiting for word from space. But the Hawai’iloa might not be the only thing up there trying to contact Earth.