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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 US 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 is the editor and publisher of the Infinite Matrix website and has served on the Clarion West Board of Directors since 1988.
Writing Description
Eileen Gunn defies description. She spits in its face. She tap dances across the street and sticks a flower in its rifle barrel.
The eminent critic Gary K. Wolfe, however, ranked her as a short story writer with John Crowley and Ted Chiang, which made her very happy until she realized it could have been some kind of typographic error. She's not sure what kind.
Her output has increased in recent years due to the psychic influence of Michael Swanwick, who not only issues cryptic commands and ultimatums ("Quick, without thinking, write a story about a golem!") but gives her the impression that there is least one person in the universe who, if she finished the story, would read it.
Goals
Plot a YA SF/fantasy book online with Michael Swanwick. We will write the book later, if we don't kill one another during the plotting.
This year I will try to find some sponsors. $10 a week? It’s for a good cause….
Website
Gunn's personal website is http://www.eileengunn.com. The Infinite Matrix is at http://www.infinitematrix.net.
She doesn't blog (yet), and she hasn't completely given up on the Infinite Matrix. Sometimes she twitters: http://twitter.com/eileen_gunn.
