I have signed the contract for Bearly Believable to appear at Hexfiled, probably in October. The novelette features two non-human biological androids that work at a picnic park on Planet Volpex.

Volpex is a terraformed world with a simplified ecology designed to maximize providing feedstock for the replicators that people use to manufacture everything. All of the people live on one developed continent and the rest of the world is left fallow to be harvested for feedstock — or used for recreational purposes.

I workshopped the characters using Wandering Shop Stories at Mastodon: A ranger who runs the park, an owl who patrols the park for litter, a bear that runs a fire-safety program, and a charming little girl named Brunhilde who is endlessly curious. I wrote a lot of short vignettes as I developed the characters. Some of the vignettes appear in the story, although most of the story is new and it includes new characters, like Lloyd — a penguin who works at Kowareta Nai, a business that sells surplus biological androids.

The story is set in the same universe as the Better Angels and includes some walk-on and cameo appearances of characters from there, including Totemo Isogashii and Lambda. In fact, I have several new Better Angels stories. When I wrote Bearly Believable, I was thinking it might appear in an anthology with the others, but that seems less and less likely to happen.

I submitted the story a few other place and several liked it, but said it didn’t quite fit. When I saw what Hexfiled was looking for, I realized it had found its perfect home:

Our editorial focus leans toward stories where the speculative element shapes the story’s infrastructure rather than decorating the top. We love biological SF, ecological futures, post-human consciousness, weird and slipstream fiction, military SF, and stories where the science is imagined thoughtfully even if it isn’t real. We are less interested in chosen-one narratives and portal fantasy.

We prefer stories that give the characters a selfhood. Not necessarily a fully realized identity if it clashes with the story’s concept, but a sense of interiority as much as the premise allows.

We appreciate stories that make us feel something alongside the imagined weird. We have a soft spot for fiction that is simultaneously absurd and grieving.

I look forward to sharing Bearly Believable with you when it appears!