GIVE THE GIFT OF ERNESTO

The seasonal consumer orgy has begun. May these rituals resurrect the world's economy. It's a lot like that great, ancient North American tradition of the potlatch:

So let me humbly suggest that while buying all those gifts, you give the gift of Ernesto – buy and give books and magazines with my stories.

The most recent of these is the anthology Alien Contact, edited by Marty Halpern, including “Guerrilla Mural of a Siren's Song,” the diabolical germ of my novel Cortez on Jupiter (very soon to be an ebook – stay tuned for updates).

You can still order Tales of the Talisman, Vol. 6, No. 3, with my story “The Great Mars-A-Go-Go Mexican Standoff” in which Spike Gershwin, interplanetary detective, saves the Solar System, from a stateroom of a luxury spaceliner/casino while wearing a Godzilla suit. I've been getting the urge to write more about Spike, so get this and be ready.

2020 Visions, edited by Rick Novy, is an exciting pack of stories about the near future. My contribution is “Radiation is Groovy, Kill the Pigs,” a wild romp with Victor Theremin, the science fiction writer whose life has become indistinguishable from what he writes, through the exploding US/Mexico border as radioactive marijuana runs amok. There's also Em's wonderful “If the Sun's at Five O'Clock, It Must be Yellow Daisies.”

Full-Throttle Space Tales #4: Space Horrors, edited by David Lee Summers, delivers the scares beyond Earth's atmosphere. “Plan 9 in Outer Space,” my collaboration with my wife Emily, is an offbeat tale of deep space zombies, and a guy who wants to be the Ed Wood of his generation.

Also still available, as both paperback and ebook, is Voices for the Cure: A Speculative Fiction Anthology to Benefit the American Diabetes Association, edited by James Palmer. In “Human Sacrifice for Fun and Profit” I introduce Victor Theremin. Somehow, I contemplated the Singularity and created a monster alter ego who took on life of his own – watch out, I may write more about him if things get crazy enough. And the money goes to diabetes research, so you get to read my perverse story and feel that you're helping make the world a better place.

Speaking of human sacrifice, I guess if the potlatch strategy doesn't get the economy rolling, we can always try something more like the rituals of my Aztec ancestors.