The Philip K. Dick Award Storybundle

Lisa Mason, one of this year's judges for the Philip K. Dick Award, has curated an e-book bundle of novels that have won the Philip K. Dick Award. Gwyneth Jones's wonderful novel, Life, is among these. This bundle will be available for a limited time, from Sept 23 through October 15. Here is Lisa, with the details:

 Above and beyond earning the distinction of the award, this unique and historic collection of eleven amazing books showcases the many-splendored spectrum of science fiction from classic themes to the avant-garde.
Visit the majestic city of the Ascendants in Elizabeth Hand’s Aestival Tide, the spooky abandoned storage closet down the hall in Kathe Koja’s The Cipher, rock-n-rolling San Francisco in 1967 in my own Summer of Love, a Martian colony with a terrible secret in Lewis Shiner’s Frontera, the visionary far future in Walter Jon Williams’ Knight Moves. 

As always at Storybundle.com, you the reader name your price—whatever you feel the books are worth. You may designate a portion of the proceeds to go to a charity. For the Philip K. Dick Award Bundle, that’s Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (“SFWA”). SFWA champions writers’ rights, sponsors the Nebula Award for excellence in science fiction, and promotes numerous literacy groups.
The basic bundle (minimum $5 to purchase, more if you feel the books are worth more) includes:

• Aestival Tide by Elizabeth Hand (PKD Finalist)
• Life by Gwyneth Jones (PKD Winner)
• The Cipher by Kathe Koja (PKD Finalist)
• Points of Departure by Pat Murphy (PKD Winner)
• Dark Seeker by K. W. Jeter (PKD Finalist)
• Summer of Love by Lisa Mason (PKD Finalist)

To complete your bundle, beat the bonus price of $15 and you’ll receive another five books:

• Frontera by Lewis Shiner (PKD Finalist)
• Acts of Conscience by William Barton (PKD Special Citation)
• Maximum Ice by Kay Kenyon (PKD Finalist)
• Knight Moves by Walter Jon Williams (PKD Finalist)
• Reclamation by Sarah Zettel (PKD Finalist)

All of these accomplished, traditionally published authors have received recognition and won multiple awards in addition to placing as a PKD Finalist or Winner, and we’re delighted their ebooks are available for the Philip K. Dick Award Bundle. Elizabeth Hand has won the World Fantasy Award (among many others), as has Gwyneth Jones. Pat Murphy has won the Nebula twice, Kathe Koja the Bram Stoker. The list goes on.

If you’re just dipping your toe into science fiction and not sure where to begin or if you’re a long-time fan and reader, this historic and unique collection is an excellent addition to your elibrary, providing world-class, award-winning reading right now and into the holidays.


So there you have it, my friends. The Philip K. Dick Award Bundle is available only from September 23 to October 15, 2015 and only via Storybundle. The bundle is easy to read on computers, smartphones, and tablets, as well as Kindle and other ereaders via file transfer, email, and other methods. You get multiple DRM-free formats (.epub and .mobi) for all books.

When the bundle is gone, it’s gone. So download yours today!

It’s super easy to give the gift of reading with StoryBundle, thanks to our gift cards – which allow you to send someone a code that they can redeem for any future StoryBundle bundle – and timed delivery, which allows you to control exactly when your recipient will get the gift of StoryBundle.
Why StoryBundle? Here are just a few benefits StoryBundle provides.

• Get quality reads: We’ve chosen works from excellent authors to bundle together in one convenient package.
• Pay what you want (minimum $5): You decide how much these fantastic books are worth to you. If you can only spare a little, that’s fine! You’ll still get access to a batch of thrilling titles.
• Support authors who support DRM-free books: StoryBundle is a platform for authors to get exposure for their works, both for the titles featured in the bundle and for the rest of their list. Supporting authors who let you read their books on any device you want—restriction free—will show everyone there’s nothing wrong with ditching DRM.
• Give to worthy causes: Bundle buyers have a chance to donate a portion of their proceeds to charity. The Philip K. Dick Award Bundle features Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.
• Receive extra books: If you beat our bonus price, you’re not just getting six books, you’re getting eleven!

Black to the Future

Notes from Ferguson is the Future Conference at Princeton University Sept. 11-14, 2015

We are all time travelers.The past hasn’t gone anywhere.

America is a haunted house.The future is in every gesture we make.

Science fiction is about figuring out how to be different together.

Ferguson is the Future is/was/will be an on-going moment of magic, community, and brilliance organized by Moya Bailey, Ruha Benjamin, and Ayana Jamieson. These women have serious superpowers. They gathered writers, activists, scholars, musicians, DJs, filmmakers, scientists, and curious folk at Princeton University to activate our blackness, our multi-dimensional, time-traveling blackness. Moya, Ruha, and Ayana called us to celebrate Octavia Butler and the joy of our sci-fi, speculative existence. They also insisted we look for that way out of no way that allows us to survive on-going apocalypse. Moya, Ruha, and Ayana raised money, fed and housed us, and kept us on point as we talked to and with each other. We did not have to provide the context for our being, for our sensibility—it shimmered around us. Everyone agreed—it was a blast, a blessing, a revelation to be activists, artists, and scholars imagining the future we want. Nothing like dreaming and scheming for justice, pleasure, peace, and sustainable abundance.

Before the public conference, writers and activists Steven Barnes, Lisa Bolekaja, Adrienne Maree Brown, Tananarive Due, Nalo Hopkinson, Walidah Imarisha, Nnedi Okorafor, Daniel José Older, Rasheedah Phillips, Sophia Samatar, Nisi Shawl, and me (Andrea Hairston) gathered for an activist/artist retreat. We were joined  by DJ Lynnée Denise, mixed media artist Soraya Jean-Louis McElroy, and musicians Be Steadwell and Taja Lindley & Jessica Valoris of Colored Girls Hustle . (I call out names, because dear reader, you should go look these folks up. Check out their art and brilliance. Buy what they make.)

Our retreat mission was to:

shake each other up

dream freely

explore craft

refuse the way it is as the way it has to be

skip racism and sexism 101

dance to the music

raise critical questions pertaining to afro-futurism

conjure solutions

support and challenge one another

spark new projects and possibilities

explore the impossible

We did all that and more in gatherings facilitated by Adrienne Maree Brown, and also in casual encounters sipping port and brandy in the library of Princeton’s guest house or walking down the avenue.

I rarely write blogs, but Timmi asked me. Writing fast (and doing all that I do) is difficult to impossible. I’m dyslexic. I actually don’t have time to write this blog, but that’s why I am writing it. Fast and furious Andrea, was made possible by Black to the Future Conference magic. Time travelers have all the time in the Universe!  

At our retreat sessions we discussed how some people are waiting for us to fail. Some people are eager to laugh at our writing. In Facebook-land and the Twitterverse there is bullying of “social justice warriors,” of POC and women writers. But we created a manifesto, a declaration of our freedom as artists. We don’t have to be perfect or silent, a million times better or silent, bullet proof or silent. We will live out loud and on line while being black, brown, disabled, queer… We will collaborate for each other’s success. We are poised to boost the signal on everybody’s work. We will be vulnerable and not always know what the hell we are doing. We won’t be realistic, we will try for the impossible.

On Monday, we were joined by scholars, Reynaldo Anderson, Netrice Gaskins, John Jennings, Alondra Nelson, Dorothy Roberts, activists and educators from Ferguson, Johnetta Elzie, Deray McKesson, Brittany Packnett, curators and filmmakers, Erin Christovale, M. Asli Dukan, Amir George, Dennis Leroy Kangalee, for an all-day speculative fiction jam. The weave of voices and disciplines, the polyrhythm of perspectives was astounding. Every day we got smarter, got activated. And Monday, nobody wanted to leave! 

With organizers Moya, Ruha, and Ayana, we created our visionary future, an alternative world in the haunted halls of Princeton University. The time together was heady and full-bodied. We carry new superpowers with us now. Change is upon us.