Short story Manumission available at Baen’s Universe at Tobias Buckell Online

Journal Entry

Short story Manumission available at Baen’s Universe

April 3rd 2008 at 1:41 pm

The online magazine Baen’s Universe has my short story Manumission featured this month. This story has been years in waiting to be published, but is one of my favorites.

In 2005 I read it aloud to a group of people who came to a reading at Confluence, an SF/F convention in Pittsburgh. Last year at Confluence a couple of the people who’d been to the reading asked me why they’d been having trouble finding the story to buy it, they’d not forgotten hearing it 2 years later.

My friend David Kirtley, back in 2006, also picked it as one of his favorite stories read in 2006, because I’d forwarded him a copy.

You can read the first 1/2 of Manumission at Baen’s Universe.

Another reason some of you who’re fans of the novels might be interested in reading this story, is that it’s the second ‘Pepper’ story. The first was Fish Merchant, which launched my short story career and appeared in SF Age back in March 2000, so 8 years later here is the second Pepper story!

A third Pepper story will be out this summer, in John Joseph Adams’ anthology Seeds of Change.

If I can sneak enough Pepper stories out there over the next year or two, it’ll be nice to put together a chapbook or collection of Pepper stories. I have a definite time line that takes him from the events of Fish Merchant all the way to the start of Crystal Rain, it’s just that I don’t write as much short fiction, and it doesn’t put food on the table as well as novels, so…

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7 Responses so far

1. Matt Ruff on Apr 3rd, 2008 at 4:05 pm

Heh. At first glance I missed the capital M, and thought Baen was helping to set short stories free…

Congrats on the publication.
2. tobias buckell on Apr 3rd, 2008 at 5:21 pm

Thanks Matt
3. Juan on Apr 4th, 2008 at 12:57 am

Think you’ll ever collect all of Pepper’s stories in one book far down the road?

=)
4. Lee on Apr 4th, 2008 at 3:14 am

Actually, it frustrates me to no end when only part of a short story is offered online. That’s why, like Cory Doctorow, I just ’serve’ them straight, like my latest, Snowstorm.
5. Cole Kitchen on Apr 5th, 2008 at 4:31 am

Lee #4: The hyperlink at your name is (i) broken and (ii) misspelled (should be “lowebrow” etc.). This presents difficulties to would-be readers of your online fiction
6. Tobias Buckell on Apr 7th, 2008 at 12:34 am

Juan, yeah, I’d like to do that
7. Jeremy on Apr 14th, 2008 at 10:28 pm

“Juan, yeah, I’d like to do that”

I’d buy a copy. I find Pepper a very interesting character, though like his namesake I like it when he’s spicing up the story following someone else, like in the Fish Merchant.