Trace the Stars

by Nancy Fulda

  “I can, Winin.”

  And finally, sometime late in the second day, Winin said, “This is the end of the reef—can you tell? The waves come differently now. Here we skirt the end of the reef, head south, and find my old route.”

  Teramoto’s voice said, “Winin, are you all right? Amy and Tevita are very anxious about you.”

  “Yes, ma’am. We’re through the storm, coming to the end of the reef, and less than a day from the Old Earth’s Pride.”

  “Great. I’ll send a message to the Pride and tell them we’re almost there. And how ‘bout you, Pete? You holding up?”

  “Ma’am, I’ve never been better. I’ve just spent two days with the best teacher of navigation I’ve ever known.” Sanchez’s voice rose, clear and confident, no trace of its old whine left.

  “Keep it up, you two. As far as I’m concerned, you deserve medals.”

  “Thank you, ma’am.” Winin clicked the intercom off.

  “Winin, can I ask you a favor?” Sanchez sat up straight in his nav couch, looking straight into the older navigator’s eyes.

  “You may ask.”

  “When all this is over, could I study wayfinding with you? This . . . this is real. This isn’t what they showed me in school. This is what I could never quite get, never quite understand, through all the trips I’ve navigated.” His voice wavered, and he stopped.

  Winin stared into the waves, silent for a long time. Then he turned and caught Sanchez’s eyes again. “I will, but on one condition.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Do you know electronics? That’s what I need to learn.”

  “It’s a deal.”

  The setting sun turned the waves to molten gold beneath the outrigger float, under the canoe’s hull. The tiny nav tank that was the Pacific Ocean shook with the laughter of two navigators.

  Biographies

  Kevin J. Anderson has published more than 140 books, 56 of which have been national or international bestsellers. He has written numerous novels in the Star Wars, X-Files, and Dune universes, as well as unique steampunk fantasy novels Clockwork Angels and Clockwork Lives, written with legendary rock drummer Neil Peart, based on the concept album by the band Rush.

  His original works include the Saga of Seven Suns series, the Terra Incognita fantasy trilogy, the Saga of Shadows trilogy, and his humorous horror series featuring Dan Shamble, Zombie PI. He has edited numerous anthologies, written comics and games, and the lyrics to two rock CDs. Anderson and his wife Rebecca Moesta are the publishers of WordFire Press. Find him online at wordfirepress.com.

  Beth Buck saw her first episode of Star Trek in second grade and has had stars in her eyes ever since. Her notebooks from middle school on are full of short stories and beginnings of novels set on space ships and alien planets, with time travel, intergalactic war, and adolescent inter-species romance.

  Foolishly, she chose not to major in creative writing college because she wasn’t sure she would be able to do something that fun in real life. She should have had an inkling that it was something she should be doing when she spent nearly all of her semester abroad in Egypt working on her (as yet unpublished) novel instead of doing her Arabic translation homework. When she realized her senior year that she loved writing and loathed translating Arabic newspapers, she began to suspect that she was in the wrong line of work but by then it was too late to switch majors.

  It took another couple of years and a few kids before she had her Isaac-Newton-style epiphany that yes, writing is something she could do in real life. After that, she jumped in with both feet. Since then, she has published several short stories, a couple of personal essays, over 60 articles on emergency preparedness, and has a middle grade serial called “Faith and Patience” in progress. Maybe she might even get that novel published.

  In addition to her writing pursuits, Beth is the acquisitions director for Immortal Works Press and presents at writing conferences around Utah. When she’s not writing, she spins on her spinning wheel, practices Shaolin Kempo, and commands her small army of children. Visit her blog at bethbuckauthor.wordpress.com or follow her on twitter @ithilien19.

  Jaleta Clegg was born some time ago and has filled the years since with plenty of make-believe. She writes science fiction adventure, fantasy of all flavors, and silly horror. When not writing, she enjoys playing with yarn, cooking weird vegetables, designing costumes and quilts, and generally messing around. You can find more about her at jaletac.com

  David Farland is a New York Times bestselling science fiction and fantasy writer with more than fifty novels to his credit. He works as the lead judge for one of the world’s largest science fiction writing contests, the L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers and Illustrators of the Future, and has helped mentor dozens of writers who have gone on to become New York Times bestsellers—people like Brandon Sanderson, Stephenie Meyer, and James Dashner. Dave lives in Saint George, Utah, with his wife and family, where he is currently working on his next book. You can find out more about him at mystorydoctor.com.

  Daniel Craig Friend lives with his family in Provo, Utah, where he works as a freelance SF/F editor. He has edited stories for Dan Wells, Mary Robinette Kowal, Dave Butler, Frank Herbert, Robison Wells, Brian McClellan, and Writers of the Future winner Amy Hughes. Presenting at LTUE is a yearly professional highlight, and being included in this anthology is a great honor. You can engage his editing services at http://dcfeditor.wixsite.com/dcfeditor.

  Nancy Fulda is a past Hugo and Nebula Nominee, a Phobos Award winner and a Vera Hinckley Mayhew Award recipient. She is also a recipient of the Jim Baen Memorial Award, which was created to honor the role played by science fiction in advancing real science. She has been a featured writer at Apex Online and a guest on the Writing Excuses podcast, and is a previous member of both SFWA and the Villa Diodati Writers’ Workshop. She has written on request for David Brin, Tor Books, and MIT’s Technology Review, as well as for the Dark Expanse space strategy game.

  Her most influential work, “Movement,” was a nominee for the BSFA, Hugo, and Nebula awards, and received the Asimov’s Reader’s Choice award in 2012. Other works of note include “Recollection,” which tells the story of a recovering dementia patient struggling to reconnect with his family, and “Planetbound”, which . . . well, that one you’d just better read for yourself. Her other fiction has appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, Analog Science Fiction and Fact, Daily Science Fiction, and other venues.

  Nancy earned both a Bachelor’s and Master’s Degree from Brigham Young University. She graduated with university honors, and her research on multi-agent systems and common-sense understanding for robotics has been presented at several IEEE conferences as well as the 2017 Conference on Robot Learning. From 2005 to 2010, she worked as an assistant editor of Jim Baen’s Universe, one of the highest-­paying speculative fiction markets of its time. From 2008 to 2009 she was the website content editor for the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, and until 2016, she was the owner, manager and chief web developer of AnthologyBuilder.com. In 2018, she led a research team as part of Amazon’s prestigious Alexa Prize challenge, a university competition to advance A.I.

  Her approach to life includes a strong dose of optimism and a generous sprinkling of humor. During her graduate work at Brigham Young University she studied artificial intelligence, machine learning, and quantum computing. In the years since, she has grappled with the far more complex process of raising four small children. All these experiences sometimes infiltrate her writing. You can find Nancy online at nancyfulda.com.

  Paul Genesse is the bestselling author of the Iron Dragon series, including The Golden Cord, The Dragon Hunters, and The Secret Empire. He has sold almost 20 short stories, and is the writer and producer of the Star Wars and Steampunk Rock Operas. He created and is the editor of the five volumes in the shared multiverse Crimson Pact anthology series featuring over half a million words and several New York Times bestselling authors.

  He l
ives with his incredibly supportive wife Tammy and their collection of frogs. Find out more about him and download the first ten chapters of The Golden Cord for free, listen to podcasts, or watch videos about the Iron Dragon series at www.paulgenesse.com. Also, friend him on Facebook and send him pictures of dragons.

  M. K. Hutchins regularly draws on her background in archaeology when writing fiction. Her YA fantasy novel, Drift, was both a Junior Library Guild Selection and a VOYA Top Shelf Honoree. Her short fiction appears in Podcastle, Strange Horizons, Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show, and elsewhere. A long-time Idahoan, she now lives in Utah with her husband and four children. Find her online at mkhutchins.com.

  Joe Monson has worked at many different jobs, including a paperboy, hot dog vendor, soda jerk, ice cream maker, busboy, volunteer missionary, teller, notary public, web monkey, content writer and developer, collections manager, convention chair, guest liaison, art show director, newsletter editor, technical support analyst, team lead, website designer, customer service supervisor, network technician, satellite installer, and credit analyst. He currently translates and edits Engineer into English by day and expands the accessible knowledge of the world by night.

  Because of his love of reading and books, he decided to get back into collecting amazing short works and sharing them with the world. His first anthology is Trace the Stars (co-edited with Jaleta Clegg), full of hard science fiction and space opera goodness. A Dragon and Her Girl, an adventure fantasy anthology also co-edited with Clegg, will come out in February 2020. A humorous military SF and space opera anthology, Join the Space Force Now!, is scheduled for June 2019.

  Joe recently started writing short stories again, and the first appears in the Immortal Works anthology, All Made of Hinges. He also has a space opera adventure series in the works. He collects science fiction and fantasy art, but not as much as Paul (as if that was even possible). He lives in the top of the mountains with his wife, two children, and their pet library. Learn more about him at joemonson.com.

  Wulf Moon feasted on fantasy as a child when he lived with his Chippewa grandmother. He begged stories from her every night and usually got his wish—fireside tales that fired his imagination. If Moon had a time machine, those are the days he would go back to. Since he doesn’t have a time machine, he tells his own stories.

  His story “The Last Ray of Light” won the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards national competition. It was subsequently published in the May 18, 1978, issue of Science World, becoming his first professional sale. He’s had the privilege of being represented by Donald Maass, selling to a Star Trek anthology, writing the conclusion to one of Nora Roberts’ romance novellas, and being published in numerous anthologies.

  He recently won Second Place in the 2018 fourth quarter L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future contest. Learn more at driftweave.com.

  Motivated by his lifelong love of reading, John M. Olsen writes about ordinary people doing extraordinary things and hopes to entertain and inspire others. His father’s library started him on this journey as a teenager, and he now owns and expands that library to pass his passion on to the next generation of avid readers.

  He loves to create things, whether writing novels or short stories or working in his secret lair equipped with dangerous power tools. In all cases, he applies engineering principles and processes to the task at hand, often in unpredictable ways with unusual results. He usually prefers “Renaissance Man” to “Mad Scientist” as a goal and aesthetic. It’s a relief you don’t have to be good at something to enjoy it, as witnessed by John’s meager skills playing a ukulele he built just because he could.

  You can often find him at writing events and comic conventions in and around Utah where he sometimes breaks out steampunk costuming. While there, he hawks a range of anthologies and novels spanning multiple genres. He is an award-winning author, having won first place in the Dragon Comet short story contest in 2018.

  He lives in Utah with his lovely wife and a variable number of mostly grown children and a constantly changing subset of extended family. His website is johnmolsen.blogspot.com.

  Emily Martha Sorensen writes clean fantasy adventures with clever characters, fun plots, and lots of humor. Her bestselling book is Dragon’s Egg, about a baby dragon and his human parents; her second most popular book is Black Magic Academy, about a good witch who gets sent to a school for fairy tale wicked witches. Four of her other series are about a magical girl turned villain, a chatterbox who’s trying not to become a child of prophecy, a Regency fantasy in which magic is forbidden and the main character has it anyway, and a teenage werevulture who clearly has to save the day. Basically, if it’s clean, and it’s fantasy, she probably wants to write it.

  She runs a newsletter called Clean Fantasy Reads, which showcases three clean fantasy books every Monday. You can join the newsletter at emilymarthasorensen.com/cleanfantasyreads.html.

  Eric James Stone is a Nebula Award winner, Hugo Award nominee, and winner in the Writers of the Future Contest. He has had stories published in Year’s Best SF 15, Analog, Nature, and Kevin J. Anderson’s Blood Lite anthologies, among other venues. His debut novel, a science fiction thriller titled Unforgettable, was published by Baen in January 2016.

  One of Eric’s earliest memories is of seeing an Apollo moon-shot launch on television. That might explain his fascination with space travel. His father’s collection of old science fiction ensured that Eric grew up on a full diet of Asimov, Heinlein and Clarke.

  While getting his political science degree at Brigham Young University, Eric took creative writing classes. He wrote several short stories, and even submitted one for publication, but after it was rejected he gave up on creative writing for a decade.

  During those years Eric, graduated from Baylor Law School, worked on a congressional campaign, and took a job in Washington, D.C., with one of those special interest groups politicians always complain that other politicians are influenced by. He quit the political scene in 1999 to work as a web developer in Utah.

  In 2002 he started writing fiction again, and in 2003 he attended Orson Scott Card’s Literary Boot Camp. In 2007 Eric got laid off from his day job just in time to go to the Odyssey Writing Workshop. He has since found a new web development job.

  Eric lives in Utah with his wife, Darci, and their children, Honor and Link. His website is ericjamesstone.com.

  Eric G. Swedin is a Professor of History at Weber State University. He has a doctorate in the history of science and technology. His publications include numerous articles, six history books, four science fiction novels, and a historical mystery novel. His novel, When Angels Wept: A What-If History of the Cuban Missile Crisis, won the 2010 Sidewise Award for Alternate History. Eric lives with his family in a house built in 1881. His website is swedin.org.

  Sandra Tayler is a writer of essays, picture books, speculative fiction, and blog entries. Her short fiction has appeared in DAW anthologies and the Mormon Lit Blitz website. She has released two picture books, Hold on to Your Horses and Strength of Wild Horses.

  Sandra’s day job is being the editor, publisher, and business manager for the Schlock Mercenary comic strip. This includes tasks ranging from weekly bookkeeping to sorting and shipping out hundreds of items at a time. Her most recent projects have been several short graphic stories that were featured in Schlock Mercenary books and the Planet Mercenary Role-Playing Game book.

  When she is not working, Sandra spends time with her house, her four kids, and her cartoonist husband, Howard Tayler. She also seems to have acquired three cats, which wasn’t in the plan at all. She can be found online at onecobble.com or on Twitter @SandraTayler.

  Brad R. Torgersen’s award-winning, award-nominated science fiction has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies. A veteran and Chief Warrant Officer in the United States Army Reserve, Brad has also served in half a dozen different countries.

  A Star-Wheeled Sky, military space opera with hard SF leanings, was released by Bae
n in December 2018. His latest short work—a novella titled “Scrith”—was released in February 2019 in the fifteenth volume of bestseller Larry Niven’s Man-Kzin Wars shared universe series.

  Married for 25 years to his very first audio narrator, Brad lives with his family in the Intermountain West. He can be found most often at his Facebook page, and occasionally writes non-fiction for both his personal blog, and the Mad Genius Club group blog. A political Classical Liberal, Brad believes in having an open mind, so long as you don’t let your brains fall out. Find him online at bradrtorgersen.com.

  As writers seem to do, Julia H. West has held many arcane jobs. When she was a quality control technician for ultrasound heart machines, video recordings of cross sections of her heart were shipped all over the world with the machines. She’s also been a genealogical researcher, an office manager, a secretary, a desktop publisher, a digger at an archaeological dig, a quality assurance tech, a webmaster, an aircraft electrician (and aircraft battle damage repair instructor) for the Air Force Reserves, and a keyer for the United States Post Office.

  Julia loves music, and sings with the Utah Filk Organization (that’s not a typo: filk is music of the science fiction and fantasy community). She was a founding member of the Salt Lake City, Utah, chapter of the Society for Creative Anachronism and still enjoys researching medieval culture. She was active in the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America for over ten years, and was awarded the Service to SFWA Award for work on the Nebula Award reports.