Professor Challenger: New Worlds, Lost Places

I’ve been a long time away from the actual blogging portion of this blog (though I do try to keep the sidebar current with my latest work), and many very cool projects have been released in the interim. One of these is Professor Challenger: New Worlds, Lost Places from EDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing, edited by J. R. Campbell and Charles Prepolec (editors of the Gaslight series of Sherlock Holmes anthologies). It’s a brand-new anthology of short stories centered on the person of George Edward Challenger, the brilliant and volatile hero of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World, The Poison Belt and other tales of wonder and adventure from the creator of Sherlock Holmes.

My short story “The Crystal Minders” is one of ten stories to appear in this collection. It's a macabre account of Professor Challenger’s summons to a lonely estate, where a former mentor and an old rival have made a disturbing scientific breakthrough. Without delving too deeply into spoiler territory, I was inspired by the challenge of taking a more contemporary science-fiction concern and re-framing it in terms that might have been accessible to Edwardian-era readers.

I’m honored to appear in Professor Challenger: New Worlds, Lost Places alongside the very talented Wendy N. Wagner, Stephen Volk, Lawrence C. Connolly, J. R. Campbell, Simon Kurt Unsworth, Mark Morris, Guy Adams & James Goss, Josh Reynolds and Andrew J. Wilson. (The cover illustration, by the way, is by Academy Award-winning artist Dave Elsey!) Making things even more exciting, the anthology has been endorsed by the estate of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and has recently been nominated for an Aurora Award from the Canadian Science Fiction & Fantasy Association. It is currently available in paperback and eBook formats.