Transtories — Colin Harvey

The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary defines “trans” as follows: “Used in words adopted from Latin and in English words modelled on these, and as a feely productive prefix, with the senses ‘across', ‘beyond', ‘on or to the other side of', ‘into another state or form', ‘surpassing', ‘transcending'.” Every one of these senses seems to be perfectly science fictional. Consult the dictionary �" beginning with “transaccidentation” (which even now feels like an intriguing story subject) and journeying all the way through to “Transylvanian” (which may have been used before in fiction) �" there are a wealth of words that could have been designed purely to inspire science fiction writers. And so the brief was issued �" write a story based on a “trans-” word. And here are the results. From a man who attempts to save his reality through music to a boy who sees a unicorn and from the devil trapped in a transept to the last radio show on Earth we proudly present fifteen terrific stories that might just be best described as “transcendent” (“beyond the range or grasp of human experience, reason, belief, etc.” �" OED).

Transtories features excellent new speculative fiction by: Joanne Hall, Jay Caselberg, Priya Sharma, Tala Bar, John Kenny, Tomas L. Martin, Lawrence M. Schoen, Susanne Martin, Robert Neilson, Sharon K. Reamer, Rob Rowntree, Jonathan Shipley, Rodney J. Smith, Cody L. Stanford, and Hugo, Nebula and Campbell Award nominee Aliette de Bodard, the winner of the British Science Fiction Association Award for Short Fiction, as well as the Writers of the Future Contest.