The story was first named honorable mention in a Writers of the Future contest in early 2003. It was winner of the UPC science fiction award, and was the last short story Brandon wrote before he sold Elantris to Tor. This story originally appeared in the October/November 2008 Asimov’s Science Fiction (in the US) and the UPC Science Fiction collection (in Europe). I think they’d appreciate knowing that they are on the right track. Give them a little pat on the back by signing up for the newsletter and maybe posting a comment or two on stories/posts you like. They’re still releasing free ebooks regularly, as well as high-quality short stories. (Though you may want to do so, as you’ll get emails with other short story links in them.) Just as an aside, I think that the staff over at Tor.com have really pulled out the stops to create an excellent website filled with serious goodies. I don’t even think you have to register for the newsletter. It’s completely free to read, courtesy of Tor. There’s also a “Buy Download Version” link where you can get the book for Kindle, Nook, or iBooks.Īnyway, I hope you enjoy the story. Look for it in the “Listen” link in the upper-left corner of the page.

I did an audio reading of “Firstborn” for Tor.com as well. (They also happen to be the only two good short stories I’ve written to date.)

This story, and the one that appeared in Asimov’s earlier, are both good examples of this. I think I’m best suited to long-form fantasy epics, but when I do turn my attention to short stories, they almost always come out as classic-style space operas. You who visit the blog frequently may have heard me say that I don’t think much of my short story writing skills. I’m very pleased with how the story turned out. Moshe, my editor, gave it a very strong edit (something it really, really needed.) A few months later, here it is! With an illustration by Donato, no less. Patrick enjoyed the story, and said he might be interested in it if we put it through some editorial work. I’ve long been looking for a place where the story could reach a larger audience (when I was at BYU, The Leading Edge-despite having some very high quality fiction in it-had a distribution of under a hundred copies.) So I sent the story over to Tor.com, asking if they’d consider it even though it had appeared before in a small publication. The magazine asked me if I’d donate a story to one of their anniversary issues, and so I sent them this one, which I’d actually just finished writing.) Though “published” is kind of a loose term here, as the story originally appeared in The Leading Edge, a BYU publication with a very limited print run. As they have noted, this story-called “Firstborn”-was the first sf story I ever published. Tor.com has published one of my short stories.

Snapshot by Brandon Sanderson