Elizabeth Bear (www.elizabethbear.com) lives in Hartford, Connecticut. She won the 2005 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and the 2008 Hugo Award for Best Short Story for “Tideline.” Prolific as well as talented, she has published fourteen SF and fantasy novels since 2005, more than forty stories since 2003, and a collection, The Chains That You Refuse (2006). Her 2009 novel will be the Norse fantasy By the Mountain Bound, and she is currently gearing up to help start the second season of the virtual TV show, Shadow Unit.
Sarah Monette (www.sarahmonette.com) was born and raised in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, “one of the secret cities of the Manhattan Project.” She studied English and Classics and has a Ph.D. in English Literature. Her novels are Mélusine(2005), The Virtu (2006), The Mirador (2007), Corambis (2009), and, in collaboration with Elizabeth Bear, A Companion to Wolves (2007). Her short stories have appeared in Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, Alchemy, Weird Tales, and Strange Horizons, and are collected in The Bone Key (2007).
“Boojum” was published in the excellent original anthology of fantasy and SF pirate stories, Fast Ships, Black Sails, edited by Jeff and Ann VanderMeer. It turns the premise of the anthology on its head. A tale of living spaceships that are brain-thieves, this story, in the tradition of Anne McCaffrey’s The Ship Sang, is one of this year’s most entertaining.