We're pleased to announce that BULL SPEC BENEFIT NOVELLA #1 will be: William Shunn's Hugo and Nebula Award-nominated "Inclination."

The Manual tells us that in the beginning the Builder decreed six fundamental Machines. These are his six aspects, and all we do we must do with the Six. We need no other machines.


I believe this with all my heart. I do. And yet sometimes I seem to intuit the existence of a seventh Machine, hovering like a blasphemous ghost just beyond apprehension.


There is something wrong with me, and I don’t know what it is.

BULL SPEC is pleased to announce that BULL SPEC BENEFIT NOVELLA #1 will be William Shunn's Hugo- and Nebula-nominated "Inclination:"

"Inclination" tells its story through the eyes of Jude, a young boy living in a technophobic religious enclave within a much larger space station. When his father sends him to work among the biomodded Sculpted, Jude encounters a wider world he knew nothing about, and finds himself confronted by choices he couldn't have imagined just days earlier.

For previous publication information for "Inclination," free full text and audiobook versions of the story, and more, much more, visit its bibliography page and everything else you can find at Bill's website. To purchase his self-narrated and well-produced audiobook, visit its page on Audible or search for it in the iTunes Music Store. His newest book, Cast a Cold Eye, is soon to be available (update: now available!) from PS Publishing and is available for pre-order, and a chapbook collection of several of his short stories, with an fanboy-enthusiasm-level introduction by Cory Doctorow, is available as An Alternate History of the 21st Century and is now available for $5. Five. Bucks.

Note: There will be no English audiobook version of this story, as it would be difficult indeed to improve on Bill's own reading! We do plan to produce an English e-book for easy viewing, despite the story's availability in HTML from Asimov's.

Look for BULL SPEC's production of "Inclination" online, in e-book, and audiobook as BULL SPEC BENEFIT NOVELLA #1 in February or March, with 100% of donations going to benefit DURHAM LITERACY. Thanks very much to Bill for his willingness to grant BULL SPEC permission to produce his work under these terms and for his further allowing us to re-use his cover art and music clip selections.

Update: Due to some scheduling concerns, we may not be able to produce this at the quality level we'd like by February/March, in which case it would fall back to May/June. We'll keep everyone posted. We'd love to see comments on whether people would like to see simultaneous release in all formats/languages, or have these trickle out as they are available.