Welcome to The Fantastic Worlds of Alan Vincent Michaels
[Updated: 05 February 2010]
Welcome to my speculative fiction and poetry website. I'm still working on adding content, so please feel free to send me an e-mail if you have a question. Ad astra, my friends! —Alan
Poems and scifaiku
[2010]
My Robota scifaiku was accepted for the July/August 2010 issue of STAR*LINE, the journal of the Science Fiction Poetry Association.
I am delighted to report that STAR*LINE also accepted my longer-form poem, Skipping Stone (Last transmission from an alternative Apollo 13 crew), for the September/October 2010 issue.
[2009]
My Ghosts of the Machines and Stellar Games scifaiku were published in the March/April 2009 (32.2) issue of STAR*LINE. For a list of the issue's contents:
click here
Want to learn more about STAR*LINE and its speculative fiction poetry mission?
click here
Want to know more about scifaiku? click here
Issue cover image courtesy of STAR*LINE. Cover art ©2009 by Daniel Trout.
Short stories
[2010]
My honorable mention short story, Fads (Or Why Jerry Loathes the Aliens), will soon be released exclusively on the 2034: Writing Rochester's Futures website. Fads is a first-contact story, set in Rochester, New York, in the year (you guessed it!) 2034, which is Rochester's bicentennial. The story focuses on the effect aliens and their technology have on the two main characters, Jerry and Mark, even though the aliens left Earth five years ago. I also muse upon the effect that first contact has on the rest of civilization and the collective human psyche. I am extremely curious about what place Earth might have in a Galactic Commonwealth populated by races far older and more advanced than our own.
2034: Writing Rochester's Futures is the first speculative fiction anthology in print and online from R-SPEC Press and R-SPEC.org. From the cover: "It's 2034 on the edge of the altered state of New York, by some of the wildest new voices and best writers in speculative fiction. Read it before you live it."
Want to learn more about R-SPEC.org? click here
Book cover image courtesy of R-SPEC Press. Cover art ©2009 by David Pascal.
Treasures from the time vaults
[1993]
I've received inquiries about my first publication in a major magazine.
I'm happy to note I won a content sponsored by Robert Silverberg and Kim Mohan, which was published in the February 1993 issue of Amazing Stories. In Robert Silverberg's 'Reflections' column, you'll find several of my time-traveling camera ideas that caught their attention and gave me my first 15 nanoseconds of science fiction fame.
Magazine cover art ©1993 by Laura and John Lakey
[1990]
Thank you for the inquiries and the encouragement, but The Dream Lives On! - The Unofficial Collector's Guide to the Music of Tangerine Dream (originally released in May 1990) remains out of print and is unlikely ever to see a second edition.
The reason is that Edgar Froese and Tangerine Dream, not to mention all the band alumni, have released far too many recordings in the intervening years for me to revise the guide.
Book and cover art ©1990 by Alan Vincent Michaels
Several curious cases of mistaken identity!
My real name is Alan Vincent Michaels. (My middle name is the key!) Although I am flattered by the e-mails I have received, but I am not the 'Alan Michaels' who authored Diamonds and Legend. Those novels were written by a retired British foreign services officer, who has released several books using 'Alan Michaels' and other pseudonyms. Also, I am not the 'Alan V. Michaels' who plays violin on Richard Thompson's Sweet Warrior and Walking on a Wire albums, nor am I a real estate agent working in Las Vegas. Hopefully, that clears up the mystery and sets the record straight!
