Agua-Cero, a Columbian SF anthology, was launched Friday, with a Spanish translation of “Second Person, Present Tense” appearing in the table of contents as “Segundo Person, Tiempo Presente”.  They wanted me to provide an audio or video introduction to play at the launch party — which I thought was a cool idea — but since the only recording equipment I own is a crappy gaming headset, I struggled for a couple days before finally giving up and sending them at the last minute a static-y and awful-sounding audio file.

(If only I had the mad skillz of James Patrick Kelly. Not to drop names here [plonk], but because Jim is also in the anthology, and because he’s  an SF podcast pioneer [podoneer?] , I wrote him an e-mail asking what he was doing for this intro — and of course he already had all the equipment and whipped out a probably great-sounding audio recording in no-time. Which means that if this trend persists, it won’t be enough to just write stories, run a website, and update a blog  — SF writers are all going to have to become recording artists. And what about video? My god, does anybody really need to see the glorious physical specimen that is the average SF writer? Okay, Andy Tisbert is an exception, because he’s a rock n roll front man who gets chicks to scream when he takes off his shirt, and James Patrick Kelly has that cool goatee thing going, but trust me, I’ve been to conventions, most of the SF revolution should not be televised. Wait, what was I talking about? Oh yeah, Agua-Cero…)

The anthology was edited by Hernán Ortiz and Viviana Trujillo, who have been great to work with. If you live in Columbia, or if you speak Spanish, buy the anthology!