My First Science Fiction Short Story, Published 25 Years Ago Today

What was it? A short story entitled “Alien Animal Encounters,” which I sold to Strange Horizons magazine, and which they published on this day in 2001. Prior to this story, I had never submitted a short story of any sort (much less a science fiction short story) to any publication. I had written short stories in high school and one in college (although that one was actually half written in high school, finished in college), and then after that there was a long dry spell for years until this one. What did I do in the interim? Well, I had a career in newspapers, did a turn as the in-house writer/editor for AOL, did a lot of freelance work, started a blog, published a non-fiction book, and even wrote a novel, which, once it was done, I plopped on this site for people to read because (among other things) I was too lazy to shop it. I kept busy. I wrote this particular short story, if memory serves, in the immediate aftermath of the completion of Old Man’s War, the second novel I’d written,…