I have a short story out in the November/December issue of Analog Magazine! Co-written with Australian SF writer Corey J. White, “Family Business” is the story of seven generations of the Weathersmith family, charting their rise and fall and rise and fall in the carbon removal industry. It features offset accounting scams, undersea engineering, ancestor AIs, and messy family drama.

Here’s an excerpt from about halfway into the story, when Rory (5ish generations in) finds out their dolphin employees have gone on strike:

“Why not send some drone submersibles down there to check the seals ourselves? The only reason we use dolphins is because Aunt Eudy was an absolute freak.”

“Well, zir, that is the other piece of bad news. Our subcontractors did send drones. But, you see zir, the dolphins destroyed the drones before they could reach the reservoir. I’ve seen the footage. They are…very violent.”

Rory got up and paced circles, their vat-leather Louis Vitton boat shoes squeaking on the polished wood.

“I’m not going to ask how,” they announced. “I really don’t want to know. What I do want to know is, where did they get these ideas? Who’s been salting these fishes?”

“Researchers, zir, working to advance interspecies cultural exchange. Apparently very few human concepts were of interest to the dolphins until the researchers tried explaining dialectical materialism.”

If you want to hear me talk about carbon removal and climate repair as a real world prospect, I recently had a lot of fun going into it on the Pullback podcast here.

This is my second story I’ve published with CJW, but it’s actually the first one we wrote together. It’s also the first time either of us has been published in Analog, which is one of the biggest and most storied SF magazines out there. Super excited to have this story out there!

So please, give it a read by supporting Analog with a print or digital subscription (a year’s digital subscription is only $6!!). You may also be able to find copies in some bookstores——not positive but I think Analog is one of the SFF mags carried on magazine racks at Barnes & Noble. It should look like this: