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Martin L. Shoemaker

Martin L. Shoemaker is a software developer and a science fiction and fantasy author. Software helps him think about technology and its impact on our lives, inspiring his fiction; fiction lets him explore how people work with new technologies, inspiring his software.

Programming pays the bills, but his second-place story Scramble, in the Jim Baen Memorial Writing Contest, earned him lunch with Buzz Aldrin.

His Clarkesworld (8/15, Issue 107) story Today I Am Paul received the Washington Science Fiction Society’s Small Press Award, and was also nominated for the Nebula award. He has been reprinted in Year’s Best Science Fiction: Thirty-third Annual Edition (edited by Gardner Dozois), The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume One (edited by Neil Clarke), The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy 2016 (edited by Rich Horton), and The Year’s Top Ten Tales of Science Fiction 8 (edited by Allan Kaster). He has been translated into French, Hebrew, Czech, Polish, German, and Chinese.

Others of his stories have appeared in Clarkesworld, Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact, Galaxy’s Edge, Digital Science Fiction, Forever Magazine, Humanity 2.0, Time Travel Tales, Trajectories, Little Green Men: Attack!, The Glass Parachute, Writers of the Future Volume 31, and the charity anthology The Gruff Variations: Writing for Charity Anthology, Vol. 1. His novella Murder on the Aldrin Express was reprinted in Year’s Best Science Fiction Thirty-First Annual Collection and in Year’s Top Short SF Novels 4. His novelette Racing to Mars won the first place and received the Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact Analytical Laboratory award, 2016.

Martin also runs The Instant Story Show, where improvisation meets science fiction. With the help of his assistant Bill Emerson, Martin dictates a short story live, with audience input.

Here is the list of Martin’s stories:

When Martin is not writing, he is a software developer with 27 years experience in the industry. He worked in the fields of color science, online shopping, databases, material handling, medical imaging, and customer relations management.

He studied Computer Science at University of Michigan and Grand Valley State University.

He is a frequent speaker, and his most popular presentations are UML (Unified Modeling Language) courses, which he both wrote and presents.

Martin wrote two books on UML: UML Applied: A .NET Perspective from Apress and Ulterior Motive Lounge: UML, 80s Flicks, and Bunny Slippers, the world’s first UML comic strip. A slightly twisted introduction to the Unified Modeling Language, originally published online in 2009, this successful comic strip uses humor and simple examples to teach UML to a wide audience.

Follow him on Facebook and on Twitter. Visit his writing homepage and personal blog Old Town Tales. Read his list of books at Goodreads. View his LinkedIn profile and his professional site, The UML Guy, and his professional Facebook site. Read about Martin at SFWA.