Ken Macleod is a terrific writer. He’s written some marvelous novels, and is increasingly showing up on awards ballots for his short fiction.  His story “Lighting Out” recently won the British Science Fiction Award for Best Short Story of the Year.  What’s not widely known is that it was originally written for The Starry Rift.  When Ken sent me the story I was delighted, but when I read it, I knew something didn’t work but I couldn’t put my finger on what.  We went round and round about it for a while, and ultimately agreed it just wasn’t working. Ken, however, sat down with the story, made some major changes (mostly changing the gender of everyone in the story), and made it work really well. It appeared in disLOCATIONS and you can read it here.