Martin L. Shoemaker is a programmer who writes on the side… or maybe it’s the other way around. Programming pays the bills, but a second place story in the Jim Baen Memorial Writing Contest earned him lunch with Buzz Aldrin. Programming never did that!
Martin's work has appeared in Clarkesworld, Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact, Galaxy’s Edge, Digital Science Fiction, Forever Magazine, Humanity 2.0, The Year’s Top Short SF Novels 4, Writers of the Future Volume 31, Time Travel Tales, Trajectories, Little Green Men: Attack!, The Glass Parachute, and The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-First Annual Collection.
Martin’s Clarkesworld short story "Today I Am Paul" was nominated for a Nebula award by the Science Fiction Writers of America and received the Small Press Award from the Washington Science Fiction Association. “Today I Am Paul” has also appeared in The Best Science Fiction of the Year Volume 1, The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2016 Edition, The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Third Annual Collection, and The Year's Top Ten Tales of Science Fiction 8, as well as seven international translations.
Blue Collar Space is the name for Martin's series of near-space, near-future hard science fiction stories. These stories are set on Luna, on Mars, in Jupiter orbit, and everywhere in between. It includes the award-winning stories "Scramble" (second place, Jim Baen Memorial Short Story Award, 2012), "Unrefined" (third place, Writers of the Future, 2014), and "Racing to Mars" (first place, Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact Analytical Laboratory award, 2016), as well as numerous other short stories, novelettes, and novellas. His novella "Murder on the Aldrin Express" was reprinted in Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-First Annual Collection.