Seriously, that’s what today is.
The only reason I know this is because several years ago I was participating in a competition being held by the online writing community Codex, and one of the story requirements was to mention a holiday that occurred in February.
Naturally I went online to search for obscure holidays, hoping I’d find one that might prompt a story idea in my head. I discovered February 27th, aka International Polar Bear Day, and the result was a short story entitled “Mars Needs Baby Seals.”
A while after that, I sold the story to Eric Reynolds at Hadley Rille Books for the anthology Destination: Future, which came out on February 24th of last year (I know, I know, if only it had been delayed three more days, alas!).
“Mars Needs Baby Seals” is very silly. It was a lot of fun to write, and has the best title of anything I’ve done.
It’s also eligible for the Hugo Award this year. Mind you, it will probably never make onto the nominations ballot, but it is eligible. I just thought you should know.
I also wanted to encourage you to celebrate International Polar Bear Day. To help you to do that, I’m giving you a copy of the story.
This story is released under a Creative Commons, Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives license.
Follow the link if you’re not sure what that means.
