I’m delighted to share that Godzilla as a Young Man Named Mike has been shortlisted for a BSFA award for Best Short Fiction for works published in 2025!
Original web page and full listing / links to all award finalists for the BSFAs here: https://www.bsfa.co.uk/bsfa-awards-shortlist
The British Science Fiction Association is a UK institution and their annual awards honour science fiction, fantasy, and horror writers from all across the world. The awards will be presented in Birmingham in April at this year’s Eastercon, the BSFA annual convention. Find out more about this brilliant convention, code-named “Iridescence” here: https://eastercon2026.org/
A little about the story
PodCastle held the “Disability: Pride and Magic” special in all of their July episodes for 2025 and I very much wanted – no, needed – to write a story for it. I have many friends who experience either visible or invisible disability (or a combination of both), and I wanted to shine a light on a small part of their journeys through dealing with diagnoses, doctors, ableist attitudes, and just the day-to-day living with incredible difficulty and pain and lack of support.
Four thousand-odd words is not enough, but we try.
When putting together a story like this, even as fantasy fiction, it is incredibly important to take people’s lived experience and feelings into account. I reached out to friends who did have such experiences, to make sure my words were sensitively done and accurate, but above all, I wanted to give them something that reflected their reality, rather than some sort of patronising “hope porn”. I cannot speak for how everyone might feel on encountering this story, but I hope that I have done it justice.
I have a disability, too, though it’s different. Thanks to my ADHD diagnoses confirming what I knew about myself for years, I have undergone my own journey, but it’s still important to note that “Mike’s” experience with physical disability is not one I have lived myself, only witnessed from the outside. Kaydee, my narrator, stands in for me, and reflects all those who can only watch helplessly on while friends and family are made to jump through hoops that our current society offers: disbelief, refusal to accommodate, bureaucratic barriers to treatment and help, and othering from those who just don’t want to understand.
But it’s not just a depressing narrative. It has rage and fire and catharsis.
I gave PodCastle these show notes, which you can read or hear on the episode page (linked below) as well as here: “The Labour government in the UK is currently proposing a severe reduction in disability welfare payments. This news has caused widespread distress, and in an already underfunded system, will likely lead to poverty, illness, and death. This indefensible political choice is just one of many aimed at disabled people in our current global climate. To anyone who is suffering this way, I wish you the strength to endure of a lizard taller than skyscrapers, and the water of community to soothe you and hold you up when you cannot. But most of all, to realise that while some people may treat Godzilla as a monster, the better folk know he is the hero of the story.”
Want to check the story out?
You can listen to the brilliant narration by Eliza Chan, or just read the story in text form, by following this link.
https://podcastle.org/2025/07/29/podcastle-902-godzilla-as-a-young-man-named-mike/
Flowers, flowers for everyone 💐
Good luck to all the shortlisted stories! It’s a privilege to be included in such good company.
The story may not win, so I guess I will give my acknowledgements now: “My heartfelt thanks goes to everyone who voted for this story – you are absolute stars! Obviously, I must also thank all the people behind PodCastle who made this happen, especially Devin Martin who championed this story from the start, and Eliza Chan for being such an excellent narrator and excellent human. I couldn’t do any of this without my writer friends, especially CL Hellisen, and the Glasgow SF Writers’ Circle critters who support me and keep me going, my other half, Doug, who is my world, and last but not least, the British SFFH community who read and review and show such love for stories like these.”
