By C.A. King One might expect writing a short story to be an easy task in comparison to penning a full sized novel. The age old saying, ‘not everything is as it appears’ definitely applies here. The short story is actually one of the most difficult literary genres for an author to find success. Read […]
Read More The Art of Writing Short StoriesBy Roberto Minto In 2010, at the age of 81, the acclaimed novelist Ursula K. Le Guin started a blog. Blogs never seemed a likely destination for the writer, who by then had a long career in 20th-century traditional publishing behind her. But Le Guin’s new book, No Time To Spare, which harvests a representative sample of her blog […]
Read More What Happens When a Science Fiction Genius Starts Blogging?By Pope Brock was slung in my favorite deck chair, drink in hand, having a gawk at the night sky. Andromeda, Pisces … I trawled the constellations, mind abandoned, still aware in some curve at the back of my brain that the world is coming apart at the seams and we’re all fucked, and enjoying […]
Read More The Moon is Full of MoneyBy Icy Sedgwick Think of Death for a moment. Did you picture a tall guy in a hood with a scythe? Or Neil Gaiman’s funky Siouxsie Sioux character from The Sandman? Or was it a more sombre abstract notion of pain and loss? Death can be, and is, all of these things, and much more. But […]
Read More Developing a Relationship with DeathA Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin My rating: 5 of 5 stars Read for the Women of Genre Fiction Challenge, the Grand Mistresses of Genre Fiction Challenge, and the High Fantasy Challenge. My reading pace has slowed as writing deadlines have piled up on me. Writing is a bit of a feeding […]
Read More Book Review: A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le GuinIt’s the latest trend in all the spec fic magazines. Flash fiction! Write a short story that’s anywhere from a hundred words to the upper limit of a thousand words or less. Check it out! More stories in one issue! Isn’t that spectacular? Except that it isn’t. It’s really a scam by magazine publishers. It’s […]
Read More Why Flash Fiction is a ScamThe imagining of possible worlds is the staple of science fiction. As expert Bruce Sterling puts it, science fiction (or SF or sci-fi for short) is ‘a form of fiction that deals principally with the impact of actual or imagined science upon society or individuals’. In speculative fiction this impact can be strictly technological (as in novels featuring […]
Read More 43 Must-Visit Sci-fi Websites for WritersI have not read all of these yet, but the ones I have read were astounding! Like many popular terms, “space opera” was coined as an insult. It’s based on “soap opera” (nothing to do with music) and its original meaning was a “hacky, grinding, stinking, outworn, spaceship yarn.” For the purposes of this list, […]
Read More The 21 Best Space Opera Books
