By Jeanette Ng Well described meals can add a lot of flavour to one’s world building. I have clear memories of salivating over the banquets described in Brian Jacques’ Redwall books. Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games has meticulously described food, especially in with each district having its own distinctive bread. I love writing about food almost […]
Read More Tidbits from a Pseudo-Medieval KitchenThe Bicentennial Man by Isaac Asimov My rating: 5 of 5 stars Read for the 12 in 12 Challenge, and the Big Fun in a Little Package Novella Challenge. This story won the 1977 Hugo, Nebula and Locus for Best Novelette. Once again, Asimov proves his mastery of the medium of “science fiction story.” He […]
Read More Book Review: The Bicentennial Man by Isaac AsimovScience fiction and fantasy mashups are popular right now. They give us an excuse to abandon typical SFF tropes for elements we’re familiar with in other genre fiction. Here’s some tips and tricks for successful plotting and worldbuilding in a mashup genre: Familiarize Yourself with the Blended Genre Okay, so you’re writing a space opera […]
Read More Successful Worldbuilding in SFF MashupsBy Dan Koboldt It’s always bothered me that fantasy and science fiction get lumped together into a single category. The two genres seem very different, at least on the surface. Fantasy usually features some kind of magic as a core speculative element. It often takes place in a secondary world at a pre-industrial state of […]
Read More Dan Koboldt on Magic Versus Technology in SF/FBarrayar by Lois McMaster Bujold My rating: 5 of 5 stars Read for the 12 in 12 Challenge, the Military Spec-Fic Challenge, the Women of Genre Fiction Challenge, the Read the Sequel Challenge, and the Space Opera Challenge. This book won the 1992 Hugo and Locus Awards. This is not the first time, nor even […]
Read More Book Review: Barrayar by Lois McMaster BujoldWeyr Search by Anne McCaffrey My rating: 5 of 5 stars Read for the 12 in 12 Challenge, the Big Fun in a Little Package Novella Challenge, the Women of Genre Fiction Challenge, and the Grand Mistresses of Genre Fiction Challenge. This classic novella, which won the Hugo award for Best Novella in 1968 and […]
Read More Book Review: Weyr Search by Anne McCaffreyBy David Barnett Two centuries. Two hundred years. That’s how long we’ve had science fiction. From the birth of Frankenstein, to the death of Ursula K Le Guin. Two hundred years. This was originally meant to be just the story of Frankenstein, written by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley and published on 1 January 1818. But this week, with […]
Read More If Mary Shelley Invented SF, Why Are So Few Female SF Writers Known?The Centauri Device by M. John Harrison My rating: 5 of 5 stars Read for the Hard-Core Sci-Fi Challenge, the Space Opera Challenge, the SF Masterworks Challenge, and the Science Fiction Masterworks Book Club here on Goodreads. This crazy book reads like a combination of Philip K. Dick, Alfred Bester, and Douglas Adams. Part madcap […]
Read More Book Review: The Centauri Device by M. John HarrisonScience fiction and fantasy, in my experience, are rarely all one thing. Sometimes – often! – SFF blends elements of other genres of fiction into it. For instance, I think just about every Philip K. Dick novel I’ve read is either transgressive fiction or a detective/crime novel. Sometimes those elements seem so weird that not […]
Read More Science Fiction & Fantasy MashupsFrom the December 2013 issue of Locus Magazine Telling people who don’t read science fiction and fantasy that I write it is still awkward. My mom used to tell people I wrote ‘‘novels like Stephen King,’’ even though I can’t watch a movie more supernaturally terrifying than Ghostbusters without enduring fierce nightmares, insomnia, and night sweats. I prefer corporeal, knife-wielding villains […]
Read More Kameron Hurley: Making Excuses for Science Fiction
