Some of you may know about my Spelljammer fanfiction the Toy Soldier Saga. For those who don’t, it has a special place in my heart for many reasons. The first is that I love the Spelljammer D&D campaign setting. I think it’s an amazing amount of fun! A few characters that I played in that […]
Read More Pity You Can’t Publish ItWell, I suppose I’m nothing if not amazing under pressure! After last night’s blog post, I promptly took a nap because I was exhausted (one of the reasons I figured I was not going to make my deadline; that and the expanded story). Then, as many writers do, I woke up at eleven-thirty at night […]
Read More Ha! I Made My Deadline After All!If I have one big flaw as a writer (indeed, as a participant in life!) it’s that I’m terrible for deadlines. I’m the one who streaks in to work at the bell (and sometimes a couple of minutes after the bell). I’m the one who always did my homework the night before it was due […]
Read More Not Making My DeadlineWell, it’s clear that space opera is making a comeback! It’s too bad they don’t seem to notice that none of these themes are new. Thanks to their folkloric storytelling and galaxy-spanning scale, “space operas” have always been near to science fiction’s heart. Even the chilliest of them – Olaf Stapledon’s Last and First Men, […]
Read More Space Opera is Taking Humanity to its LimitsSome possible precipitating factors are already in place. How the West reacts to them will determine the world’s future, says Rachel Nuwer. The political economist Benjamin Friedman once compared modern Western society to a stable bicycle whose wheels are kept spinning by economic growth. Should that forward-propelling motion slow or cease, the pillars that define […]
Read More How Western Civilization Could CollapseEmphyrio by Jack Vance My rating: 3 of 5 stars Read for the SF Masterworks Reading Challenge and the Science Fiction Masterworks Book Club. I had a really hard time getting into this book. At first I was ready to dismiss this whole thing as a bunch of right wing propaganda claptrap. Ghyl, our protagonist, […]
Read More Book Review: Emphyrio by Jack VanceThis is great stuff! There’s no bigger pet peeve of mine than someone pontificating on high about the “right” way to do something. We all have our own ways of doing things, and there are many paths to the top of the mountain. What worked for you is what worked for you; not what works […]
Read More The Ten Worst Pieces of Writing Advice You Will Ever Hear (and Probably Already Have)Red Holocaust by James Axler My rating: 2 of 5 stars Read for the Apocalypse Now! Reading Challenge. Method of the world’s destruction: global thermonuclear and biochemical warfare. This book was pretty much exactly what I expected. The Deadlands series takes place about a hundred years after a major thermonuclear and biochemical war plunged the […]
Read More Book Review: Red Holocaust by James Axler (Deathlands #2)A handful of megacorporations acquire a complete lockdown on every major market in the world, including the media, access to books, our food, our water, and the air we breathe. Corruption at the highest levels of government, general apathy, and a determined propaganda campaign prevents humanity from doing anything to stop it. Frederik Pohl & […]
Read More 6 Dystopian Sci-Fi Plotlines I’ve Seen in the News Recently
