Behold the Man by Michael Moorcock My rating: 5 of 5 stars Read for the SF Masterworks Challenge and the Science Fiction Masterworks Book Club. This was amazingly subversive at the time that it was written. And I suppose that a person who was raised Christian or Jewish might find it mind-blowingly subversive even now. […]
Read More Book Review: Behold the Man by Michael Moorcock#30days30authors
Read More I Write to Create Myself#30days30authors In a city of glass, where people who are just Numbers living in glass-brick houses, and everyone’s daily routine is determined by the Tables of the Hours set down by the Well-Doer, one particular Number, D-503, is developing a dangerous affliction. He is nurturing a soul. This could put his life and that of […]
Read More Orwell vs Huxley vs ZamyatinOriginally posted on The Angry Staff Officer:
When I think of the six warfighting functions I always think of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. What, you don’t? Let’s be honest, one does not immediately think of fantasy or science fiction when conversations turn to Army doctrine. Most vignettes that are used to make the…
By Matt Staggs J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings (first volume, 1954) may have codified many of the tropes of fantasy literature — noble elves, doughty dwarves, magic swords, and long-bearded wizards — but the genre’s roots stretch many years back. The late nineteenth and early twentieth century in particular saw a […]
Read More 4 Epic Fantasy Novels Written Before The Lord of the RingsBy Fran Wilde Once upon a time (cough, August 6, 2013, actually), Tor.com published “I Hate Boats,” by Carl Engle-Laird. Carl’s gone on to brilliant things, but I still want to argue with him about the post, and especially this sentence in particular: “Whenever my beloved protagonists get on a boat, I groan, put the […]
Read More It’s All in the Rigging: 9 of the Best Boats in FantasySome writers continually submit the same manuscript until it is accepted. Others chose to do a more polished draft before sending it out again. A select few learn from the lessons of submissions, to write a completely new book. What they all have in common is a persistence to never give up on their dream; […]
Read More Bestsellers Initially RejectedBy Sam Reader The term “space opera” conjures grand vistas, massive spaceships, multi-threaded plots of romance and intrigue, dashing protagonists, and dastardly villains, evoking all the grandiosity of an opera and the hallmarks of the best imaginative science fiction. But while all this is true, operas rarely come in a single flavor. There are gothic horror operas, romantic […]
Read More 6 Space Operas That Explore the Comedic Side of the CosmosSometimes in my stories, a space ship *does* blow up on page three. But even then, my work always has something deeper to say, and I find the dismissal irritating. Every science fiction writer has something that drives him or her. For many if not most writers this is the need to pen a […]
Read More A Space Ship Does Not Blow Up on Page ThreeWell, 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 Limits
