Every year or two, someone writes another article about a genre that women have just now entered, which used to be the province of male writers. Usually it’s some form of science fiction. Lately it’s been fantasy, especially epic fantasy (which strikes me with fierce irony, because I remember when fantasy was pink and squishy […]
Read More From Dark to Dark: Yes, Women Have Always Written Space OperaA Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick My rating: 2 of 5 stars Read for the 12 Awards in 12 Months and the Science Fiction Masterworks Challenge. This book won the 1978 British Science Fiction Association Award. This is my third PKD book, and I have to say at this point, I think he’s a […]
Read More Book Review: A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. DickSometimes 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, 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!Emphyrio 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)KAMERON HURLEY’S SCIENCE fiction novel The Stars Are Legion almost never saw the inside of a book store. She came up with the idea in 2012, but she and her agent didn’t think anyone would buy it. A “big gory political space opera” wasn’t something flying off the shelves at the time. But two years […]
Read More Space Opera Fiction is Back & Better Than Ever!Now this was a resource I just had to share! I may, in the future, repost particular articles that are relevant to something I’m immediately writing, but there’s just too much stuff to post the whole series at once! Science in Sci-Fi, Fact in Fantasy is a blog series for authors and fans of speculative […]
Read More Science in Sci-Fi, Fact in FantasyScience fiction has a reputation for being a field that has traditionally been entirely dominated by white heterosexual cisgender men, both in terms of its writers and its protagonists. It’s a reputation that the whole field has been working very hard to leave behind. One often wonders (at least, I do,) how it got that […]
Read More One Reason Why Science Fiction Was Traditionally Racist — Maybe
