This essay details the history of various cultural groups in the Wyrd West, and how and why they developed the way that they did. With the fluctuating, and often regional, changes in physics after the Cataclysm, a lot of modern technology that we take for granted in today’s world were rendered useless; or, worse, dangerously […]
Read More The History of Cultural Groups in the Wyrd WestThe Star by Arthur C. Clarke My rating: 4 of 5 stars Read for the 12 in 12 Challenge. This story won the 1956 Hugo for Best Short Story. This, along with A Case of Conscience by James Blish, is a story from a similar period in which the author confronts the apparent opposition of […]
Read More Story Review: The Star by Arthur C. ClarkeEnemy Mine by Barry B. Longyear My rating: 5 of 5 stars Read for the 12 in 12 Challenge and the Big Fun in a Little Package Novella Challenge. This book won the 1979 Nebula and 1980 Hugo and Locus Awards for Best Novella. I saw the movie many years ago. In the days of […]
Read More Book Review: Enemy Mine by Barry B. LongyearThe 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 AsimovBy Robbie Gonzales HALF A CENTURY ago, astronomers observed their first pulsar: a dead, distant, ludicrously dense star that emitted pulses of radiation with remarkable regularity. So consistent was the object’s signal that astronomers jokingly nicknamed it LGM-1, short for “little green men.” It wasn’t long before scientists detected more signals like LGM-1. That decreased the […]
Read More We Can Navigate Using Pulsars: Where to Now?Science 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?
