I am still dazed from a weekend-long sci-fi / fantasy conference, Tuscon 42. The name of it looks like a misspelling of Tucson, but it isn’t. It’s supposed to mean something like TUS (the airport designation) + CONference, hence Tuscon. Cute, … Continue reading
An astronaut is injured in a dust storm on Mars. His crewmates give him up for dead and head home. Miraculously, he survives (some extreme hand-waving is needed to explain that). He makes it to the inflated canvas habitat left … Continue reading
A friend was horrified to read the first writing assignment in her just-started class. It read, “Write a story about a 20-something telling his/her parents, who are having their own marital problems, about an impending marriage to a much older … Continue reading
Funny, Imaginative, and Vulgar This is my first Palahniuk novel, and to my surprise, I enjoyed it. Surprised because it’s not the sort of thing I normally like, a hodge-podge of urban punk, violent, humorous, sci-fi, horror of an experimental thing. … Continue reading
An interesting and well-written article at NBC news discussed the recent discovery of earth-like planet Kepler 452b, sometimes dubbed, “Earth 2.0.” http://www.nbcnews.com/science/space/could-human-beings-ever-reach-earth-2-0-n399956 Apparently, Earth 2.0 is rocky, moderate in temperature, and could harbor liquid water. It might even have an … Continue reading
What To Assume About Aliens Lem, Stanislaw (1968). His Master’s Voice. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich (199 pp.) It barely counts as a novel, this story presented as a single scientist’s memoir of a project he worked on long ago. … Continue reading
Surprisingly to me, definitions of science fiction differ significantly. I may have just written a sci-fi novel and if so, I’m interested in understanding what I did. Authors seem to agree that science and technology feature as necessary elements of … Continue reading
I recently discovered a category of sci-fi called “mundane” sci-fi. (See https://sfgenics.wordpress.com/2013/07/04/geoff-ryman-et-al-the-mundane-manifesto/) Mundane sci-fi eschews aliens, intergalactic travel, and interstellar communication, as these are entirely unrealistic and qualify as fantasy, not sci-fi. Instead, the “mundanes,” … Continue reading
New novel: The Newcomer Have you ever wondered if you were really a robot or perhaps an alien? I’d be surprised. Nobody has reason to doubt their personhood. My latest novel, The Newcomer, is about an android, a human-like, human-looking robot. … Continue reading