This weekend, Friday July 24 to Sunday July 26, I— along with my new shirts— will be attending Confluence, “Pittsburgh’s premier SF/F/H literary conference.” The location is: Doubletree by Hilton Cranberry Pittsburgh (that’s a mouthful) 910 Sheraton Drive, Mars, PA 16046. My con schedule: Big Ideas: “Philosophical” Science Fiction …. Read more…
While this blog post I read conflates a number of issues that I think are unrelated, it raises an issue that I think is valid for most authors to think about. It is the nature of most fiction, especially genre fiction, to focus on a central character, the protagonist. This Read more…
There is a very old trope in SF, epitomized in the novel Slan by A. E. van Vogt, where a subset of humanity “evolves” some form of mental/psychic gift and is subsequently persecuted by the majority “normal” population. It’s a theme particularly suited to expressing alienation, and the term “Fans Read more…
I have read some stupid assertions about Science Fiction and Fantasy over the years. As I have internet access, this is inevitable. People say idiotic things occasionally. Then I read this from the Daily Kos, and watched as the bullshit reached such a density that the article collapsed through it’s Read more…
For various reasons I’ve been pondering thrillers as a genre lately, considering the directions of future projects. One of the nice things about SFF is the fact that it is the universal donor of literary genres. Tropes from science fiction and fantasy can be mixed with almost any other genre Read more…
So SF Signal led me to a review of a rather odd play with the provocative title (review title, not play title) “Why Are So Many Fictional Utopias as Terrifying as Dystopias?” This is a subject I’ve touched on before. But the review’s author hits on something I haven’t touched on, Read more…
Two things converged in my head recently. I didn’t comment about the whole Game of Thrones rape kerfuffle last month. Mostly because I don’t watch Game of Thrones. But the controversy about it seemed (to me) to spring from a deep conflict between the contemporary ethos of sexual morality and a fiction portraying a Read more…
I’ve always liked Stephen King. He counts as one of the significant influences on me as a writer. And reading (listening to) one of his more recent works, 11/22/63, I came to an epiphany about one of the major techniques he uses to keep readers continually turning the pages. Maybe Read more…
Over at Making Light there’s a serious proposal that seems a lot more constructive than the cries of “No Award” and looks as if it addresses the issue with slate voting. It seems to do so without being anti-democratic, needlessly arcane, or open to too much manipulation. I’d hope, despite Read more…
10) No, the Hugos weren’t captured by some sort of conspiracy. It’s silly to say it’s a conspiracy. So silly, in fact, that saying that someone else is saying it’s a conspiracy is a nice bit of rhetorical judo that makes one feel intellectually superior to the crazy wing-nuts who are Read more…