This past week saw my 59th birthday, and as a present my wife got me The Complete Tales of Jules de Grandin by Seabury Quinn, all five hardback volumes. Many of you might be saying “who?’ right now. I don’t blame you. Even back in the 1970s and 1980s when Read more…
When I’ve commented on bookish controversies on this blog before, it usually is in regards to “authors behaving badly” be they plagiarizing or trying to game the NY Times bestseller list. But this time I don’t think the author in question had any ill intent at all. I think that Read more…
That’s the good news. I’m several chapters into book two and I’m enjoying myself. That said, I don’t have a home for it yet. It’s not usual for me to get committed to a project like this before I know where it’s going to sell. But I like my main Read more…
S. Andrew Swann is giving away ARCs of his novel Teek, which is going on sale on Amazon.com October 15th.
It has been a while since I’ve done a rant about plagiarism. It’s one of the more corrosive bits of self-destruction writers engage in. It might be envy, or laziness or something deep-seated and broken in the writer’s psyche, but in most cases I’ve heard of, the plagiarist is compulsive Read more…
So a few days ago Slate published an article in what has become a distressingly common subgenre we could call “People are writing SF wrong! Here’s what we must do to fix it!” It seems to have been inspired by an earlier article in Vox about “Hopepunk,” a nascent literary movement whose Read more…
So far my Facebook group, Swann’s Lounge, seems to be a success. But it comes at a price. On one of the more popular threads people are listing “obscure” SF/F titles. There’s a lot of good stuff in there. But apparently it’s been long enough for Jack L. Chalker’s Well Read more…
I’ve been reading some Neal Stephenson lately and I’ve been reminded of a point that I often try to make when I do my world-building talks. The point being that the skills used for world-building in science fiction and fantasy are not genre specific. I see writers who assume that Read more…
I wrote about the morality of fiction earlier, a couple of things I’ve read recently brought me back to the question from the another side. In that post I was talking about morality of fiction in light of the inner processes of the author. But really, when most people talk Read more…
So I noticed that the movie Zootopia is on Netflix now, and it reminded me of a little fan theory I developed back when I saw the movie in theatres. If you’ve seen it, you may have noticed something that differentiates this film from the typical Disney (or any) “funny Read more…