Fuck this shit! Up to now I’ve been pretty quiet about this, but you all have finally pissed me off. I’m seeing all sorts of grandstanding, self-congratulatory, “I’m so fucking proud of fandom,” nonsense all over the place. This is some sort of high-water mark for the genre. Schadenfreude for Read more…
This month sees the omnibus re-issue of Forests of the Night and Fearful Symmetries in a single snazzy new package: The Moreau Quartet Volume One. For those of you that are worried about breaking up of the original Moreau trilogy, no worries. A) Fearful Symmetries is a direct sequel to Read more…
Last weekend I had a fun time at the Confluence convention in Pittsburgh. One of the panels I attended was titled “7 Things That Every SF/F Story Contains.” Kudos to the panel moderator Joshua Palmatier who managed to be the best moderator of any panel I was on, and that 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…
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…
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…
Back in the mid-1980s I read the one line that had the most profound impact on my career as a writer. It was from Vonnegut by way of Gardner Dozois, quoted in his contribution to the book Writing and Selling Science Fiction put out by SFWA in 1977. (Back when Read more…