science fiction

Apotheosis Trilogy

Two down, one to go.

Just wrapped up the draft of Heretics, YEA! Something over a hundred thousand words of epic destruction as I continue in my apocalyptic deconstruction of the Hostile Takeover universe. I’ll be doing some fixing up of the draft this week (a few retroconned scenes here, some backfill there, epigrams everywhere) and should get a copy off to DAW by Monday. Doesn’t mean I’m done with it, for good— I always have editorial revisions— but I’ll be done with it for now.

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By S Andrew Swann, 17 years ago

philosophy

So what is SF good for?

Following up on the sense of wonder post, as well as picking up some threads from my earlier post on Mundane SF, and the latest Scalzi article for AMC, I’ve had a lot of different thoughts percolating about a particular question: “Why write SF in the first place?” Of course Read more…

By S Andrew Swann, 17 years ago

lol

In defense of sense of wonder

There’s been a grumbling brewing about various places that seem to question one of the core attributes of science fiction. It’s a point of view that I think is crystallized nicely in a recent post on Nancy Kress’ blog: Maybe the world has gotten too grubby and jaded for “awe.” Read more…

By S Andrew Swann, 17 years ago

Apotheosis Trilogy

Why I like space opera

I’ve destroyed an entire star-system, simultaneously blown up a network of a hundred-odd wormholes across about 100 light years, and I’ve just carpet-bombed an entire planet with pure distilled singularity. . . And I’m only half done with the trilogy.

By S Andrew Swann, 17 years ago

movies

Five flavors of dystopia

A recent email reminded me of a panel I was on at at Context. The subject was about making dystopias, which seems an oddly timely subject. One of the things we discussed a little bit was the fact that there can be a number of different kinds of dystopia, depending Read more…

By S Andrew Swann, 17 years ago

science

The stuff that really changes the world

There’s a bias in SF and its brethren such as alternate history to do world building around the big ass stuff; wars, revolutions, catastrophes. Or, for the sciencey mindset, the big ass discoveries that change our understanding of cosmology or fundamental physics, or some sort of massive engineering or computing Read more…

By S Andrew Swann, 17 years ago

Actually, yeah you CAN write near-future SF

According to Charlie Stross: We are living in interesting times; in fact, they’re so interesting that it is not currently possible to write near-future SF. He has a few points about the hazards of planning a near-future SF novel in a plausible fashion, the most important IMHO being the long Read more…

By S Andrew Swann, 17 years ago

Apotheosis Trilogy

We Can Haz Book Trailer?

Prophets comes out in March 2009, and in advance of it coming out I have made my first attempt at a book trailer. The images are from NASA, a godsend for folks looking for spectacular royalty-free sfnal imagery. The music comes from Kevin MacLeod who runs a great music site Read more…

By S Andrew Swann, 17 years ago

appearances

Out of Context/In Context

Just a note that I will be showing up at Context 21 Saturday and Sunday. I’m on three panels: 11:30 AM SAT How To Build A Dystopia 1:00 PM SAT Genre Labels 1:00 PM SUN Are Agents Necessary? I’m not going to be there tonight though, so don’t look for Read more…

By S Andrew Swann, 17 years ago