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…
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…
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.
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Officially got to 33% of Heretics today. So far I am on course to get this thing done by year end.
I just noticed, about 25% of the way into Heretics, that suddenly most of the story is being told from the POV of various female characters. Compare this to Prophets, where the first major female character doesn’t show up until nearly that late and she isn’t a POV character, at Read more…