When any group of intelligent readers (and writers) of science fiction get together, the conversation will inevitably turn toward the “ghettoization” of science fiction. There is nothing new here. It has happened in every decade of science fiction since its inception. One cannot be an intelligent reader or writer of science fiction without questioning its…
I would have swore that the first time I met Harlan Ellison was at a talk he gave at the Learning Tree in Chatsworth, California in July 1995. My diary only goes back to April 6, 1996, so I thought I had no way to confirm or deny this. Until this morning. I got into…
Okay, this is not really a meme, but I was thinking about this last night as I was dozing off to sleep. Suppose a major science fiction publisher asked you to come up with the ultimate science fiction “short fiction” anthology. You were given the following guidelines for your selections: You may include up to…
I ended up doing a second workshop story critique last night instead of working on my own writing because I felt I needed to get it out of the way. I still have one more to do before Sunday when the group meets. As it turns out, I wrote a total of about 3,600 words…
Edmund Schubert continues a debate on his blog that Rob Sawyer started, asking if speculative fiction is an endangered species. Edmund was asking for thoughts on this topic and the question struck a chord with me. I posted a rather lengthy response in which I take the role of the optimist and argue for three…
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Doing a vanity search this morning, I discovered that SF Signal made mention of my post on I write science fiction. That’s pretty cool!
I figure I need some way of keeping up the momentum and so there are a few more conventions that I will be attending over the course of the rest of the year. (Although I do so with some trepidation, worried that however good they are, they cannot possibly beat my experience at Ravencon.) Next…
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My previous post was, in part, inspired by the fact that last night I pulled off two of the oldest issues of ASTOUNDING in my collection and skimmed through them. The oldest issue in my collection is the August 1945 ASTOUNDING, which contains Isaac Asimov’s “Paradoxical Escape”, on of the positronic robot stories. Also in…
I have never been to a science fiction convention before, but there are two happening relatively close by in the next couple of months, and I’m very tempted to attend at least part of each of them, if I can so arrange my schedule to do so. Balticon 41 is taking place over Memorial Day…
Any wannabe science fiction writer, like myself, who reads the chapters in Isaac Asimov’s autobiography, In Memory Yet Green, describing his first story submissions in 1938 and his first story sales can fail to become excited and envious. In past years, I read those chapters and imagined myself selling my first stories. It was like…