Clik here to view.
Which is the fictional critter?
Because nature is weird, and I like science fiction, which is the real creature, and which is the fictional critter? Critter #1 is 1 mm long critter that: Can survive in space and at the bottom of the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Book Review: Marooned in Realtime (Vernor Vinge 1986)
There are no spoilers in this review beyond what you’d find in the first few chapters or the cover blurb. Rating: 4/5 Marooned in Realtime by Vernor Vinge is the far future sequel to The Peace War, set...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Writing Prompt: Cleaning the Lab
Time: 7 minutes. Click here to go to my list of prompts. “Cleaning the lab” Ash scowled at the mess sitting in front of her. What a mess decades of research could produce. Now, as the last student, it...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Writing Prompt: Intrigue and Alchemy
Time: 10 minutes. Click here to go to my list of prompts. This prompt led to my short story “The Alchemist’s Contract“, which appeared in Swords and Sorcery Magazine in November 2013. “Intrigue and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Book Review: Cyteen (C. J. Cherryh 1988)
There are no spoilers in this review beyond what you’d find in the first few chapters or the cover blurb. Rating: 4/5 Cyteen was the winner of the 1989 Hugo Award. It is about neither cyborgs nor...
View ArticleClik here to view.
March Reading Review
Below is a list of my favorite science fiction short fiction in the last month (you can find my review for last month here). I like to read them and give myself a little time to think about them. If...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Science Fiction Worldbuilding
One thing I love about science fiction is worldbuilding. When you go to a new place, you take in the architecture, the language, the food, the weather, how someone enters a house, how someone insults...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Happy 17th Anniversary, Vironevaeh!
Tomorrow is April 15th, 17 years since I did a project about a city named Vironevaeh, chock full of V’s and vowels, because why not? Somehow it never went away, and seventeen years later, it’s hard to...
View ArticleClik here to view.
A Weekend at Ravencon
This weekend I went to my first science fiction convention, Ravencon in Richmond, and what a weekend it was. The weekend started with a bang when our hotel had a fire alarm during a tornado warning....
View ArticleClik here to view.
Bizarre Tales from the Three Notch’d Road
Bizarre Tales from the Three Notch’d Road is a collection of eight science fiction and fantasy stories celebrating the 5th anniversary of our SFF writing group. It’s now available for the kindle...
View ArticleClik here to view.
“The Lonely Man on the Ship”: Available now!
“The Lonely Man on the Ship” is now available as an e-book! “The Lonely Man on the Ship” in an illustrated science fiction fairy about the adventures of a man stuck on a broken down space ship. It is...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The slow and steady
Over six months ago, I challenged myself to do 100 illustrations of my city of Vironevaeh, the fictitious city that is the unspellable namesake of this website. I would build my world in myriad ways,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Book Review: Ancillary Justice (Ann Leckie 2013)
Note: in this review, I spoil nothing beyond the first few chapters or back cover blurb. Rating: 4/5 stars Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie grabbed me quickly, with tight writing and careful and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Diversity in Science Fiction: Some Diverse Reads
Science fiction often touts itself as the genre of the future. But science fiction is a reflection of today as much as it is a dream about the future. Science fiction has been too white and too male,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Book review: The Dispossessed (Ursula Le Guin 1974)
Rating: 2/5 I first read The Dispossessed in high school. I wasn’t wild about it. But high schoolers lack knowledge of government and people and how we get along together, major topics of the book, so...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Science Fiction and the West: Part 1
Three events inspired this post: 1) I reread A Canticle for Leibowitz, set in future Utah, for the first time since moving west, 2) a member of my scifi club out east joined wordpress (check out his...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Science Fiction and the West: Part 2
The western landscape is absurd. There are massive towers of rock, ancient ruins, and strange colors. There are fields of lava and dunes of drywall. In a recent post, I talked about how the west evokes...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Writing prompt: Submarine day
Time: 7 minutes. Click here to go to my list of prompts. “Submarine day” (Inspired by this list of silly holidays. Because St. Pat’s would be too obvious!) The sub was beginning to stink. It reeked of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Vironevaeh: 19 years of love
Like so many of us sci-fi-ers, I grew up on science fiction television. I remember watching Star Trek Next Generation in a high chair, and later I watched Babylon 5 and Voyager. I feared the space...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Writing prompt: A pint and prompt!
Back in Virginia, our writing group had what we called a Pint and Prompt. A group of friends hit the bar, have a pint, and write for a few minutes on a writing prompt. Then you read your responses to...
View Article
