Still Writing

Another year winds down, somehow we're all (most of us) still here. I call it a win. Still writing, sort of (barely). I used to pass this house on my way to and from a job years ago. I should drive out there and see if they're still putting up these decorations. My writing focus …

Time

  Time is not my friend. Every day that passes makes me that much more frustrated that I spend my life using all my energy and time in the pursuit of other people’s dreams. Time I can’t get back. I can only spend it once. Like that Daffy Duck cartoon where he keeps trying to …

Russia’s Open Book

Having an insomniac night, and find reading to be of no help in settling my mind, I switched on the tv at 4 o'clock in the morning. After flipping through the handful of channels I get on the antenna (I don't have tv cable) I ran across this on OPB (Oregon Public Broadcasting). It's a …

The Stars Seem So Far Away – Margrét Helgadóttir

I'd like to introduce you to Norwegian-Icelandic writer, Margét Helgadóttir, whose first book, The Stars Seem So Far Away, has just been released through Fox Spirit Books. Congratulations, Margét! Let's talk about the book. What is The Stars Seem So Far Away about? The Stars Seem So Far Away is a story set in a distant …

A Crystal Age

Another of my Project Gutenberg finds, “A Crystal Age” by W.H. Hudson is an early science fiction story. Originally published in 1887 anonymously, later editions had the author’s name. One wonders why it was published anonymously to begin with as science fiction was not unheard of at that time. According to Wikipedia, utopia/dystopia literature was …

Ann C Crispin, Knight of the Writing Realm

Word sadly came today of the passing of author Ann C. Crispin, science fiction writer and defender of writers everywhere through her collaboration with her friend and fellow writer Victoria Strauss, via the Writer Beware blogs here  and here, and their website.  It was only two short days ago I learned of her battle with …

Are We Becoming Eloi?

The Eloi were, of course, the child-like, cattle-like race of humans in H. G. Wells' "The Time Machine." They didn't do anything except sit around in the sun, eat the food and wear the clothes provided to them by mysterious means without even wondering where they came from. They were used as food by the …

Happy Birthday, Ray Bradbury

Born this day in 1920, left us (probably for Mars) June 5, 2012. Some of you who follow me on Twitter may have seen my tweet the other day about a lengthy dream I had in which I was talking with a young Ray. I can't really recall what we discussed, mostly I just remember …

The Casual Time Traveler

Time travel. Who hasn’t thought about what they’d do if they had the chance to go back in time and change something? Maybe you’d find a way to prevent an evil dictator from being born (Hitler, Castro, Pol Pot), stop John Wilkes Booth from assassinating Lincoln, save the Romanovs from being murdered. The problem is …

Future Sci-Fi

More random bizarro thinking on my part. I suddenly started wondering what science fiction of the future will be. Today most science fiction is focused on colonizing other planets, alien encounters, high-tech taking over, dystopias, the fall of civilization, robots, AI, time travel, extending human life. Ok, that's a whole lotta stuff. In say, a …