Language in Fantasy and Science Fiction

One of the things that really pulls me into a story and transports me to a fantastical or future setting is the language, specifically the invented slang and terminology for various things. For example in Star Trek we have "phasers," "beaming," "transporters," "replicators," "tricorders," "hyposprays," "Jefferies tubes," "Turbolifts," and on and on. Firefly didn't have …

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 …

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 …

Good Saturday

I probably should have been more "responsible" but I needed some downtime so I went out for another bike ride. Did a little better this week than last week, much better than I expected for not having been on the bike in probably 9 months. Also have several writing projects going, which is interesting to …

How to get the little woman to try sci-fi

Well, I’ll tell ya. I wrote this post at the urging of  a couple of guys who wanted suggestions of books and movies to try to interest their spouses in science fiction. So I thought, ok, it could be that many women have simply not been exposed to it, or are not aware of the …

More Bad Book Covers

I had thought the previous crop of tramp-stamped dommes in fetish gear wielding swords on book covers  was bad enough. But these two recently caught my eye, and I'm hoping this isn't the next trend. Come on. Who would ever walk around dressed like that, packing that much heat? If you're going to war, I …

Why Don’t Women Like Sci-Fi?

All this brouhaha over "John Carter" being a flop and the reasons for it hit a new low this morning. Here I was, minding my own business, reading my Twitter timeline, when I see a retweet saying "Men are from Mars, and Women are Nowhere in Sight." I had a bad feeling but I went …