All of this reflection, eventually, produced a name for the sense I had for what was missing in my writing and what unifies the pieces I enjoy the most: wonder.
Predicting the Future of Science Fiction
If we don’t have a vision for the future, the future might never arrive.
Fantasy’s Four Eras
Modern fantasy can be divided into four eras, but there first came a zeroth era which I call the pre-fantasy era.
What Makes a Classic?
There will necessarily be changes to the list of classics from time to time, and doubtless many factors must contribute to making a book a 'classic', but we should be able to come up with a rigorous definition that will endure. To do that, we need to understand what we're even trying to accomplish by categorizing something as 'classic.'
Audience and Word Choice
For whom you are writing matters, and whether your story is enjoyed or not will depend almost as much upon who is reading it as on what you put into writing it.
Reflections on the Performative Nature of Language
When we consider the organic and evolving nature of language, it becomes clear that the medium in which we as writers work is at once both a static means of information storage, and a dynamic, independent artform allowing the author to engage in a unique interaction with each reader.
Communicating Clearly
Compare these two sentences: 1) LyttIeton hypothesized long ago that Triton and Pluto originated as adjacent prograde satellites of Neptune, and 2) A physical unclonable function (PUF) is a hardware security primitive that exploits the inherent randomness of its manufacturing process to enable attestation of the entity wherein it is embodied.
Magic is Science is Science is Magic
Long before Arthur C Clarke coined the phrase “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” before Howard Taylor riffed on that claim to assert that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a big gun,” and probably even before Mark Twain wrote A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, people, and especially writers, have been fascinated by this idea of an equivalency between science and magic.
Sympathetic Nature
That single, two-word sentence sent me along a tangent about the role and purpose of imagery and sympathetic nature in writing, and why certain concepts, like that of lightning flashing, have such a powerful, dramatic effect on a scene.
Effect and Cause
A recent Writing Excuses episode to which I listened discussed the ideas of disordered storytelling, and means of writing stories that are intended to be read in an order other than from the first page to the last page. Unfortunately, it didn't really dig into the topic the way I hoped it would engage with it.
IGC Publishing 