Alternative world (or secondary world) fantasy gets all the attention these days as the quintessential owner of the steepest learning curves, but those expositionary slopes are molehills compared to the mountainous terrain to be conquered in the hardest of science fiction that the genre has to offer, like Garfinkle's All of an Instant.
Lloyd’s Best Books of 2022
Everyone and anyone who does book reviews probably does a similar post around this time, but given my...eclectic reading list, I doubt I need fear redundancy.
Perfected Life
If this technology can enable us to be more productive, healthier, and more fulfilled, what possible argument can be made for why implementing it would be detrimental?
The Island of Doctor Moreau Review
If the fantasy genre has its roots in fairy tales and mythology, science fiction birthed from the horror genre in a kind of mutated mitosis. That relationship is on prominent display in HG Wells' The Island of Doctor Moreau.
The Young HG Wells Review
No, I think that one need not like an author or their views in order to like their books, which is a good thing, because after reading Tomalin's biography of HG Wells, he's definitely not my favorite person.
Blood Magic S3:E10: Principles Release
It doesn’t come up a lot in my writing on the site, but I’m something of a Star Trek fan, and the style of storytelling utilized by that franchise was certainly in the back of my mind while I was writing the outline for the Blood Magic series. Two episodes particularly stand out for that influence, and both of them involve Pifecha: Strange Lands, and this one.
War of the Worlds Review
In other words, it is a more realistic depiction, devoid of cluttering drama, and reads like the framing story intends: as a pamphlet describing a few experiences and perspectives on the Martian invasion.
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.
Nightfall
Another classic piece of science fiction, this should take you less than an hour to read, but it will set you thinking for long after you've finished it. You might say that it will keep you thinking after Nightfall.
Failing Writing Aliens
I wanted to dedicate a post to a specific aspect of writing science fiction: writing aliens. Or, as the title more accurately asserts, failing to write aliens.
IGC Publishing 