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.
Off on a Comet! Review
It starts and ends with an utterly outlandish premise, that a chunk of the Earth should be scooped up by a comet without anyone hardly noticing, and then that it should be returned, again without anyone hardly noticing.
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.
The Gods Themselves Review
If anyone could write a compelling and insightful science fiction treatment of the concept, I thought that it would be Asimov. I was wrong.
From the Earth to the Moon and ‘Round the Moon Review
Imagine that the year is 1869. Heavier-than-air powered flight is a distant fantasy for reckless dreamers and adrenaline junkies willing to throw themselves off of cliffs to test their contraptions. The American Civil War only recently ended, and the transcontinental railroad is not quite complete. Steam-powered ships are just beginning to replace sailing vessels for oceanic travel. This is the context in which Jules Verne, one of the grandfathers of science fiction, told the story of the Apollo program.
Dialogue Short Stories Reviews
I made an exception this past week for a pair of short stories (they could almost be called flash fiction) that Brandon Sanderson recommends for studying dialogue. Since the stories were fine examples of both storytelling and writing craft, I decided to share a review for them, along with a review for Sanderson’s contribution to this technical style.
IGC Publishing 