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Category archive: Speculative Fiction

Stuff I like in fiction

Lengthy notes on stuff I like in fiction. (More...)

Previously, on Battlestar Galactica

Battlestar Galactica returns to TV tonight for the start of its final season. (Or at least the start of the... (More...)

Futurismic fiction returns!

I continue to be out of touch; it's been a month now since Chris East announced that the fiction department... (More...)

Sarah Connor ARG

Been meaning to post more about the TV series Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, which I've been quite enjoying. (I've... (More...)

On Spinrad

In discussions of early sf criticism--of writers who write serious and thoughtful critiques of speculative fiction as literature--I hear certain... (More...)

Online sf notes from all over

It continues to frustrate me that I don't have time to read everything I want to read. Here are a... (More...)

Oz

A call for newness in worldbuilding. (More...)

New sf commentary site: io9

Annalee Newitz, Charlie Anders, and a cast of several have been running a blog called io9 for the past few... (More...)

Tiptree and Russ

I'm still reading the Tiptree bio. Getting close to the end; I'm becoming more and more aware of what I... (More...)

Anti-technological sf

I'm sometimes surprised by how often sf stories are all about the evils of technology, and how much better unmodified... (More...)

Fantasy debut novel blog

For the past couple months, Tia Nevitt has been blogging about debut fantasy novels, including reviews of some of the... (More...)

Dr. Who church service

"[St Paul's Church in Grangetown, Cardiff] is to host a Doctor Who-themed communion service aimed at young people. [The church]... (More...)

R.I.P., Madeleine L'Engle

As most of you know by now, Madeleine L'Engle has died at age 88. I liked the original Wrinkle in... (More...)

Utopia is bad?

For decades now, sf writers have been writing stories that go like this: Pick some big change (to a person... (More...)

"In the Quake Zone"

I realized recently that I had never finished reading last year's Year's Best science fiction and fantasy anthologies, and that... (More...)

"Am I going mad?"

This happened all the time in sf stories in the 1940s: the protagonist would see something strange happen, and his... (More...)

More about Year's Bests

I've just updated the Year's Best SF Info page to link to the newly posted table of contents for Best... (More...)

ISO Star Trek: The Good Parts Version

Which Star Trek episodes shouldn't be missed? (More...)

Throwing in the hat

The discussion has taken its toll, and I've decided: I'm declaring myself to be a write-in candidate for the SFWA... (More...)

Sf items from all over

Some assorted tidbits pertaining to speculative fiction: Everyone but me appears to have known for days now that last week,... (More...)

Arguments about science fiction

Among my father's books, I just found a copy of a printed fanzine. It contains, among other things: A complaint... (More...)

Bay Area events

A few noteworthy upcoming and current things happening in Redwood City and San José: Tonight (Wednesday, March 14), 7:30 p.m.,... (More...)

Delany interviews Russ

At WisCon last year, Samuel R. Delany interviewed Joanna Russ by telephone; I was sad to miss the event, but... (More...)

Year's Bests interim report

The majority of the Year's Best reprint volumes have posted tables of contents; I've been updating my Year's Best info... (More...)

Move Under Ground for free!

In honor of Nick M's birthday (happy birthday, Nick!), I'm finally getting around to mentioning that Nick has provided his... (More...)

Slobodkin site

Carol Reid of Albany, New York writes to tell me about Io Sono, her new site honoring the life and... (More...)

Flammarion woodcut

A couple weeks ago, for reasons I can't remember offhand, I was trying to figure out the name of a... (More...)

Items: Writing advice

In the past few days, I keep coming across various items of advice and commentary about writing. (The focus here... (More...)

Year's Bests info site

It seems like every year we SH editors frantically scurry around to all sorts of websites and journals and things,... (More...)

Greek suffix meets Lingua Terra

Sometimes people complain that the word polyamory is a mix of Latin and Greek roots. I've been known to make... (More...)

R.I.P., Jack Williamson

To quote Locus Online: "SF Grand Master Jack Williamson, born 1908, died this afternoon at his home in Portales, New... (More...)

BSG season 3 opener

So with the aid of the new devil device, Kam and I watched the two-hour season opener of Battlestar Galactica.... (More...)

Imminent and upcoming readings/events at Borderlands

Borderlands Books, in San Francisco, has a bunch of readings and other events coming soon. For example: Date and time... (More...)

Eleanor Arnason has a blog

I've been meaning for quite some time to link to Eleanor Arnason's blog, but I don't think I ever got... (More...)

Featured blog

My journal will be one of the featured blogs on the featured blogs page on the Asimov's site and the... (More...)

Trek apocrypha, plus fan video

A bunch of links to various kinds of Star Trek fan films, plus info on Phase II. (More...)

Review: I, Robot (movie)

I liked it quite a bit. (More...)

Author gender and Asimov's

One of the high points of WorldCon for me was getting to chat more than I usually do with Sheila... (More...)

Non-English sf

I continue to be very slow in pursuing my goal of finding out more about sf published in languages other... (More...)

Still more on gender bias in sf

We at Strange Horizons have just about filled up our publishing schedule for 2006, and have started on 2007. Interestingly, even though still only about 33% to 40% of our submissions are by women, in 2006 two-thirds of the stories we're publishing are by women. (More...)

Twenty Epics

Do you like epic fiction, but don't have time to read the latest ten-thousand-page epic series? Fear not! Twenty Epics,... (More...)

R.I.P., Jim Baen

I knew Jim Baen had had a stroke a couple of weeks ago, but I hadn't known until just now... (More...)

Ones and zeroes and copies

It's fairly common in science fiction these days to see sentient beings in electronic form--whether artificial intelligences or uploaded human... (More...)

Nalo, Beagle, et alia reading in San Francisco on Tuesday

This coming Tuesday, June 13, there are two events in San Francisco, at the same time and in different places,... (More...)

Reviewed without venom

For over three months now, I've been meaning to post a note about Liz Henry's excellent SH review of Touched... (More...)

Sultan's Elephant and Tyger

I keep seeing links to photos of "The Sultan's Elephant," but not to information about it. In case anyone else... (More...)

BSG, "previously," and the iTunes Music Store

A couple of quick thoughts about BSG that don't involve spoilers (mostly discussion of the iTunes Music Store approach to... (More...)

BSG: Wow

Very big spoilers here for the last three episodes of season 2 of Battlestar Galactica. Non-spoiler summary: I loved them,... (More...)

Becoming what they oppose

There's a trope I like a lot in fiction when it's done well: characters who are so ardent in their... (More...)

SH/SLF rapid-fire reading fundraiser, Wednesday in SF

Tomorrow night (which is to say Wednesday, 10 May), there'll be a rapid-fire reading in San Francisco to benefit Strange... (More...)

BSG: I spoke too soon

Some reasonably big and fairly specific spoilers here for the second half of season 2 of Battlestar Galactica. Kam and... (More...)

Redshirts and spear-carriers are people too

This entry contains a couple of generalized and thematic quasi-spoilers for Battlestar Galactica, especially for the first half of season... (More...)

How I explained infodumps and saved humanity

"And now," Dr. Zurückgeschichte said, "please explain to me how an infodump works." "But why would I have to explain... (More...)

Five-minute summaries

Peter W. pointed to the Five-Minute "Battlestar Galactica: The Miniseries" comic. Sort of in the style of the old Fotonovels,... (More...)

R.I.P., Stanislaw Lem

According to the SFWA obituary: Polish science fiction author Stanislaw Lem died in his home city of Krakow on Monday,... (More...)

Another Year's Best update

Assorted Year's Best TOCs and news and such: Kathryn Cramer has posted the table of contents for Year's Best SF... (More...)

More about Beagle, The Last Unicorn, and Lord of the Rings, plus Star Trek

I wrote about this a while back, but I've learned more about the situation since then, so I wanted to... (More...)

Two Hearts

I haven't finished reading all the non-SH stories from 2005 that I plan to read before making my Hugo nominations,... (More...)

Rich Horton to do Year's Bests

As many of y'all know, Rich Horton reads possibly a higher percentage of the short science fiction and fantasy published... (More...)

R.I.P., Octavia Butler

For those who haven't heard: sf writer Octavia E. Butler died on Saturday, age 58. Here are some relevant links... (More...)

Assorted sf notes

Some deadlines, to-do items, and con-related notes, and more good news for SH. (More...)

R.I.P., Andreas "G'Kar" Katsulas

Andreas Katsulas, who played G'Kar on Babylon 5, has died of lung cancer at age 59. I knew nothing about... (More...)

Genre levels

Some thoughts on plausibility and genre conventions. (More...)

R.I.P., Cynthia McQuillin

Just discovered that filksinger-songwriter Cynthia McQuillin died two weeks ago, on January 14, of renal and respiratory failure, at age... (More...)

Africa, the Other, and sf

Some items that may or may not add up to more than the sum of their parts: Okay, so there's... (More...)

Saving the future

Imagine you're an 18-year-old computer gamer in Chicago, and you're sitting around at home one evening when someone you don't... (More...)

Rangergirl reading

Just a reminder that Tim Pratt will be reading at Borderlands Books in San Francisco today (Saturday, 7 January) at... (More...)

Star Wars misconceptions

While checking the quote in that last entry, I stumbled into a forum thread on The misconceptions you had about... (More...)

Farewell to the Infinite Matrix

Friday brought the sad news that The Infinite Matrix, once the second-highest-paying online speculative fiction venue, is closing its doors.... (More...)

Productive

Here are some of the things I've done in the past week, in no particular order: finally washed some dishes... (More...)

Hitherby

Back in May, I posted some links to a few entries at Hitherby Dragons. I still haven't gone back to... (More...)

Outline of Narnian history, plus nitpicking

I'm continuing to re-read the Narnia books. Will have more to say about that sooner or later, but for now,... (More...)

The predictive power of fantasy

People are always talking about the amazing predictive abilities of science fiction. But what about fantasy? Yes, yes, Arthur C.... (More...)