Archive for Speculative Fiction
Here’s a pet peeve of mine about a communications situation that comes up sometimes in certain kinds of science fiction. The situation: Some characters are on a spaceship. They need to communicate with other characters on another spaceship nearby, but the radio isn’t working. In most versions of this situation that I encounter, the two […]
Today I learned about British sf writer and editor Hilary Bailey. I just read her 1964 novelette “The Fall of Frenchy Steiner.” I read it in The Penguin Book of Modern Fantasy by Women, in which I had previously read a couple of stories that I would classify as non-fantastical literary fiction, by a couple […]
(Spoilers here for various decades-old time-travel stories.) One of my favorite sf stories when I was a kid was Lester del Rey’s 1951 “…And It Comes Out Here,” in which a time traveler goes forward in time and steals a device (from a museum, I think) in the future, then comes back to the present […]
When I was a Strange Horizons editor, we used to occasionally receive stories in which the title gave away a major surprise plot element. I always thought of that as a kind of beginning-writer mistake, but I see now that apparently it was considered a reasonable thing to do in sf written circa 1940. For […]
A while back, I posted a chronological list of Le Guin’s major books, mostly put together by my friend Chaos. But lately, I’ve been wanting an expansion of that list that includes the original publication dates of short stories and essays. So here’s a fuller chronological list, ordered by publication year (and alphabetically within a year), […]
Just noticed that it’s been a month since I posted here. I guess that means it’s time for another status-update post. A little less avoidant than last time I posted here. Have made progress on various things; for example, finished the ebook of Mary Anne’s cookbook, and continue to asymptotically approach being done with the […]
In 1989, I wrote a story (titled “Absences”) about a kid and her brother who had survived an alien invasion. Part of the core idea of the story was that the invading aliens were super sensitive to sound; humans who made too much noise got killed, and the protagonist’s brother was deaf, so the protagonist […]
I keep seeing articles suggesting that it’s universally understood that Star Trek: Discovery wasn’t very good in the first season, and/or that it’s generally disliked by fans. Which makes me sad, because I loved the first season (and am continuing to love the second season so far). It continues to be my favorite Trek series […]
(This post is about last week’s Robert Silverberg quote that criticized N. K. Jemisin. If you read about it last week, there’s nothing new here. Content warning for descriptions of racism and for referring to Vox Day.) Last week, Vox Day posted in his blog to the effect that the list of this year’s Hugo […]
Here’s the next Strange Horizons Flashback story: “Messengers from the Stars Will Come to Help Us Overcome the Obstacles That Hold Us Back from Achieving Our True Potential,” by Grady Hendrix Voyager Sraosha is part of the Transhuman Project, and all of the Voyagers in the Project are about to Discard their human vessels to […]
I now have author-gender stats for over 80 anthologies that I’ve looked at in the past couple years, from my father’s and my bookshelves, with publication dates ranging from 1951 through about 1990, plus a few outliers outside of that date range. (This post is essentially an update of my post from a couple years […]
Here’s the next Strange Horizons Flashback story: “How to Hide Your Heart,” by Deborah Coates A man who hunts monsters meets a woman who’s really good at driving. (Somewhat NSFW.) (Content warning for hints of bad things in character backstory.) (Published in 2008.) (5,300 words.) He’s a hunter. And the things he hunts live in […]