Space Traders, DACA, and Good SF

In listening to fallout over Trump’s recent DACA decision, I’m drawn to parallels with Derrick Bell’s Space Traders, a controversial novella published in 1992 that examines what might happen if an alien race offered the US government a wondrous bounty in return for the entirety of the country’s African American population. Outlandish, right? I say […]

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The Hugos

If you’re focused at all on the Hugo Awards, by now you know that the Sad and Rabid Puppy slate was soundly defeated by an avalanche of “No Award” votes, and that the fallout is beginning to spin in multiple directions. This is, alas, almost certainly not over. For those interested in the two spins, […]

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Books that changed SF forever

Jackie Allen-Peters, a friend of mine, linked to this list of 21 books that changed science fiction from io9, and she asked how many I had read, and what I would add. Here are my answers. I’ve read at least 16 of the 21, and maybe 17 … I can’t remember if I actually read […]

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Mur and the Totally Trick Question

Yesterday I was listening to a podcast interview of Mur Lafferty. Mur is a writer, an editor, and a big name podcaster. And, of course, a recent Campbell Award winner as best new writer. The questions were interesting overall, but it seemed that the interviewer was not, let’s say, the most positive-minded person in the […]

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100 Greatest SF Stories, Written by Females

I’m all for the concept of posting this list of the 100 Greatest SF stories written by women. But what about what was arguably the first SF story ever written? By that, I mean Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, which was written in 1823, five years before Jules Verne even appeared on the scene. Since I love […]

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Perdido Street Station

The problem with reading China Mieville’s Perdido Street Station at a rate of a chapter a night is that it’s really hard to hold the whole thing in your head for that long. Just saying. Yeah, I know I’m late to that train, but we do our best, you know?

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On Spec Arrives

Imagine my joy when I came home from work this evening to find in my mail box a pair of copies of On Spec, complete with my story “Operation Hercules” and Roberta Laurie’s interview of me. I am seriously not used to all this activity around my writing. It’s kinda nice … Don’t know about […]

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Interstellar Fiction takes “Out of the Fire”

In quickly breaking news, I am happy to announce that I’ve come to agreement with Adam Crouse and the good folks at Interstellar Fiction to have my short story “Out of the Fire” published in their June issue–which should be going up, well, in June. June 1st, to be specific. Very pleased, of course. I […]

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“Three Days in May” Launched!

The Indianapolis Motor Speedway opened for practice yesterday, and that can mean only one thing! Yes! Launch day is finally here! John C. Bodin and I are pleased to announce that we’ve made a short anthology of our Indy 500 collaborations available in e-formats. You can find it in these places: Kindle Format All other […]

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