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Columnists

Asta’s Annotations: Editing Tips for Sci-Fi/Fantasy Writers

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Today I thought I would cover three of the common editing queries I see from science fiction and fantasy writers. 1) World and Race Names The common issue here appears to be whether or not to capitalise. My advice is to follow standard English conventions, unless you have a strong reason not to do so. In either case, the real key is consistency. Don’t swap and change from chapter to chapter; make a decision on your preference and stick to it. Here is an example based on common English usage, followed by a fantasy rendering. In Denmark, many Danes enjoy … Read more

Jeff Baker—Boogieman In Lavender

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The View From Worldcon, or Down On The Swanwick River by Jeff Baker A stack of autographed books and a head full of memories. Those are the souvenirs from a few days at MidAmeriCon II, the World Science Fiction Convention, held in Kansas City, MO August 17 through 21, 2016. We got there Thursday the 18th in time for me to drive over to the Crown Center (the vast convention facility where the convention was being held) and see it all for myself. I had been to Bouchercon (the Mystery Writers of America Convention) in Cleveland in 2012 so I … Read more

Angel’s Bits – Author as Reader

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It bothers me on a wince-inducing, cellular level when an author says these words: I don’t have time to read. Dude (used in the gender-neutral, collective sense) – that’s part of your job as an author. To read. Oh, I know. We can’t read everything. Sometimes it’s difficult to grab enough time to read, certainly. Most of us don’t have the time to read all the books we’d like. But we have to grab, borrow and steal some time. Somewhere. Especially when an author writes genre fiction, it’s a good idea to understand what’s out there. Are we being too … Read more

U=(N/T)M*G: Leech

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It’s no secret that modern medicine is a strange mix of old and new practices. Re-purposing is very much part of medicine too. Ancient practices like leeches for bloodletting are now used today for bloodletting. Ha! Nothing new under the sun, I guess. While that sentiment may be true, we are finding new ways to use what we have on our world all the time. From the old stand-by of breaking leg bones to make them longer, to using shit in medicine, humanity has turned ancient “cures” into actual, medically sound, treatments as our technology and intelligence advance. Helminthic therapy … Read more

Dispatches from Hogwarts G.S.A.: In tribute to a Hero: Perry Moore

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Perry Moore

For this month’s dispatch, we thought we’d write about an innovator and an activist in queer fantasy who left us much too soon. Perry Moore (1971-2011) was an author, screenwriter, and a film director. He was probably best known for The Chronicles of Narnia franchise. Widely regarded as smart, influential, and not incidentally a handsome guy, Moore accumulated an impressive Hollywood resumé by his mid-thirties. Though his work was behind the scenes, he seemed to fit the moniker “golden boy” in a lot of ways. Moore was also an openly gay man in an industry where, if being gay was … Read more

Where No Gay Has Gone Before: First Tattooine, now Vulcan

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NASA announced earlier it might have located Luke Skywalker’s home planet Tattooine.  For the past nine years, NASA has embarked on a planet finding mission, SIM PlanetQuest to find Mr. Spock’s home Vulcan.  Astronomers at Jet Propulsion Laboratory are searching for a planet orbiting 40 Eridani, a triple-star system about 16 light-years from Earth.  ‘Vulcan’ is thought to orbit the red-orange K dwarf star Eridani A. K-stars are orangey stars, slightly cooler than our sun.  They are hotter, brighter and bluer than M stars, but cooler, dimmer and redder than O, B, A F and G stars.  Did you get … Read more

Ayres and Graces: Queer Author Interview

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Being a writer is already a huge challenge and being a queer writer brings with it a whole new set of challenges. This week we have queer writer and artist duo Finn Lucullan and Kate Larking who jointly create the queer space opera webcomic Crash & Burn. I spend my entire first impression explaining what I am rather than what I do. — Finn What challenges have you personally faced as a queer writer? Finn: Hello! I’m Finn, a 22 year old queer (agender aromantic, would call my sexuality “queer” for lack of a better term) writer and artist from Canada. … Read more

We Already Have the Wheel. Frankenstein 1 – Strange Conception

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John Allenson

Frankenstein Part 1 – Strange Conception. We know the myth of how Mary Shelley came to write the novel Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus.  The myth is fairly factual but the underlying biases give a completely false understanding of who Mary Shelley was, why she wrote the first science fiction novel (at least in English), and what was happening in the novel. The basic myth is that a group of important men and a couple of young women were trapped in a castle in Geneva and bored out of their skulls.  The poets came up with a contest to tell … Read more

U=(N/T)M*G: Ashes To Ashes

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Death is an old and familiar companion to humanity, older than life and just as well understood. A predator that haunts our every step in a very literal sense. We are so aware of it, in fact, that a great many people actually fear it. That fear has caused, in part, the need to remove the dead from our sight, but paradoxically, given rise to high ritual and ceremony for the occasion. Funerals. An occasion that gives us an illusion of life to say goodbye to with a stunning array of preservative science before we entomb a beloved’s body in … Read more

Angel’s Bits: Off to Flame Con And About That…

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This’ll be a short one this morning – I’m off to Brooklyn in a couple of hours for Flame Con. (Woohoo!) This will be the second year for this particular convention, which they project to have perhaps double the attendance of their first year. New conventions can be tricky. If organizers haven’t had a lot of prior convention wrangling experience, the learning curve can be huge. Some cons learn and grow, some, unfortunately, run into trouble and vanish for a few years or for good. Flame Con must be doing things right so far. They projected 1500 attendees last year … Read more