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The Next 800K Years in Sci Fi Predictions

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Photo by Michel du Cille/The Washington Post

When will humans land on Venus? When will we have robot cats? And when will the aliens finally come? Science fiction offers some potential answers to these burning questions. The timeline below, created by designer Giorgia Lupi and her design team at Accurat for the blog Brain Pickings, lays out 62 future events predicted by various works of science fiction, from “Hunger Games” to Isaac Asimov. Here’s a selection: 2012: The Titanic is resurrected from the ocean floor. (“The Ghost from the Grand Banks,” Arthur C. Clarke) 2019: The U.S. loses its position as world leader to Japan. Extraterrestrial life … Read more

Announcement: Alt. History 101 Anthology

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Alt. History 101

QSFer Michelle Browne has a story in a new alternative history anthology: The future is history… From Samuel Peralta, creator of the #1 bestselling Future Chronicles anthology series, comes a new speculative anthology series that turns the world you know upside down. In Alt.History 101, thirteen top speculative fiction authors re-imagine the world – as one where the inventor of the smallpox vaccine died before he’d created it, as one where the women’s suffragist movement failed to win the right to vote, as one where the death penalty exists but where all forms of capital punishment are ruled inhumane – … Read more

WORLDBUILDING WEEK: Day Three – History and Timelines

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Worldbuilting Week

Welcome to the first annual Worldbuilding Week at QSF. We’ll talk about all aspects of building a world for your story, including languages; alien/magical races; history and timelines; culture and politics; sex, marriage and reproduction; and tools and techniques. It should be a lot of fun. OK, so you’ve come up with your very own language for your new world. And you’ve chosen the most awesome-ever aliens or magical creatures to populate it! Now you have to come up with a history and build a timeline. How did your world come to be? Were there wars? Settlers? Nation building? Did … Read more

News: NASA Discovers Global Underground Ocean on Saturn’s Moon Enceladus

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Planning a sea-faring vacation to escape from the rest of the world? Don’t discount Saturn’s moon Enceladus, as NASA has just released new research that indicates a global ocean lies underneath its icy surface. Using research from the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft that is scheduled to make a flyby of Enceladus on October 28, NASA was able to detect a slight wobble on the moon that researchers say can only be accounted for by a underground ocean. “This was a hard problem that required years of observations, and calculations involving a diverse collection of disciplines, but we are confident we finally got … Read more

Announcement: Shifting Chaos, by Elizabeth Noble

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Shifting Chaos

QSFer Elizabeth Noble has a new paranormal book out: Chaos reigns in The Sleepless City, and it’s really beginning to piss Detective Jonas Forge off. He’s got inner demons to battle and a life to build with his new soul mate, Blair Turner. Nothing is going right, and he already feels the universe is conspiring against him when a turn of events he never saw coming flips his world upside down. Hallucinations grip the town and everyone in it, threatening to tear their precariously built family apart, and the only way forward is to bare all to each other. This … Read more

WORLDBUILDING WEEK: Day Two – Creating Alien and Magical Races

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Worldbuilting Week

Welcome to the first annual Worldbuilding Week at QSF. We’ll talk about all aspects of building a world for your story, including languages; alien/magical races; history and timelines; culture and politics; sex, marriage and reproduction; and tools and techniques. It should be a lot of fun. Today we’re talking about alien and magical races, and Jana Denardo will be our moderator. Have you ever created a an entire alien race for a story? Or maybe a magical race for a fantasy novel? How do you design them – are they human-like? Completely alien? What characteristics do you consider? And how … Read more

WORLDBUILDING WEEK: Day One – Languages

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Worldbuilting Week

Welcome to the first annual Worldbuilding Week at QSF. We’ll talk about all aspects of building a world for your story, including languages; alien/magical races; history and timelines; culture and politics; sex, marriage and reproduction; and tools and techniques. It should be a lot of fun. Today we’re talking about languages, and Erica Pike will be our moderator. Have you ever created a language for a story? How do you go about building the fundamentals? Are there tools online to help? Does your language offer clues to your culture? And how do you make it work for your readers? Join … Read more

Exclusive: Teaser of the Upcoming WROTE Podcast LGBT Halloween Episode

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Hey all… we’ve got something really cool today – a teaser for the 3MMuskateers Podcast (now changing to WROTE to be more inclusive) for Halloween. The folks at WROTE have pulled together seven short stories for Halloween, and are giving them the full spooky treatment: The 3 M/Musketeers podcast has realized it’s time to be more LGBTQ inclusive. Their new brand, WROTE Podcast – “Written on the Edge” – celebrates queer storytelling in all genres and across all mediums! To celebrate this move forward, your hosts have teamed up with several podcast alumni authors to put together a Halloween Storytime … Read more

Announcement: Kaminishi, by Jan Suzukawa

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kaminishi

DSPP author Jan Suzukawa has a re-released time travel/historical fantasy book out: Michael Holden wakes up in an impossible reality: mid-nineteenth-century Japan, face to face with Shinjirō Kaminishi, a samurai warlord Michael has seen in a dream. Imprisoned by the warlord and interrogated about the future, Michael has no idea if what he’s experiencing is real… and then he finds himself back in present-day America. Lord Shinjirō’s commanding presence and smoldering sexuality draw Michael again and again to the past, where dangerous information is revealed and Shinjirō’s life is threatened. Through the mists of time and in the reality of … Read more

Announcement: Moon Born, by D. River

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Moon Born

QSFer D. River has a new paranormal book out: Tucker and Ryder figured that the worst was over. They’d gotten used to being lycans, they’d managed to not get killed by werewolf hunters and they’d stopped a crazy magician from trying to unleash Armageddon. However, as they try to get back to their lives, they find a whole host of new problems awaiting them. The government has established a task force to deal with paranormal threats and lycans are at the top of that list. There is a monster prowling the dark places of New York City. And the Moon … Read more