Archive for December, 2010

Guest Post: Blowing Up Planets

Doomsday scenarios are a dime a dozen. When a villain claims to be on the verge of ‘destroying the Earth’ he/she usually means killing everyone/everything on it. But sometimes simply killing all humans isn’t good enough. Unfortunately even the vast amounts of energy necessary to wipe out all civilization is woefully inantiquate to physically destroy the planet. To do that would take some serious power.

Highlights for Children is SFWA’s Newest Qualifying Market

Today the board of directors of SFWA unanimously voted to add Highlights for Children to the list of SFWA qualifying markets. This venerable magazine began publishing in 1946 publishes short fiction for children.  It has served as an early gateway to reading for many science-fiction and fantasy writers. Speculative fiction short story sales to Highlights may be […]

Nebula Awards Guest Post: Sex, Skin and Secret Messages

What is it that makes us entertain fantasies about mating outside our own species? Surely this can’t be in our DNA; the mule, sterile offspring of a horse and donkey’s mating, is an example of the evolutionary dead end that results.Yet since our earliest days we’ve apparently been fascinated by the non-human cultures we co-exist with, and the fantasy of strange creatures, able to shift from wild animal to human. Long before we could write, we told stories around the campfire about them, as lovers, not monsters.

Holiday Hiatus

Because even watchdogs have to rest sometimes, the Writer Beware blog will be taking a break over the holiday season. Unless there’s a really juicy publishing story, this blog will be on hiatus until the new year.

Guest Post: Steampunk/Alt History Week
Living in Color

Picture this–it’s the 1870’s. An African American pharmacist in knee-breeches and a frock coat has just made a startling invention–a refrigeration device. Okay, it’s an improved model designed for corpses, which makes me wonder what other mad scientist stuff was going on in the background, but Thomas Elkins was a REAL GUY. And totally, thoroughly steampunk.