Archive for 2019

In Memoriam: John A. Pitts

SFWA member John A. Pitts died on October 3 from amyoidosis.  Pitts began publishing short fiction in 2006 with “There Once Was a Girl from Nantucket (A Fortean Love Story),” co-written with Ken Scholes.  He went on to write several short stories on his own and in 2010 began publishing novels under the name J.A. Pitts with […]

Star Trek Will Save the World!

by Filip Wiltgren

Climate crisis, economic imparity, obesity, totalitarianism, re-nuclearization. The list is long, but there is a solution right around the corner.

It’s called the Holodeck.

Writing to the Shadows

by Paul Jessup

Let’s talk about that early stage of the story, when you have that bright gleaming idea in your head, burning brightly. It wants to be born, it wants to come to life. You spend days, weeks, months doing research, laying down pages and pages and pages of notes. Enough to be a small novel in itself. And then you start writing.

Collaboration

by Daniel Brotzel

Finishing a book sounds like hard enough work when there’s just one of you. Can working with someone else really help? Yes! says Dan Brotzel, who’s recently launched a novel he wrote with two pals. Here’s the why and the how…

Sketching a Story

by Paul Jessup

Novels are hard, yo. I mean, books in general, maybe writing overall? But for me making that leap from short stories to novels was a difficult transition. I had to completely change my writerly habits, completely reinvent the ways I was doing things altogether.

Transportation

by Daniel M. Bensen

So I have to get to work with my conscious mind. I have to soothe my limbic system as if it’s a spooked horse. I rub my fingers, I wiggle my toes, I take valerian pills. I imagine my body is being filled with glowing liquid, I compose haikus.

In Memoriam: Katherine MacLean

Katherine MacLean (b.1925) died on September 1st. MacLean began publishing science fiction in 1949 when her short story “Defense Mechanism” appeared in the October issue of Astounding.  Her first novel, Cosmic Checkmate, was co-written with Charles V. De Vet, and appeared in 1962 with her first solo novel, The Man in the Bird Cage, appearing in 1971. Although […]