Category: Writing
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Worldbuilding Workshop: After-Action Report
On April 17 I ran a three-hour workshop on science fiction worldbuilding for the Pioneer Valley Writers' Workshop. It was my first time teaching a class of any kind, so I think I learned as much as I hope my students did. The students were great. All ten of them were engaged, intelligent, and seemed…
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Godel Operation Minus 10
Ten days from now is the official publication date of The Godel Operation. The clocks are running, the pumps are powering up, and the gantry has been rolled back. Be sure to get a copy because this launch is going to be spectacular. If you want to read more about The Godel Operation, see my…
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Let’s Build a World
This Saturday, April 17, I'll be teaching "It Used to Take a Week," an online workshop on worldbuilding in science fiction for the Pioneer Valley Writers' Workshop. This is a new step for me — I've never taught a class before. Except that I've done hundreds of convention panels and presentations over the years, and…
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Inception Et Cetera
I recently saw the film Inception for the first time — I'm not sure why I didn't watch it when it came out, but I didn't. It's a great movie, and it helped me to understand a key difference between science fiction films and novels. A perennial gripe about SF in movies is that films…
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Why Odysseus?
My son is taking a class on Mythologies of the Ancient World, which means he's been reading things like the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Iliad, and other ancient works (in translation). And since we've been talking about what he's studying in class, that means I've been re-reading them and thinking about them, as well. In…
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My First Story
Back in the 1990s I wrote some adventures and sourcebook material for the legendary Star Wars Roleplaying Game published by West End Games. Some of the worlds and plot elements I put in those pieces actually worked their way into the "canon" of the Star Wars universe, and I got paid, so I was happy.…
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PhilCon 2020 Goes Virtual
This year's PhilCon — the venerable Philadelphia-era science fiction con now in its 84th year — is going to be all-online. On the plus side that means no New Jersey traffic and mall food; on the minus side it means no spontaneous conversations in the hotel lobby, no room parties, and no basic human contact.…
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The First CYBER WorldCon!
This year's World Science Fiction Convention was to have taken place in New Zealand, but since that country is entirely sealed off from the outside world, the convention has gone entirely on-line. It's a CYBER WorldCon! See the link here. Despite obstacles the show will go on! I'm participating in several events, without leaving my…
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AmazingCon Continues!
The online SF convention AmazingCon continues all this weekend. Tomorrow, June 14, I'll be doing a panel at 10am on Worldbuilding. It should be a great show, as the lineup of panelists is pretty impressive: me, Paul Levinson, Rosemary Claire Smith, and T.B. Jeremiah. We'll be talking about how to make convincing and unique science…
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Work In Progress: The Billion Worlds
A while back I started thinking about the distant future. What can humanity expect if we don't invent a magic FTL drive, don't go extinct, and our civilization mostly putters along the way it has been since the invention of agriculture? I described some of my thoughts in this blog post from 2018. Extrapolating with…
The Cambias Digression 