My inestimable agent, Trodayne Northern, decided that what he really would like to have on the new Prentis Agency website he’s building is a series of love letters from his writers to their beloved genres. Here is my “how do I … Continue reading
I have to start today’s blog with a small scream. I am so excited about HBO’s dramatization of His Dark Materials. Having entered the premier date in my calendar, I was on my sofa that very day to watch and … Continue reading
The starstream is beautiful. But beauty turns deadly when an ancient and destructive AI uses it to travel uptime…
Continue readingA lovely sendoff for our beloved friend and acclaimed novelist Vonda McIntyre at her memorial service yesterday near Magnuson Park in Seattle. All of us at Book View Cafe, the author-owned publishing coop co-founded by Vonda, Ursula K. LeGuin, and … Continue reading
New Worlds, Year Two: More Essays on the Art of Worldbuilding by Marie Brennan Explore a world of your own . . . Science fiction and fantasy are renowned for immersing their readers in rich, inventive settings. In this follow-up … Continue reading
What is time travel good for? Well, you need never lose. Redo that failure, rerun that war, reboot that relationship, until it flies. You can do and be whatever you desire. No one will know — no one can know, if you’re rewriting history out from under them. But what does that do to the time traveler?
Continue readingMountains of the Mind Gillian Polack Shooting Star Press Australia A new collection from BVC member Gillian Polack: Mountains of the Mind – A Polack Retrospective contains never before published early work from Dr Polack, prizewinning published pieces and brand new … Continue reading
This post first appeared in the Big Idea section of John Scalzi’s Whatever blog I have always thought of myself as an SF and fantasy writer. But I realize now, what I really am is a fan of plot. What … Continue reading
My husband and I begin conversations, as we often do, that travel down many highways, side roads and dirt paths. Last night we found ourselves in the land of place names. … Continue reading
Worldbuilding is one of the great pleasures of writing science fiction and fantasy — and also one of its greatest challenges. Award-winning fantasy author Marie Brennan draws on her academic training in anthropology to peel back the layers of a setting, going past the surface details to explore questions many authors never think to answer. She invites you to consider the endless variety of real-world cultures — from climate to counterfeiting, from sumptuary laws to slang — and the equally endless possibilities speculative fiction has to offer.
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