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Showing posts from January, 2016

Dystopia Pointing to Utopia In Science Fiction

Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons Last week’s blog  was about Martin Luther King’s Dream as a utopian vision and its relation to science fiction. I said it relate s to science fiction because the genre is basically a vision of social change for the future, good or bad. There is the utopia and the dystopia, the first one being the perfect or ideal society the second being a messed up society struggling to remain intact. Many might say that if all science fiction is utopian or teaches a need for a utopia then it’s boring because there’s no story or it sounds too much like a lecture. That’s not necessarily true. Science fiction does not have to take place in a utopian society in order to convey a need for social change. In fact, the best science fiction is probably just the opposite: dystopic yet often serving as a warning so we won’t allow such a bleak future to occur and so we can work towards the utopic. Science fiction being visionary shows us where we might go as a soc...

A Sci Fi Tribute to Martin Luther King Day: Afrofuturism

This week has been one of tragic loss of two people in science fiction and fantasy, and also commemorates a tragic loss that occurred more than 40 years ago. As many of you already know, we lost former rock star David Bowie and  Harry Potter  actor Alan Rickman. It's easy to see how Rickman relates to the world of sci fi/fantasy but, unless you're a Bowie fan, it's perhaps not as known how Bowie relates to it (unless you happen to be a fan of the '80s movie,  Labyrinth , which I'm not although Bowie's acting in it was good). But Bowie produced many sci fi-related songs and albums, his most popular being  Ziggy Stardust  (which was also a movie he starred in) and another that is perhaps not as popular but said by Westword.com to be very good is  Low .  David Bowie on guitar as Ziggy Stardust Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons Alan Rickman of the  Harry Potter  films Photo Credit: David Shankbon/Wikimedia Commons A loss that was ...

Good Sci fi News for a New Year and Writer’s Resolutions

Photo Credit: Pixabay.com I hope everybody had a great holiday season. Mine was groovy. One of the best gifts I got was from my brother. He knows how much I like Neil Gaiman’s work so he got me Gaiman’s latest biography, The Art of Neil Gaiman: The Story of a Writer by Hayley Campbell. Campbell does a super job telling the story of Gaiman’s career as a writer and uses abundant photos and interview clips. I’ve been a little burned out from writing several articles for clients over the weekend and so that’s why I’m posting late again, but I should be back on my Saturday publishing schedule this weekend now that the holiday rush is done. I’ve also had a bit of a cold today and so have been mostly taking it easy on this slightly moanday Monday, so I’m going to keep this post simple and short. I said I would post my writing resolutions for the new year but first I want to leave you with a couple of links to good sci fi news to start the year off. Print books have actually ...