A Far Out Fantastic Site

Last Saturday’s Toy Game and Pop Culture Expo held at Sacramento’s Great Escape Games wasn’t quite all fun and games. It was fun, games, books and their authors. Local authors Nicholas Grabowsky (who wrote the novel adaptation of Halloween IV ) and Angelique Anderson (writer of YA sci fi and fantasy) were displaying their books for sale. I had a great time talking with both of them. Nick talked about his plans to present at more cons after having taken a hiatus. I talked to him about my current projects: my most recently published ebook, “Circa Sixty Years Dead” ,   and the print and photo-real cover editions in progress. The great thing about talking with authors such as he and Angelique is that when you’re sliding down the hill, like I’ve been ever since I started my day job as library technician back in September, you get motivated and more focused on your own writing. That’s among other great things like the generous offers Nick gave me such as a free copy, signed by h...

Charles Stross just came out with a new novel titled Empire Games . Although I haven’t read it myself yet, (I’m just barely getting through his Atrocity Archives of his Laundry Files series) the way he explains it in his article at io9  makes the novel seem to do for global politics what many of Kim Stanley Robinson’s later novels have been doing for environmental issues: taking the realist approach. Because of this, it sounds like it’s a little more down to earth than his Laundry Files novels. Stross explains in the article the difference between far-future science fiction and near-future science fiction using his novel as an example of the latter. He refers to far-future sci fi as mostly escapist fiction and near-future as more realistic. That may be so on a social level, but I’ve read a lot of far-future hard science fiction that gives the best of both worlds . If there’s ever a time we need the serious sci fi Stross talks about, it’s now in this dawn of an elitist pres...

If you saw my latest posts on my Facebook page earlier this evening you may be a little surprised why I’m writing here. Well, I just wanted to share with you an article from the online magazine, Futurism -- which covers the outlook of future science, technology and the two’s impact on society. The article, entitled “Europe Looking to Make AIKill Switch Mandatory” , by June Javelosa is the next step in today’s rapid process of science fiction becoming science fact, in this case robots. European Parliament just drafted a plan for regulations on artificial intelligence and so Isaac Asimov’s Laws of Robotics is seems to be getting applied more than ever. Check out the article and then check out the European Parliament’s official report that it links to. Then come back here and tell me if you can find the Three Laws of Robotics applied anywhere in the report. Until next time . . .   Credit: Pixabay.com

Credit: Pixabay.com Somewhere between Christmas Day and the New Year’s Day, I get that dark feeling as if nothing will be on the other side of the threshold between the old year and the new. It’s almost as if all hell will break loose once we step through that threshold. In fact, this concern caused me to write a short story the day after Christmas for my writers’ critique group’s holiday party, a kind of time travel story you can say. I’ve only written the rough draft though, and because it’s holiday themed, particularly New Year’s, you probably won’t see it until the end of the year. But even though for some of us the other side of the portal to 2017 maybe seemed like a black nothingness, here we are; we are alive and that’s all that counts. I thought I would look at my writing accomplishments from last year and my goals (or resolutions) for this new year of 2017. But first let me talk about how Christmas went. It went by great. Nothing that spectacularly different ...