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Showing posts from July, 2020

Book-To-Movie: Asimov’s ‘The Bicentennial Man’

Credit: Pixabay Again, I’ve postponed the Book-To-Movie from its usual third weekend of the month to this fourth weekend and so tonight it’s here! In a Book-To-Movie , we review a work of prose fiction and its movie adaptation. This month we’re reviewing Isaac Asimov’s novella, “The Bicentennial Man” and its 1999 movie adaptation starring Robin “Mork from Ork” Williams. Much of Asimov’s science fiction is hard science fiction. So, his stories take serious consideration of the scientific subject matter involved. In doing so, they seriously ask the speculative question that all good science fiction should ask: “What if?” As in “What if robots developed human consciousness?” There is something unique when it comes to Asimov’s robot stories and that is that, unlike with most robot fiction of the 1950s when he was flourishing as a writer, his robot characters are more benefitting to humans than they are menacing. He had an optimistic view of robots and their impact on future soci

New ‘Star Trek Series’ and Self-Publishing Wide

Credit: Pixabay.com As I said last post, I’m postponing the Book-To-Movie review to next week like I did last month because of the inevitable delays in the library’s services where I check out movies from. So today I have some views about some upcoming sci fi TV shows, especially the “Star Trek” series, and updates about the self-publishing of my work Upcoming ‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ Series The problem with a lot of science fiction TV series right now is that they don’t do much more to take a person’s mind off of the gloom and depression of the present world-wide plague that continues killing thousands of people. We go outside of our homes for the essentials and see that everyone is wearing masks and remembering that we too are, if we’re wise, wearing one. It’s so surreal since nothing like this has happened before in most of our life spans. (Most of us weren’t around yet to experience the early 20th century flu pandemic.) It’s as if we’ve been living in a post-apoc

Horror Fiction Can Prepare a Person for a Pandemic, University Study Shows

Credit: Pixabay I hope everyone had a groovy Independence Day. Now that the neighbours’ cherry bomb firecracker blasting has toned down a bit, I can concentrate on other disasters. That is, disasters such as my current fiction projects that I’ve been working on and trying to get in order. More on that in a bit. Right now, I’d like to go over something a little more relevant to the challenging times the world has been going through. If you’ve ever wondered if reading, writing or watching horror is really some hedonistic waste of time, you can take comfort in a scientific study to back up your reasons for loving the genre. This new study has shown that horror fiction can help people mentally prepare for a pandemic such as the one we’ve been going through. Or, at least it can do this with horror fans. The Study The study was done by experts from the University of Chicago, Pennsylvania State University, and Aarhus University. It concluded that fans of horror fiction are more

IWSG: Freedom Writers, Freedom Publishers

It’s the first Wednesday of the month and so it’s time for another Insecure Writer's Support Group (IWSG)  post! In an IWSG post, we writers bring our writing challenges and problems out into the open to share with each other and try to offer solutions. What does the Fourth of July and self-publishing have to do with each other? Freedom. Read on to see how! Changes In the Book Industry I’d like to start off answering the IWSG question of the month which is: There have been many industry changes in the last decade, so what are some changes you would like to see happen in the next decade? One of the many changes in the last decade have been the publishing of more minority fiction, especially in the speculative genres. This has made me very proud since I come from a Hispanic background although I’m nowhere near exemplary of this change like award-winning minority authors such as N.K. Jemison and Wesley Chu. But the success of writers such as they shows that it is not impossib