Ignorance is Bliss: More Self-Publishing Nonsense
It amazes me the things people say about the publishing industry. I often wonder if there’s a magical world that some of these folks live in that I somehow missed the train to get to. It’s almost like an anti-publishing psychosis that leads certain individuals to spout nonsense as if it’s fact. I liken this […]
The Fantastic is in the Genes
If you trace back through time you can see through every generation and era the presence of the fantastic. By fantastic, I mean anything that could be construed as fitting into science fiction, fantasy, magical realism, fairy tale, myth, religion, and any other such genres or subgenres in which something we know is not entirely […]
Science Fiction is Not Immortal
Having spoken of the non-death of science fiction, it occurs to me that I should also talk about the would-be-death of the genre. Because, unlike general fiction (or “literary” fiction, if you want to call it that, though that would be unfair), science fiction does have a limited lifespan. To be fair to SF, that […]
Science Fiction’s Not Dead, Fantasy is in the Golden Age
People are talking about the death of science fiction again. It’s not actually dead, far from it, but as soon as someone says “it’s dead” someone else goes crazy (either because they believe SF has long been dead or because they’re tired of hearing the argument). Apparently the genre has a few dozen lives and […]
Racist/Sexist Editors: Still Bad Even If They’re Not
So, apparently if you’re an editor and you don’t publish enough women or people of color in an anthology or magazine, but it’s because your slush pile contained primarily white males, you’re still a sexist or racist bastard. At least, that’s what oldcharliebrown says. It seems that no matter what, even if you have a […]
Writer Problem: Genre “Bias” as Weakness?
Stay with me here. The other day I was thinking about my writing and wondering if one of my problems is that I always write the same genre (or genres, since I occasionally do fantasy, but mostly do science fiction, as far as short stories are concerned). I don’t know how many of you who […]