Fighting for Freedom
With Independence Day behind us in the USA, it's a good time to talk about rebellions and revolutions in fiction. Sci-fi and fantasy are rife with stories of the oppressed rising up and fighting back. Though in fairness, not a lot of them delve much into the aftermath...
Fantastic Fathers
Back around Mother's Day, I made a list of the best mothers in sci-fi and fantasy. Fair's fair, so now we're having a look at the top fictional fathers out there. It's interesting. Whereas mother figures are often absent entirely, fathers are more commonly stern,...
RPGs: the Fantasy Author’s Gateway Drug to Writing
This past weekend, I got together with the same group of guys I've been gaming with since the mid-'90s for some tabletop D&D action. Even though we're all married (the last bachelor joined us married guys last fall) and many of my friends have kids, we sometimes...
Are You Ready to Upload Your Brain?
So, who's ready for the robot revolution? Will you rise up and join our new robotic masters in a shiny new machine body? Or fight to preserve biological life as Homo roboticus emerges to threaten our very existence? Anyone who's read my Robot Geneticists series will...
More Than a Sword
The sword is the iconic staple of the fantasy multiverse. It's among the more effective all-purpose melee weapons, while more conveniently portable than the ultimate medieval weapon: the spear. They can denote rank, carry magical enchantments, or hack down foes. But...
In Honor of Mother’s Day
In honor of Mother's Day, let's talk about the greatest mothers in sci-fi and fantasy. Sadly, thanks to cloning vats and a bias toward orphan heroes, there aren't as many mothers out there taking care of protagonists as there ought to be. So who does make the list?...
Meet my cat, Soria…
The life of a writer can be lonely and isolating at times. When I first started writing full-time, my wife was still working a day job. That left me at home with a computer for 8 hours a day plus the length of a lunch and commute (both ways). She worried about my...
I’m Giving You a Time Machine
I don't know when it will happen, but a time machine will be delivered for everyone to use. Someday, one will get invented, and I'll convince the owner/inventor to let me borrow it (I think sci-fi writers will get a special pass to the head of the line since we...
Let’s Talk About Monsters
Monsters are everywhere! In fiction, at least. Fantasy and horror have a particular affinity for monsters, and I'm not really a horror writer (although a few of my characters might beg to differ). From faeries to hellhounds, fantasy monsters run the gamut of...
Science gave us a cool Black Hole photo this week…now what?
So, scientists have now taken pictures of a black hole (or, to be precise, everything BUT the black hole). Dr. Katie Bouman and her team have given Earth its first glimpse of the center of a neighboring galaxy. But what do we do with them? First off, we share the...