Hot Wheels, Matchbox…and microchips?
Your age will determine your relationship to them, but just about everyone will at least be familiar with a particular type of tiny toy cars called Hot Wheels (or possibly Matchbox, before they merged). Painted, die cast, with spindly little axles and plastic wheels,...
My Secret Life as a Screenwriter
You never grow as a writer without trying new things. I started out writing epic fantasy before I found my groove with snarky sci-fantasy (i.e. Black Ocean). I’ve also written hard sci-fi (Robot Geneticists/Project Transhuman), urban fantasy (Shadowblood Heir, which...
Brave New World: A 1931 novel, a 2020 television show…a 2022 reality?
George Orwell’s 1984 seems almost naive in retrospect, believing that a faceless government would strip all privacy, create a surveillance state, and render truth entirely subjective. All it took was Facebook. By contrast, Aldoux Huxley’s oeuvre, Brave New World, has...
Wizard’s Wishes – Could a cop show with criminal wizards really work?
One of the key quirks that made the early seasons of the X-Files great was the Mulder/Scully dynamic, where he came up with these wild, plausible-sounding theories that fit the cases, but in the end, Scully won him over with logical, rational (if often still weird)...
Skyrim created a world too awesome to bother saving
If you’re familiar with Skyrim, congratulations. You don’t need to be told. But for everyone else, this 2011 Bethesda game is a classic. There, I’ve said it. 11 years old, and it ranks as an all-time great. Frankly, it has been for a while. Even SIX years after...
AI-generated artwork: Move Over Dalí, it’s DALL-E Time
In the earliest days of machine automation (we’re talking about looms here), workers worried that they’d be rendered obsolete revolted. These movements and the actions taken gave rise to the terms sabotage and Luddite. By and large, however, the efforts to stop the...
Writers don’t get summer vacations
I seem to remember, a long time ago, that school started in the first week of September, shortly after Labor Day. It feels like it’s gotten earlier, slipping into August. Since it’s been an increasingly-distressing amount of time since I was last in school, I no...
Good Omens: A Buddy Comedy For The Apocalypse
Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett are two of the better known fantasy authors of the late 20th Century. Their works are snarky, irreverent, and often explore deep philosophical meaning under a veneer of satire. So, when they combined to write Good Omens, there...
Sidekick Powers
Can A Good Pun Become A Great Book? I no longer recall where or when this idea originated, just that it came from not paying attention. I probably misheard "psychic power" as "sidekick powers" and thought, "Hey, what about a series starring sidekicks with lesser...
Truberbrook: Twin Peaks meets Fringe
Truberbrook is a point-and-click mystery game set in a quaint little town in the mountains of Germany. And by quaint, I mean batshit crazy. It’s an onion of a puzzle game, and each layer is weirder than the one before. You play as Dr. Hans Tannhauser (yes, there’s a...