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Two of the most common literary devices that science fiction authors use to give their stories a real “science fiction” feel are time travel and faster-than-light travel.  We sci-fi writers do that to get our characters around the hugely time-consuming task of traveling the galaxy.  Even at the speed of light, a spaceship would take over four years just to get to…

This past April I attended the Pike’s Peak Writers Conference in Colorado Springs with the main purpose of pitching my science-fiction novel to an agent.  In particular, to a New York based agent.  Secondarily, of course, I took advantage of the courses and talks that were presented by many others at the conference: writers, agents, publishers,…

Over the past several months we’ve been treated to several movies whose premiere was not what the movie makers wanted it to be.  That is to say, the movie didn’t bring in as much money as expected and the reviews were poor and the potential audiences stayed away in droves.  Some movies were, basically, a total bust. …

While doing a revision of my first science fiction novel several years ago, I came across a somewhat unusual situation with regard to two very specific English words.  One word, encircled, is relatively well-known in English, but the other, ensphered, isn’t.  (In fact, the second word is so unusual it isn’t even in the WordPress dictionary…

I’ve been on vacation for the past ten days, and got back on Tuesday, June 25.  Great time.  I took an Amtrak train trip all over the western part of the US: Chicago to Spokane to Portland to Oakland and back to Chicago.  It was a chance to see a large part of the country I’ve…

To me, the only thing more surprising about the current scandal about government spying on US citizens has been the surprise of US citizens about government spying on US citizens.  Of course the government is going to spy on us, it does that to gather information about god-only-knows-who-or-what (presumably terrorists, but others are caught up in the…

This may not be my own invention, but I’ve never seen any concept like it in all the study of writing I’ve done over the past fifteen years or so, so I may not be able to take credit for it.  What I’m talking about is the notion of a character in a story, usually…

Most of you who read this blog know that I write science fiction, and that includes short stories as well as novels.  Many of my stories involve aliens that either come to Earth or find themselves face-to-face with humans on, say, another planet.  And many times I will write the story either wholly or in part…

For this week’s post, I want to return to a favorite topic of mine, the presence of life in the rest of our galaxy: where is it? On the one hand, with around fifty billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy (of which we are a member) and an average of eight or perhaps ten planets orbiting…

The face of publishing is changing.  At least that’s what they tell me.  As an unpublished author I guess I don’t have much say in how things change or stay the same, and I’m taking a risk here of annoying or upsetting or just plain pissing off possible agents, editors, and publishers, but I thought I’d…

I just returned from the 2013 Pikes Peak Writers Conference.  (Here’s a question for trivia lovers: Why is the name is spelled Pikes Peak?  Shouldn’t it be Pike’s?)  Great place to go for a writer in almost any stage of his/her career.  For the first time at any writers conference I’ve been to in quite some time I…

I finished reading Michio Kaku’s book, Physics of the Future, a few days ago, and I thought I’d make a few comments on it here.  Dr. Kaku, a theoretical physicist by trade and a futurist author (see also Physics of the Impossible and Visions) likes to look into the future and describe what he sees.  Granted,…