Originally posted by james_nicoll at Seen on on FB: "The Only SciFi RPG Starmap You'll Ever Need"

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In 1971, sf and f scholar Thomas Clareson had some still-relevant insights into the sudden explosion of sf and f some five years previous. With a few quotes from his essay, I throw out a couple of ideas about why it happened. I'd love to discuss what you thing about why it happened. Here is the link.

These seem to be a new thing, right? The earliest I could think of is Mark Sumner's The Devil's Tower, but in the last years or so there have been several, beginning with Emma Bull's Territory, about Tombstone. I have Rae Carson's lovely new series, and Laura Anne Gilman's Siver on the Road (which I have not yet read)--are there others?

Chris Dolley has another Worcester and Reeves story out, this one with H.G. Wells as a character, featuring time travel, called The Aunt Paradox.

(If you have to have your one-click, here's Kindle, though the author gets more if you go through BVC ( Read more... )

Linda Nagata, who has the indie published novel on the Nebula final ballot this year, has just come out with a hard SF story at Lightspeed. Looks like hard sf with good female representation, hoo!

BTW, tangentially, I just sold a novella reprint to Lightspeed.

There's a fast paced serial going, for free, from author Leigh Kimmel: Alternate today, mixing astronauts in a very different space program, terrorists, clones and a beleaguered cop trying to make sense of it all . . .before we even get to the threat from space.

Via james_nicoll, a crow using tools, which I think is delightfully sfnal.

Linda Nagata, who writes gritty, complex science fiction, is offering a free ebook if you go over and sign up for her newsletter.The story appeared in Azimov's. It's a prequel to her military techno-thriller

The Red: First Light. (Which is really gripping if you like complexity, grit, violence, plausible future scenarios, and a thriller plot.)

Falling to the Moon.

A few years ago, I was reading PARADOX, a spec fic magazine, and encountered a story that was a standout for me, called "Tucker Teaches the Clockies to Copulate."

The logline is, What would have happened if a crippled, alcoholic, Confederate veteran living in Utah Territory taught clockwork robots to have sex?, but that doesn't give a hint of how ( Read more... )

One of my top favorite comfort reads is space opera. Here I talk about why and gives examples of some favorites that I don't see mentioned as much as the Vorkosiverse (which I love) or Honor Harrington (which I could never quite get into), or the Maijstral books by Walter Jon Williams, which are great fun ( Read more... )