As you can see from the date, I’m a day late with this post. No excuse for that, or no good one. Need to do better. I did finish Sharon Kay Penman’s historical fiction, The Land Beyond The Sea. This is a magnificent book, the story of the downfall of Outremer, the Crusader Kingdom of […]
The AFICTIONADO® Blog
Mid-week Maunder 22 April 2020 – more hard sf
I talked a little about the concept of hard sf last week. One topic I mentioned but didn’t go into is the idea of hibernation/deep sleep/suspended animation. For all the attention that we pay to physics, we don’t spend much time on this, but if we don’t have an FTL drive or a multi-generation ship, […]
Mid-week Maunder 15 April 2020 – What is hard sf?
The term hard sf (or hard science fiction) is used a lot but it seems to mean different things to different people. To me, it is a story in which the author sticks within the confines of how the universe acts based on science, with as small a number of extrapolations as possible. Some stories […]
Mid-week Maunder 8 April 2020
There is a lot happening in the world today, but this blog was never designed as commentary on politics or pandemics. Here, I will stick to writing and books. Closing in on getting the audiobook of Starman’s Saga ready. I had never thought much about audiobooks before it was so strongly recommended to me. I […]
Mid-week Maunder 1 April 2020
Working on the first draft for the next book brought to mind a session I remember Salvatore Scibona running at the Wesleyan Writers’ Conference a couple of years ago. He made the point, rather emphatically, that when you are writing a first draft, you should not stop to polish the words or try to make […]
Mid-week Maunder 25 March 2020
COVID-19 dominates most discussions and most news right now and certainly occupies a lot of my thoughts. I’m finishing the last day of a 14 day self-isolation after an exposure. Saying thanks to all the health-care workers who are now the front line fighters in what is truly a war. It seems almost selfish to […]