Recent posts tagged fantasy
2023
The Unasked And Unseen Questions
Science fiction and fantasy are like any other fictional mode: they're only as good as the presumptions brought to them.
2022
Imagine That
Over the course of my life I've emigrated from one kind of imagination to another -- from just "making things up" to seeing what we have in front of us in a new way.
Labels, Labels, Labels
I don't particularly care if my SF is hard, soft, or mushy; I care whether or not I give a darn about who's in it and what happens.
Fantfacy [sic]
On the presence of inarticulate, inexpressive prose -- "Engfish" -- in SF&F.
The Fine Art Of The Center-Eligible Play And Other Cheats
On cheating in a work of fantasy or SF.
The Human Use Of Human Beings, And All That
What are people for in SF&F? To show us what's possible, and to show how that's possible right here, not just "out there somewhere."
Wave A Wand And We Got The Bomb
Most fantasy stories never confront the idea that magic would have the social impact of the atomic bomb.
Self-Criticism Session
What do you do when you find yourself writing the kind of book you might take issue with if someone else wrote it?
Here, Now, Nowhere
On using Zen Buddhist notions of time in writing SF&F.
A Clear(er) Head For The Future
What Zen taught me about writing SF&F, part 1.
Magpie Mind Power
With every story set in a strange new world, give yourself as many individual elements of wonderful strangeness to draw on.
In The Right Spirit
More notes on writing SF&F, as a Buddhist- and Zen-influenced author.
Knots Within Knots
The job of a storyteller should not be to make things complex, but to find common threads in complex things. Doubly so in SF&F.
2021
Moving Parts Grind The Gears
On the balance between a story with too many rules and not enough.
An Amiable Chaos
How science fiction and fantasy stories live and die by their technical details, for both better and worse.
2020
The Function Of Fantasy, As Per Lynda Barry
Fantasy can be used as a distraction, but its job is to give us new ways to look at what's around us every day,
The Beatings Shall Continue, And All That
It is not required to substitute ugly things for lovely ones in the name of some spurious bid for truth.
The New Absurd Is The New Normal
And how we might be able to write about it.
The Impossible Factor
Why SF&F have something to teach us even when it isn't "real".
Not Coming To A Book Near Me
Why I wasn't going to do post-apoc, or apoc-in-general, stories -- yes, even long before COVID-19 came along.
Escapism In Bad Times
The point isn't to run away from what's around you, but to see something new despite it.
The Unplanned Obsolescence Of Our Dreams
SF and fantasy both have shelf lives, but drastically different kinds.
2019
The Blankest Of Slates And Pages
What happens when we take a genre and remove everything from it that we'd label as being part of that genre?
Up The Academy
No more superhero/wizard academies based on British boarding schools, please!
2018
Future Schlock
On how SF tries to imagine the future, and how that needs to be more than uplift or doomsaying.
