Oh my God! Oh fck! I wake up to this big news and all I can say is fck! I went to bed having read something about Philip K Dick Awards (I can't even remember what I read about it!) and I wake up to learn that my book, Where Rivers Go To Die, has been nominated for this and its a big deal to me and all I can day is f*ck! What a way to start the year!
10 authors, of whose books I've read at least five:
Ursula Le Guin
Kim Stanley Robinson
Octavia Butler
N. K. Jemisin
Becky Chambers
Iain M. Banks
Martha Wells
M. R. Carey
Lois McMaster Bujold
Vonda McIntyre
#WritersCoffeeClub Jan 1: What are your writing related New Year Resolutions?
I don't really do resolutions, but let's try this: I'll actually send my work out more this year. Get serious and make a list of agents, and just go through the list.
📚Les #utopiales2023 sont ouvertes, et la soirée d’inauguration commence fort avec la « Leçon du président » Roland Lehoucq. Faire tribunes pleines sur le sujet de l’antimatière dans la #sciencefiction, il n’y a qu’ici qu’on peut voir ça 😀 #utopiales#sff#sf#sfff#mesutos2023
I loved SCARLET so much that I read it last night in one sitting then came to work today and grabbed another Cogman, THE INVISIBLE LIBRARY. I didn't know I needed a Scarlet Pimpernel retelling with vampires, but this novel is oodles better than it sounds! What a ripping yarn! @bookstodon#bookstodon#sff#fantasy
#Reading a seemingly reasonably well written period #sff novel (Babel by RF Kuang)
setting is early 19th century Oxford U
explicit focus of the novel is on language
character uses modern idiomatic phrase in dialogue ("say more")
Friends, I almost DNF'd it right there. You can't do that. Obviously that's on the editor as much as the author, but what are we doing here? Suspension of disbelief is a privilege not a right.
Do you reply to your last toot, or do you reply to the initial toot of the thread? Why? (Please reply to the thread.) Please boost for a bigger sample size..
Stuart Little - White
Stranger in a Strange Land - Heinlein
That Hideous Strength - Lewis
A Prayer for Owen Meany - Irving
Ender's Game - Card
The Sparrow - Russell
Making Color Sing - Dobie
Holy The Firm - Dillard
Red Mars - Robinson
Homeland - Doctorow
Wool - Howey
Lagoon - Okorafor
Light from Uncommon Stars - Aoki
#WritingWonders 7.9 — What are you good at when it comes to writing?
People have complimented me on my dialogue.
Recently, I've switched from 3rd person to 1st person narrative. That's essentially the MC talking to the reader, which may explain why my writing feels so much more fluid and natural.
I read most everything I write aloud. It has to pass the speech test. Getting tongue-tied is a bad sign.
So...
My answer to this one is what I am doing now. Talking to the reader. What do you think? Does it work for you?
AN INTERVIEW WITH CHARLES STROSS, Hugo and Locus and Prometheus Award winning author and science-fiction visionary. We grill him about the future of our world! His perspective is very distinctive indeed. Don't miss out.
#PennedPossibilities 85 — MC POV: Tell us a quick love story. The story must end badly. CW: Um, frank talk?
I thought he was dead. The only guy who'd ever had a crush on me. My lieutenant from my days in the mob. He'd been bleeding when I'd shoved him through the /Interstellar/ apparition a year ago. When I'd escaped through the same working ten minutes later, the street it was anchored to in Home City was abandoned—but for Praetorian guards too frantic to notice me because Director Rainy Days had roared through only half a minute before, in full battle mode, without any of her guards.
A year later, Rainy Days cornered me. To convince me to stay, she'd baited her trap with him. She'd made him a cadet in her Praetorian guard, and oh my—my—my, did he look good in that uniform. He stepped up to me, no longer blushing or stuttering, not able to say those words that he liked me. No, he stepped up to be, cupped my chin, and kissed me deeply.
My knees nearly gave out, despite my worst enemy standing less than a dozen standards away from me. My heart racing, I returned the kiss, warming up, and letting him put a hand behind my back.
Rainy Days said something like, "She should get a room."
I stepped back, a hand on my lieutenant's chest. I looked at her in complete shock, but I couldn't think of anything sufficiently sarcastic. I flashed her a hand-gesture instead, then grabbed his head and kissed him back until he moaned. I expected that evening would be sweet.
He fought alongside me against Rainy Days, the strongest thaumaturge to ever live. We nearly died.
That night, after lots of events too numerous to enumerate, and me agreeing to work with Rainy Days as her minion (long story), I had to deal with my roommate. She was the first person I'd acknowledged as a friend since childhood. I had used her in a sting operation to catch a crime boss and for various reasons—including that she had never ever gotten laid because of who her mom is—was bummed out.
I "gave" her my boyfriend to cheer her up.
They took me literally. Loudly, I might add. You'd think an ivory tower would have better sound insulation, but you'd be wrong. I left as soon as I could the morning after as they were still at it.
Just finished "A Psalm for the Wild Built" by Becky Chambers. What a lovely book! Unique premise, beautiful writing, and an inspiring vision of a #Solarpunk world. It poses deep question that will sit with you long after you read it. I can't recommend it highly enough.
On a personal level, I've been working through questions about my vocation, and this book really went deeply to that place I've been at for the past few years.
Technology and science wasn't magic, and Sharp Eye knew this more than ever. Five generations ago, Fleetmaster Running Talon had turned a portable cannon on his first Tyrannosaur, and ended their species rein of terror. Since that day, science and progress had ruled their world. Telescopes and the study of astronomy were unknown to her grandkin. The laws of orbital dynamics took a decade to render correctly, and her own grandmother had invented the slide math-relator that made verifying it all possible.
She lived in a world that promised her hatchlings steamships that could cross the Great Ocean between ports reliably, in days, because it need no sails. It offered /their/ hatchlings the possibility of powered flight using a lightweight heat engine. Literature discussed the not too fictional possibility of one day visiting the moon.
She ought have been happy with life and her grand future.
This wasn't the case. She turned the great telescopes with there photo capture plates toward the sky every night.
She'd found a streak.
Not a new planet. Something far smaller. Something far closer.
The rodent was very brazen outside the window. She'd been throwing the mammal bits of meat for the last month as she'd directed the telescopes, so of course he was. It chittered. With googly eyes, needle teeth, and the rotted smell of offal, the creature wiggled its pink nose and whiskers at her. It could see through a window! So smart. Its furry kind survived the freezing nights on the mountain, where despite her downy feathers, and a heavy parka, she could barely breathe the frigid night air. It burned her lungs.
She'd found a giant rock in space. A week later she confirmed it was two. The latest plate insisted she'd found a co-orbiting swarm, the biggest the size of a city or larger, the rest not that much smaller. Its mass made her think it was mostly iron-nickel. The length of the streaks on the plates grew smaller as the planet's gravity well influenced the orbit, sending it down on their heads.
Physics was physics. The ellipse calculations were irrefutable.
Between the constantly erupting volcano lands on the opposite side of the continent—which made sunset burn orange and purple, and sometimes caused snow to fall at the equator—and the dirt and dust that would be kicked out of the atmosphere by the meteor impact to rain down molten rock across the land, would it be that prolific mammal's descendants who'd inherit her decimated world?
Sharp Eye took a deep breath, inhaling the steam of her tea. The big question was: Did she announce her findings? While she had time?
Did it matter?
Who was she to break the world's ignorant bliss by announcing the inevitable? Fame didn't matter any more. How could it?
She sipped her tea and watched the soon to be victorious vermin nose through gravel, looking for roaches. She set the cup down, thinking how pleasant living only in the present was. She knew the future.
Then she thought, surely roaches would survive. Right?
The first season of The Peripheral was ok in its way & I'm looking forward to the Neuromancer show of course but I'm really hoping above all that someone will eventually do a @GreatDismal adaptation that leans with full force into what I take as his two core theses: the very rich are "no longer even remotely human", and the causes & drivers of most stories are utterly opaque to the people living in them. This latter point confuses many readers and would cause delightful havoc in video media #sff