There are a few. They’ve been the subject of several emails I’ve received since I posted this piece. What we call natural laws are observable regularities in the behavior of mass, energy, and spacetime. Jokes to the contrary notwithstanding, Congress can’t modify or repeal them. If there’s a “legislator” behind them, it’s Almighty …
Category: fiction
Apr 08 2025
Plausibility In Science Fiction
Now and then, a reader will write to me about something scientifically or technologically disputable in one of my books. That readers don’t always manage to “suspend disbelief” while reading a science fiction novel doesn’t come as a surprise. However, one recent observation was a reminder that the ability to accept a novelist’s “handwavium” …
Mar 12 2025
Frontiers In Intolerance: Indie Publishing
While writers who’ve elected to go independent, exploiting the 21st Century’s gatekeeper-free outlets for publishing our fiction, have a variety of reasons for doing so, the retention of control over our works is prominent among them. Conventional publishers seldom permit a writer that degree of control. They demand changes of all sorts, ostensibly to …
Feb 08 2025
The Duty Of A Speculative-Fiction Writer
He must speculate. Perhaps he constrains his speculations in some fashion, with an eye toward the beliefs and preferences of his target readers, but nevertheless, he must exhibit imagination in his tales. His plots must embed original possibilities; his characters must confront the challenges they offer and labor to surmount them. All else is …
Dec 03 2024
An Answer, And A Justification
I received a curious inquiry just yesterday, from a fiction colleague I’ve known for some time. As we hadn’t spoken for some time, we exchanged some pleasantries before he got to the real reason for his call. He wanted to know why there’d been no new novel from me in 2024. As Doors was released …
Sep 28 2024
Wishful Thinking Dept.
In a column that reports on a crazy “professor” decrying Shakespeare as a symbol of “white supremacy,” Lincoln Brown deposeth and sayeth: There is no shortage of funds and support for black, brown, or native people to make their own movies. Let us have a new version of “Arrow to the Sun” made …
Sep 21 2024
An Action-Adventure With An Agenda
Henry Brown’s Paradox hexalogy presents up-front as a time-travel adventure. Normally those don’t thrill me, owing to the poor way in which most writers treat the possibility of meaningful time-travel: i.e., time-travel in which the traveler can actually change the era he visits. Brown does it right, producing an epic tale of multiple temporal …
Sep 15 2024
The Doomed Pursuit
Enough of politics for the moment. There are a lot of things happening that way, but there are also a lot of people talking about them, so let’s leave off with that bundle of subjects and turn to something even more frustrating. The frequency with which I get “But why did you write …
Sep 04 2024
Book Sale
Well, it’s that time again: BasedCon, which (as far as I know) is the only F&SF convention that must conceal its locale until the day it opens, is upon us. And so, in keeping with the tradition he’s established, is Hans G. Schantz’s Based Book Sale, in which all the books are $0.99 or …
Jun 13 2024
Strolling Among The Universes
Forgive me, Gentle Reader. I’ve been so wrapped up in my novel-in-progress that thoughts about fiction and its attendant trials are nearly all I’ve had lately. But perhaps this will provide you with some amusement. Writers write. Few of us are as diligent about it as we should be – I’ve had long …
May 17 2024
Power Positions
Whether you’re writing exposition, opinion, or fiction, you want your prose to have power. There are a number of maxims about this, for example the dictum to prefer the active voice and strong, active verbs. Another is the advice to avoid overdecorating your sentences with modifiers and subordinate clauses – i.e., to let your …
Fran’s Recent Novels
Margaret’s Recent Novels
