Sarah Pennington's Blog, page 26

The Actually Terrible AIs You Didn't Know You Needed

This post topic is brought to you by 7 A.M. Sarah, who apparently channels her inner Tumblr weird-blogger when she's tired. Have fun. 

What's a sci-fi story without a surprisingly human (or inhumane) AI? Ever since someone realized that you could use ones and zeroes and code to make computers seem like they can think and reason and make decisions and develop consciences, we've been sticking them in narratives left and right. It doesn't matter if it's strict sci-fi or sci-fi adjacent...

(Belated) November + December 2019 Doings!

It feels a little weird to be doing a recap post for November and December of last year after doing all my New Year 2020 posts earlier this week, not gonna lie. But I also know that if I don't do this post, I will eventually need to look back at it for some reason and then be frustrated that it doesn't exist. (For the record: I do occasionally go back and reread my Doings! posts, so this isn't out of the question.) So, let's get going. Because I'm covering two months, I'm going to try to...

2020 Vision

Well, here we are: the start of a new year and a new decade. I’d like to say that it feels hopeful or weird or whatever, but, let’s be real: it feels a whole lot like yesterday did. After all, when you get right down to it, the first day of the New Year is just another day to which we arbitrarily assigned a particular meaning. There's nothing inherent about this particular sunrise that somehow lessens the problems of the time behind us or makes the time ahead of us more hopeful. We're still...

New Year's Dream [A Mechanical Heart Short Story]

So, I originally wasn't going to do a New Year's short story this year, but then I had this idea, and, well, things happened. This takes place the winter before Mechanical Heart, so no worries about spoilers. That said, you might want to hop back and read "New Year, New World," last year's New Year's story.

New Year's Dream: A New Year's Short StoryIt was supposed to be a quiet night. A peaceful one, even, if such a thing could be had on Crossings Night. Luis had been planning it for weeks....

End-of-Year Book Freakout 2019!

Here we are again: the end of another year and another six months of books to recap (counting from the time of my mid-year book freakout)! I actually am freaking out a little in this post, 'cause I've read some amazing books in the last six months. But we'll get to that in a minute.

A few quick stats before we get started: I have read a total of 130 books and 38,656 pages this year, plus a little bit because I have a few reading days left in the year. (For those of you concerned: I'm finishing...

Winter 2019-2020 Reads!

Hey'a, everyone! I return at last from my (unplanned, finals-inspired) hiatus to bring you — what else? — a list of recent and upcoming book releases to brighten the dreary winter days. Except, I guess, it's not particularly dreary right now, seeing as Christmas is almost here (!!!), but come January, we'll all need a magnificent distraction. And books are both magnificent and distracting (and very bad for impulse control, as you know if you saw my library stacks on FB or IG), so yeah....

Books Full of Delicious: The Pie Book Tag!

Hey'a, everyone! It's the day after Thanksgiving, and we all know what that means — well, we know three things specifically. First: it's the first day on which you can reasonably play Christmas music in public. Second: it's the first day of holiday sales (or "sales," depending on where you shop). Third: it's the day on which, if you're lucky, you get to eat an abundance of leftover pie! I covered the first a couple years ago, and I'm taking care of the second over on Light and Shadows. That...

Magical Powers I Wish I Had (For Totally Mundane Purposes)

Everyone wants magical powers, am I right? Or superpowers, if you prefer that term — they're honestly about the same thing, just with slightly different connotations and sources. Anyway. We frequently pick the powers we'd want based on sheer Rule of Cool — I mean, how absolutely storming awesome would it be to be able to fly or shoot fire from your hands or use most standard forms of gravity manipulation? But at the same time, most of those would be pretty impractical or even dangerous if you're not a...

October 2019 Doings!

Hello, everyone! So, October. It's been a crazy month, let me tell you. I mean, that is the whole point of this Doings! post, but yeah.

(Also, I just got back from a Halloween party about an hour before I finished this post, and I'm still so hyped. Tired, but hyped. It was amazing. But more on that later!)
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Fairy Tale Mashups I Want to Make Reality (Ft. BitS 1st Book Birthday!)

Hey'a, everyone! So, exciting thing: tomorrow is the one-year anniversary of Blood in the Snow's release! As of tomorrow morning, I will have been a published author for exactly one year. Sadly, I don't have the time to do a giveaway in celebration, but I do have Blood in the Snow set to free on Amazon today through Sunday, so if you haven't read it yet or you have a friend who needs to read it, now's a good time to pick it up!