Steven M. Moore's Blog, page 64
June 25, 2019
My email newsletter…
Maybe I’m old-fashioned. Some pundits are now saying that email and email newsletters are dinosaurs due for extinction. I disagree with them. I subscribe to many email newsletters—mostly ones for regular news, science news, causes (environment and wildlife preservation are big ones), new books, and news about other authors and their books. I read them at my leisure, often at night on my Kindle. While email newsletters might be going out of style a bit, I still like them—let’s face it: tweets...
June 20, 2019
First contact…
It comes in two forms: we meet them out there, or those out there come here to Earth. In any case, the theme is ubiquitous in old sci-fi. I’m not sure how much it’s used today. Recent discussions in the media of UFO sightings (remember, UFO only means “unidentified flying object,” not an ET’s vehicle, in spite of NY Times crosswords’ clues) might increase tales about first contact. Who knows? So it might be worthwhile to study how believable such tales can be.
Both versions have the problem t...
June 19, 2019
ABC shorts: The Map…
The Map
A.B. Carolan, Copyright 2019
“Maybe it’s a treasure map,” Kevin said after unrolling the document they’d found in the old house onto the attic floor and putting some old tools at each corner to hold it down.
“Kind of weirdo,” his friend Dave said. “Just a bunch of black dots with some numbers beside them. Maybe the rest of it faded away? The paper’s brittle.”
The roll of paper had been in the top, thin drawer of an old chest. The other larger drawers were filled with rocks.
Kevin look...
June 18, 2019
Author photos…
I probably don’t do enough of them because I haven’t found one I really like yet. Although my headshots appear in many places on the internet and in my books, they all look staged. Just below is my most recent one, which seems very staged (first pro shot). One of my first, with sunglasses, makes me look a bit like Tom Clancy. With my glasses off, my kids used to say I looked like Kris Kristofferson.
I think authors have a tough time with photos because a lot of us are nerdy introverts and no...
June 14, 2019
News and Notices from the Writing Trenches #170…
[Note from Steve: I cannot believe this is only issue #170 of my “News and Notices…” after 10+ years of this blog. But here it is.]
Spring and summer reading. Summer seems almost here, and then it’s not. So let’s just agree to say spring and summer reading is here—books to read on vacation, day-trips to the beach, or in those lazy evening of daylight savings time when you’re tired of TV reruns, lack of good movies, or everyone hogging your internet bandwidth. Or just books to read on those ba...
June 13, 2019
Stars and planets…
It’s hard for anyone to get their head around how far away the stars are. The nearest, Proxima Centauri, is 4.243 light-years distant—a light-year is the distance traveled by light in a year, going at 186,000 miles per second!
Three Sol-like real stars (i.e. like our sun) are where the Human colonies of New Haven, Novo Mondo, and Sanctuary are located in The Chaos Chronicles Trilogy Collection (a three-novel bundle from Carrick Publishing). In A.B. Carolan’s Mind Games, the main character vis...
June 12, 2019
Steve’s shorts: Shipwreck…
[Note from Steve: Join me in a little space opera.]
Shipwreck
Copyright 2019, Steven M. Moore
You only think about gravity when you don’t have it—the real thing or the artificial kind.
“What’s going on, Wilbur?”
The ship’s AI didn’t respond. That’s when you know you’re in trouble.
I floated up from the lounge to the control room aided by the few handholds I could find. My launch toward the captain’s chair was okay, although my head ended up where my butt should be.
I managed to flip around an...
June 11, 2019
Popular fiction…
Some literary wags consider this equivalent to “genre fiction” and look down their noses at it, while they prattle on and on about boring “literary classics” that high school English teachers use to torture their students. I prefer “popular fiction” as a descriptor because many avid readers actually flock to it in order to entertain themselves and learn things about the world as well—past, present, and future.
I don’t particularly like the word “genre” either. Today genres are only key words...
June 6, 2019
Magic vs. science…
[Note: This can be considered a continuation of last Thursday’s post.]
Arthur C. Clarke’s quote is a good way to start this article: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” This is more than a glib remark from an old sci-fi writer. It is an important statement about technology.
Imagine a caveman from Earth’s prehistory holding a smart phone. He can’t call anyone and no one can call him, but he can hit a video replay icon, see the video unfolding, and drop the p...
June 5, 2019
ABC Shorts: Harvest Time…
[Note from Steve: A. B. Carolan isn’t sitting around patting himself on the back for his new novel Mind Games. He continues to write short fiction. Here’s one story he wrote in honor of Brian Aldiss.]
Zeno climbed higher. The fruit at the top ripened first. The tribe always went through the grove, back and forth, each time getting nearer the ground. And then they would start all over again.
He climbed almost to where the sky closed over and he could climb no more. It never occurred to him to...
