Steven R. Southard's Blog, page 34

Coronavirus and Black Swan Theory

Historians will look back, I believe, at the Coronavirus Pandemic of 2020 as a black swan event. For the rest of us, memories of this may fade, but theyll never go away.

Whats a black swan event? According to Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, a black swan event has three properties: (1) It is a surprise; (2) It has a major effect; and (3) After it occurs, people consider it to have been inevitable.

Were still in the middle of the pandemic...

It’s Not Too Late

You still have time to submit a short story to the upcoming anthology, 20,000 Leagues Remembered. This book will be a sesquicentennial tribute to Jules Vernes novel.

Cover Image for 20,000 Leagues Remembered

Im co-editing this anthology along with Kelly A. Harmon of Pole to Pole Publishing. Were received and accepted a number of fine stories already.

However, we still have room for two or three more. For us to accept your submission, your story:

           must pay tribute in some way to...

Future Technology vs. Pandemics

Lets take a break from the unpleasant coronavirus news of the present, and travel to the future. Specifically, lets see how our descendants might prevent or deal with pandemic viral outbreaks.

Futuristic Caduceus

Speculation about the future is always error-prone. Many technologies Ill mention wont pan out, or will introduce unforeseen problems. Also, these probably wont eliminate the existence of viruses; new ones will mutate to get around our best efforts to defeat them. Still, those...

19 COVID-19 Story Prompts

Youre stuck at home, all you can think about is COVID-19, and youre in the mood to write a story. Youre stuck for an idea. Below, in no particular order, are nineteen free story prompts involving diseases. Some may be similar to stories already published, but you can write your own version.

Character A, hated by the family, returns home from travel and spreads coronavirus to the family. Character A recovers, but beloved family member Character B dies. Character A must live with the guilt...

12 Cures for Stir-Craziness

Stay in your homes, the experts tell us. Keep away from others. Dont gather in bars, restaurants, or theaters. There arent any sports. All your club meetings are cancelled. The boss called off that business trip and made you telework. Youre bored, being at home all the time. Youve gone stir-crazy. What to do?

Heres my answerwrite something.

Thats right. Sit at your keyboard, or grab pen and paper, and write something.

But, youre saying, Im not a writer!

My answerhow do you know?

Heres my...

Quarantine and the Writing Scene

The spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus has got us all thinking. Each of us is reacting in his own way. As a writer, my mind turns toward fiction possibilities.

Please dont take this post as some attempt to minimize or make light of this contagious and deadly disease. The numbers of infected and dead continue to mount as this new virus spreads around the world. Nobody knows how bad this coronavirus will get. Though panic may be unwarranted, so is blind optimism.

So far, Im not showing any...

My Muse Walks into a Blog

I haven’t invited too many guest posts on my site, and today both you and I will discover why. I invited my muse to write a post. She accepted right away. That was three years ago.

I prodded her about it recently, during one of her rare visits, and she said she hadn’t forgotten. She’d just been busy. I think she was lying. In any case, below is what she gave me, and it sure doesn’t read like three years’ worth of work. More like a last-minute, slap-dash, hodgepodge mess.

...

Prompts for Your Next Story

Got some story ideas for you!

As you know, I’m co-editing an upcoming anthology called 20,000 Leagues Remembered, a collection intended to commemorate the sesquicentennial of the publication of Jules Verne’s classic submarine novel. My co-editor, Kelly A. Harmon, and I are are still accepting submissions. Click here for details. This image is what we intend to use for the cover.

We’ve received a good number of submissions, and have accepted several. There’s still room for more, though. I’ll...

The Life-Cycle of Technology

On occasion, I blog about the ways society reacts to new technology. Today I’ll consider the life-cycle of a technology.

Graphing a technology’s life-cycle isn’t new. You can see this graph on Wikipedia. It’s the standard view of the profitability of a new technology over its life, including the four phases: Research and Development, Ascent, Maturity, and Decline.

I’ve built on the standard technology life-cycle curve by adding several points of interest to it. These don’t occur with every...

Jules Verne’s Impact on Undersea Fiction

The publication of Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea led to a boom in books about undersea adventures. But the boom didn’t occur immediately and Verne wasn’t the sole cause.

Before explaining all that, I’ll mention an upcoming anthology of short stories titled 20,000 Leagues Remembered, scheduled for release on the 150th anniversary of Verne’s submarine novel. Until April 30, fellow editor Kelly A. Harmon and I are accepting short stories inspired by that novel. For more...