Edward M. Lerner's Blog: SF and Nonsense, page 10

Latest review of Muses & Musings

Excerpt from a review of my 2019 collection, Muses & Musings, upon which I just stumbled:

The mold has yet been fashioned that can fit him. He is science fiction down to the bone, but he very often takes the "serious" stuff not so seriously. Or he does, but he still squeezes a modicum of wit and whimsy into his subjects. He can catch a salient point in a couple of pages or explore a well-trodden road like AI with new insight.

"Him," in this context, being me.

The full review, for anyone...

Sherlock #3

Perhaps you met my AI PI in "A Case of Identity," in the December 2015 Analog. Maybe you encountered this futuristic detective in his second outing, "The Satellites of Damocles," in Future Science Fiction Digest 3 (June 2019).


Either way,  I expect you'll be happy to know that "Sherlock" confronts his third mystery in "The Adventure of the Meat Interpreter." That story just debuted in the January/February 2020 issue of The Grantville Gazette (in the zine's Universe Annex).

And if you ...

To everything there is a season ...

The new year, traditionally, is a time to take stock. And this being an SFnal blog, a certain Philip K. Dick quote comes to mind. To wit:

"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."

What reality should be recognized in this new year? That after more than eleven years and 655 posts, my enthusiasm for blogging has ebbed. That whereas my practice has long been to post more or less weekly, this schedule in recent months has -- being honest with myself -- too often been...

Been bad or good?

Sauron knows ;-)

Credit: NASA, ESA, and P. Kalas (University of California, Berkeley).(Season's greetings.)

====================== from Edward M. Lerner's "SF and Nonsense"

Arrivederci Italia

Mentioned in passing in my November 22nd post, "2019 Best Reads," I was recently in Italy. To be complete, my wife and I both were. Between research and prepping for the trip, the trip itself, and resting/catching-up afterward, this Italian adventure accounted for a big chunk of my autumn. Setting aside the rain we encountered during some part of nearly every day sightseeing, everything about this trip was awesome.

(Yes, this a blog about science and SF. If you choose to leave now, nothing...

Buy-a-Book Saturday

It's that time again.

Regularly since 2010, shortly before Thanksgiving, I've posted about Buy-a-Book Saturday. That's my personal variation on Small Business Saturday: the day (specifically, the second day after Thanksgiving, and one day after retail's infamous Black Friday) on which holiday shoppers are especially encouraged to patronize small businesses. The big-box stores and Internet giants will do fine this holiday season. But will your neighborhood, non-chain shops and boutiques?

Rara...

2019 best reads

Thanksgiving 2018 fell as early in the year as possible. In 2019, Thanksgiving comes as late as possible. Nonetheless, Black Friday and Cyber Monday are, once again, almost upon us.

So: on to the latest installment of this annual feature.

As ever, I read a lot: as research, to keep current with the genre in which I write, and simply for enjoyment. Before the holiday shopping onslaught, I like to volunteer a few words about the most notable books from my reading (and sometimes re-reading) thus...

Discover ... *me*

Many of you drop by SF and Nonsense because you're familiar with at least some of my novels and shorter stories -- but for some visitors, that isn't the case. If you're in that latter group, now's your opportunity ....

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Does size matter?

At a con a few weeks past ("Back (exhausted!) from Capclave"), one of my panels, Does Size Matter?, dealt with the perennial topic of story lengths. As this is a matter of perennial interest among con-goers and aspiring writers, I decided to make it the subject of a post.

How I write: 
When the idea comes first -- and for me, usually, it does -- I let the story evolve into whatever length it s...

M&M: first review

Popular genre website Tangent Online recently posted their review of Muses & Musings: A Science Fiction Collection. My favorite passage (from among many):

Sure to have something to appeal to almost every reader of science fiction

Sure