Tim Major's Blog, page 26
July 21, 2014
The peculiar charm of ‘Robot Monster’
Robot Monster (Phil Tucker, 1953) is a terrible film, but it’s weirdly haunting. The film tells the story of a group of people who, after waking from a picnic nap, find themselves the remaining six people on Earth. Ro-Man, an alien with a diving-helmet head and the body of a gorilla, has destroyed the human population with a combination of nuclear attacks and rampaging prehistoric creatures. Now he’s out to kill the few survivors.
What’s notable about Robot Monster is that its low production v...
July 9, 2014
Infinite Science Fiction anthology
The table of contents for Infinite Acacia’s upcoming anthology, ‘Infinite Science Fiction’, has been released and includes my story, ‘By the Numbers’. Take a look!
I know nothing about the other stories, but the titles are intriguing – I’m really looking forward to reading them! The release date of the anthology will be announced soon.
July 1, 2014
Announcement: Carus and Mitch
So here’s a thing.
My novella, ‘Carus and Mitch’, will be published by Omnium Gatherum Books in February next year. You can read the announcement on the OG site here.
As you can imagine, I’m feeling pretty pleased about it! Omnium Gatherum seems a great home for the story – I discovered the company due to previous titles being nominated for the Bram Stoker and Shirley Jackson awards. I haven’t read any of the other OG authors’ work yet, but you can be sure that I will.
I’m really looking forward...
June 27, 2014
Origins of science fiction terms
The io9 website this week features a long list of science fiction terms and their origins. Some I was already aware of – I remember reading an article not long ago about cheeky reuses of Ursula K. Le Guin’s ‘ansible’, and William Gibson’s ‘cyberspace’ and Karel Čapek’s ‘robot’ are well documented.
There’s a huge amount of unexpected detail in the article, though. Tracing a first usage of ‘alien’ to mean ‘from another world’ is pretty impressive, for a start. Pinpointing ‘space-ship’ to 1880 is...
May 23, 2014
Writing update, May 2014
Ting!OK, so my writing spreadsheet didn’t actually go ‘ting’ when I hit 400,000 words, but it should’ve. Anyway, I’m using this tiny milestone as an excuse to summarise my writing up to this point in 2014, following on from my 2013 update.
Short stories
A Crest of a Wave (2400 words) – SF, Mars
Like Clockwork (3500 words) – SF, Mars
Cast In the Same Mould (4200 words) – SF, Mars
Finding Waltzer-Three (1400 words) – SF
Longer fiction
I’ve temporarily shelved the historical time-travel novel I was wor...
April 29, 2014
Writers of the Future: minor success
An email this morning informs me that my novelette, Carus & Mitch, has received an Honorable Mention from the judges of the Writers of the Future contest (Q1 2014). It’s a decent result for my first entry to the prestigious SF/F writing contest, and hopefully a sign that I’m on the right track…
However, it’s difficult to know what to do with Carus & Mitch itself, now. Where do 17,000-word novelettes belong, these days?
January 16, 2014
#StoryDecon: ‘A Sound of Thunder’ by Ray Bradbury
This article is filled with spoilers. If you haven’t read it already, you can find the 1952 story itself online here.
Plot summary
In the near future, Eckels, a hunter, pays to travel back in time with a safari group to kill a Tyrannosaurus Rex. When they arrive, the hunters are instructed by the guide, Travis, to stay on a metal path in order to avoid having severe repercussions on the future. Upon seeing the dinosaur Eckels becomes terrified and strays off the path, to Travis’s outrage. Back...
#StoryDecon: ‘Man from the South’ by Roald Dahl
This article is filled with spoilers. If you haven’t read it already, you can find the 1948 story itself online here.
Plot summary
An Englishman spends time beside the swimming pool of a Jamaica hotel. He meets a man from South America, then they are joined by an American sailor and an English girl. The mysterious man proposes a bet: if the sailor can successfully light his lighter ten times in a row, he will win the man’s Cadillac; if he fails, the man will chop off the sailor’s little finger....
Deconstructing short stories
In late September my wife and I had a baby boy. Every day with my son is a thrill, but there are minor downsides, including the fact that my novel-reading speed has tanked.
That’s not the only reason that I’ve decided to concentrate on reading short fiction this year. I write SF short stories and have had a couple published, but I tend not to read short fiction for pleasure. This seems ridiculous – would you give the time of day to a would-be novelist who didn’t read novels? The more stories I...
