favorite science fiction blog | favorite science fiction blog
May.14.2011
On his recent show featuring the new Doctor Who, late-night host Craig Ferguson extolled the venerable British TV show as "the triumph of intellect and romance over brute force and cynicism." While there's plenty of science fiction that puts brute force and cynicism front and center, my...
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May.13.2011
Reflections on Pamela Zoline's "The Heat Death of the Universe"
This is the kind of story that only comes around once. Like the chaos of the universe. Once it’s started, there’s nothing to stop it. Certainly there are other more profound works. Some tomes full of whole worlds created...
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May.13.2011
I was seventeen when I first read 1984, and that was the year George Orwell forever changed my view of the world.
I don't think any other novel read during my school years quite impacted my thinking the way 1984 did. I discovered it in 1999, so the plot in the book had long since past. It was...
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May.13.2011
Sci Fi Eyes
My favorite science fiction story is The Coded Eyes. Projected in the distant future the most popular distribution centers are the ones that provide eye transplants to the living from the deceased. Consumers are drawn to this concept as blindness is defined in different categories....
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May.13.2011
Back in the early seventeenth century, when the novel was still a novel idea, a Frenchman wrote “Voyage to the Moon”, one of the earliest written works of sci-fi. That work of far-from-primitive art, inspired the science fiction and fantasy of Voltaire, Swift and Poe, among others. Who the hell was...
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May.13.2011
I've never warmed up to science fiction.
I'm sure it's a personal failing. I suspect it has something to do with a preference for the "could be true."
As a child, I had a rich fantasy life, but it was firmly grounded in a life I might aspire to. I had imaginary human playmates. ...
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May.13.2011
"Z for Zachariah" is a science fiction book that really resonated with me. The main character named Ann is the sole survivor in a radioactive free pocket of land on the East Coast after a nuclear war. The narrative is written from her perspective and very believable. Another survivor...
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May.12.2011
Until I was in high school, I wasn't consciously aware that the catagory "short story" existed in literature. I didn't know much about literature in general, actually. I would read things for class, stories our English teachers assigned us with the hope of forcing us to think big,...
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May.12.2011
It’s hard to narrow it down to my favorite science fiction story. My first inclination is, of course, to name Star Wars -- by which I mean the original movie, which came out when I was 14. I was overwhelmed, absorbed, and inspired by that movie, to the point that nothing that followed could...
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May.12.2011
My earliest memories of reading involve science fiction. In particular a series of books for children about an eccentric scientist who, as I recall, was rather short, but with a huge head. He might have been an alien, or an alien/human hybrid, but I don’t recall for sure. For years, all I could...
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