Re: Wikihistory

After struggling to like some of these Nebula-worthy stories, it came as a relief to stumble on a story that just plain made laugh. “Wikihistory” by Desmond Warzel is an amusing short about time travelers maintaining the wiki of the world’s timeline.Part of its charm comes from the way it turns Godwin’s Law on its […]

Re: Children’s Crusade

Remember how I changed my mind about “Titanium Mike Saves The Day” after I got past the first page? Well, the same thing happened with “Children’s Crusade,” by Robin Wayne Bailey, only it went in the opposite direction. A boy, Ari, is kneeling in prayer, ignoring hunger without complaint. Then his uncle Abad gives him […]

Why blogging is so damn addictive

The day after I posted about the work function of writing, it stopped working. To be honest, I stopped taking my own advice. I would pick hard things to write next, and then resist writing all day. Duh! Blogging on the other hand became easier every day. These are the elements that I think make […]

Going forward

So here’s where I post my resolve to keep posting every day for another month. Now that I’m getting a feel for what I want to write about, I will impose a little structure.

What I’ve learned so far

Why I didn’t want to blog. Now that I’ve finished a month of blogging every day, I’m surprised that I managed to do it. I have enough trouble getting myself to write fiction every day. Blogging just seemed like an incredible waste of time. I also didn’t think I could compose a post every day. […]

Is this Potable?

I have no idea why, when we were bringing this pot home, it looked like a good place to stash…

Re: Pride

Some people seem to be strange atttractors. In Pride, by Mary Turzillo, Kevin is enlisted by Animals Our Brethren in an attack on a Frankenlab where they’re cloning dead animals. Never mind the image that rouses of a Contented Cow arising from a revenant hamburger, the ugly duckling cub he rescues somehow manages to survive […]

Re: Always

Funny how you can always tell a cult by who gets to have sex. In “Always,” by Karen Joy Fowler, the unnamed narrator is warned by her mother: if only the pastor is having sex, it’s a cult. When the narrator and her husband come to Always and discover exactly that about Brother Porter, she […]

Re: Captive Girl

With lovely, musical language, ” Captive Girl,” by Jennifer Pelland opens with a vista of space as seen by a watcher tracking dangers to her home. Then the watcher, Alice, wakes up in her body. She is trammeled in the machinery that makes it possible, her face covered by a heavy mask, her senses replaced […]

Starting to believe in spring

Spring is coming even inside the house. Like this orchid, for instance. No matter how I neglect it, every year it puts up a shoot of flowers. Meanwhile, there’s quite a bank of snowdrops developing outside.