The Importance of Actually, You Know, Doing Stuff
When I first heard the announcement that Steve Davidson had secured the trademark for the name “Amazing Stories,” I had a variety of mixed feelings. On the one hand, I was delighted to know that […]
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A Novel Dilemma
How do you get published when the rules and the markets are constantly shifting? Book stores are closing, mega-publishers are adopting their smaller cousins as in-house imprints, and the internet has made the leap from […]
Fiction and the Happy Brain
STORY HORDER As a child, I was a story horder. I couldn’t get enough of them. I was very fortunate to have parents who read to me, and looking back, they were saints in this […]
No. 4 – H. G. Wells, The Time Machine, War of the Worlds, and the Social Impacts of Science
I suspect what most people remember most about H. G. Wells gets confused with Orson Welles, the actor. You know, that infamous radio announcement? When the radio started blaring out reports on Halloween, 1938, that […]
A New Generation of Star Wars
A couple of months ago came an announcement that caught many of off-guard. The announcement I refer to is that of the Star Wars franchise being sold to Disney and the plan of a new […]
Publishing Options – Many Choices Now Viable
Many fans of fantasy & science fiction have dreams of joining the ranks among their favorite authors someday. But as little as five years ago the publishing landscape was much different than it is today. […]
Some Things Are Not As They Seem
Stories can become dated and lose their luster, but amazing stories have a tendency to shrug off changes over time and shine on with fresh wonder. Written in 1932, The Lost Machine by John Beynon Harris is one of those amazing stories.
“I Like Science Fiction, It’s Got Like Giant Robots and Stuff, Right?” Science Fiction’s Self-Esteem Problem Part III: Robots, Reboots and Remakes. How Hollywood Kills Serious Science Fiction
The only time the public pays attention to Science Fiction is when that great machine of mass marketing and “entertainment” called Hollywood inundates the collective consciousness with that most dreaded of phenomena: the Summer Blockbuster. But […]
Art + Fandom ≠ Fan Art: Definitions
Before I get properly rolling with this blog, I thought it might be worth taking a moment to stake out the territory I plan to cover. This website, and these blogs, are all about fandom, […]
Playing the Short Game: How to Sell Your Short Fiction (Part 4)
Why You Never “Sell” a Story: Understanding rights and licensing Welcome back. This is the fourth in my weekly series of posts on how to market and sell short fiction. You can check out my […]
Epic Fantasy Analysis Jan 24, 2013
My intention is to do these analysis every 15 days or so. This is the second in the series and is from data as of 1/24/2013. To review previous data (01/03/2013 you can click here). […]
Amazing News January 25
Boskone 50 is fast approaching. That is, the 50th Boskone. Half a century of science fiction fannish goodness, all in one place for a weekend. I will be in attendance as will a few other […]
Loving the Alien
Human beings have always had a fear of and, at the same time, a fascination with the “other”. Almost as soon as humans were able to make art on cave walls depictions of strange and […]
The Speed of Science
Science deals with a lot of high speed phenomena, like the speed of sound and the speed of light, which can make the topic seem fast and exciting. We also see science news on tv […]
Ready When You Are, JJ
They’ve really done it now. It’s over. First George Lucas sold Luke, Obi Wan, Princess Leia, Han and all the others into eternal indentured servitude on the Disney Plantation. Lucas, once a man with ideas […]
The Clubhouse: Five words every fan should know
“I have a Cosmic Mind — now what do I do?” Fanspeak is what we call the jargon of fandom that grew up in fanzines and is still in use in the internet age. It’s […]
Science Fiction Poetry
Unlike most of the other bloggers here at Amazing Stories, I’m just a fan-girl. Not a writer. And I don’t claim to be a particular expert on anything (except maybe Hildegard von Bingen and Baroque vocal music […]
Steve Stiles A Retrospective
Steve Stiles is a living double entendre: not only does he draw icons of the field, he is an icon of the field. If brushing twilltone off your lap after reading is a familiar experience, […]
Amazing News Addendum, January 24th
Tomorrow will be the very FIRST (and totally unplanned) FANNISH FRIDAY here at Amazing Stories! We’re going to try to put an emphasis on all things fannish every Friday. This week we kick off with […]
Time Travel Defined: A device for repairing a poorly thought out plot. Usually.
Time travel is one of those devices that seems to turn up eventually in most long running Science Fiction shows, particularly in the later seasons when they’ve worked out their main story arc already. I’ve […]
Amazing News January 24
Frank Wu and his wife Brianna ‘Spacekat’ Wu have designed a game called REVOLUTION 60. It looks quite awesome! The back-story sees the resurrection of a cold war environment, though this time with China, a […]
What is the Optimal Human Population? Lessons From the Novels of Stephen Baxter
Are there too many people on the planet? Science fiction bears much of the responsibility for spreading this meme, which can be unpleasantly tinged with racism. But now and again a great science fiction author develops a more inspiring and pro-human approach to the population question.
Crossroads: A Genre Darkly
World-building, extrapolation, analogy, conceptual breakthrough, thought experiment – these are science fiction’s basic methods. Other genres might occasionally borrow them, but SF has sharpened them to a razor’s edge. So what happens when this set of tools works alongside the themes, styles, and plot structures of noir?
To the Dadcave!
Whether you’re a new dad, or a dad starting out the new year, it’s time to think about yourself. Christmas, Thanksgiving and Halloween before the New Year were all about the kids. But they’re over. […]
Amazing News January 23, 2012
Dave Truesdale from Tangent Online (a very, very, very long-running review publication) wrote in to let us all know that the Tangent Online Recommended Reading List has been published and can be found here A […]
A Big Money Cast Doesn’t Always Make For A Hit
You’d think that fronting a new TV show with a well known cast would equal a hit. Especially in the sci-fi sector. There are a few actors who are rolled out for several shows, the […]
Synthetic Voices #13 – December 2012 Top Picks
This month has been a tumultuous one – travel, holidays, and illness. Podcasted fiction seems to have also had a hard time, December representing the weakest month for fiction that I have yet seen. Even […]
PULPED! A Blog About Pulp And All The Places To Find It
Although I’m sure that there’s certain decorum for writing blog posts that prohibit fanboy type moments, I am choosing at this point-if such rules do exist- to completely ignore them. I do not have nearly […]
Weird Tales For Winter
If you’re anything like me, you have long since exhausted the established canon of weird, speculative, and mainstream horror fiction. You’ve read every Stephen King novel in triplicate, and are starting to wish that […]
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