From Fantasy England to Realistic Space Battles
I had a spurt of reading energy so instead of giving you three weeks of reviews I decided to bundle them altogether into one article. Luckily for me I get to review books from two […]
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Fantastic Stories of the Imagination Returns
Fantastic Stories of the Imagination Warren Lapine, ed. Wilder Publications $29.99 hardcover $14.99 trade paper $6.59 Kindle $7.99 Nook In one of its prior incarnations, Amazing Stories® had a sister publication, Fantastic Stories of the […]
Nuevos trabajos de ciencia ficción en español
Como parte del proyecto de este blog, pretendo realizar una vez al mes una sección de ”novedades”. En esta sección informaré sobre nuevos números de revistas, nuevos libros, películas o lo que aparezca. Es por […]
What’s Your Type?
Does fantasy fiction feed racism? An important distinction between literature and film is often elided. Arthur Conan Doyle on the classification of peoples and my thoughts on the Boston Marathon bombing.
Growing Pains by Ian Whates – book review
Growing Pains is a new collection from the highly talented British author and editor Ian Whates. Whates is the author of the Noise series of space operas and the urban fantasy trilogy City of 100 Rows. He […]
Crossroads: The Cores of Literary Fiction and Speculative Fiction
The relationship between speculative fiction and mainstream literary fiction is complicated by decades of group identity dynamics, mutual ignorance, and overbroad critical generalizations about both genres. However, if we try to put our long-held attitudes […]
Electrons for Everyone
As I sit wandering the internet for fresh tidbits of science fiction, fantasy, and horror, I find them flourishing everywhere. Perhaps flourishing is not the right word. Flourishing leads me to images of well-manicured flower […]
THE WOLF AT THE END OF THE WORLD – A Novel by Douglas Smith (excerpt)
THE WOLF AT THE END OF THE WORLD An urban fantasy novel by Douglas Smith (Estimated release date: Summer 2013) Set in modern day Northern Canada, THE WOLF AT THE END OF THE WORLD is […]
On Sansa Stark
(Note: This is from the perspective of someone who has watched the Game of Thrones TV show but is only 120 pages into the first book.) I’ve spent a serious chunk of my first week […]
Interview – The Amazing Art of Anja Uhren
I met Anja Uhren recently at an Easter egg painting event. She was casually painting a face on an off-cut of card and I was immediately impressed by the effortlessness with which she produced a […]
Crossroads: Negotiating the Unreal in Magic Realism and Fantasy
Perhaps the most important insight I’ve gained from my research for my Crossroads series is that the borders between genres are very fluid, and the more one genre (or sub-genre) resembles another, the more contentious […]
Synthetic Voices #17 – April 2013 Top Picks
This was one of those wonderful, terrible months where there were simply too many good stories to choose from. Buckle up! [powerpress] *Announcements* First up, assuming all goes well, you should hear a version of […]
Fiction River Debuts
Fiction River WMG Publishing Six times a year Electronic $6.99 Trade Paper $15.99 I interviewed Kristine Kathryn Rusch two weeks ago about the experience of launching Fiction River via Kickstarter. Fiction River is a new […]
Hayao Miyazaki and Epic Fantasy
Since taking on this blogging position, I have been struggling to find works that would appeal to the audience that Amazing Stories has, particularly those who are interested in fantasy. I would categorize a large […]
EMPEZANDO A RECORRER EL CAMINO
Una de las reacciones más interesantes que ha provocado mi entrada como “blogger” en Amazing Stories es la del destacado escritor venezolano Jorge de Abreu, quién se planteaba interrogantes por demás válidas y que además […]
Crossroads: Tensions between SF/F and Mainstream Literary Fiction
Welcome to the first week of May! This month, I’m going to be taking a look at the often-fraught relationship between speculative fiction and mainstream literary fiction. I’ve always found the love-hate relationship between devotees […]
I am a Reader
Before I was a writer, I was a reader. My mother tells me I’ve been reading since I was four, and I accept that, because I don’t remember a time when I couldn’t read. By […]
A Review of Writing Fantasy Heroes
Writing Fantasy Heroes Jason M. Waltz, ed. Rogue Blades Entertainment trade paper, $14.99, ebook $ 7.99 Kindle (There is no other electronic version available that I’m aware of.) Okay, class, today we’re going to have […]
Trials and Tribulations of the Publishing Game
As I put the finishing touches and edits on my latest novel, I am charged with the task of also creating the cover art. I consider myself to be a good photographer but for some […]
JACK VANCE: VISIONS OF A DYING EARTH
After the last few S&S works of the early 1940s, such as “Dragon Moon” by Henry Kuttner and the short-lived Unknown, Sword & Sorcery lost steam. With Robert E. Howard dead for five or more […]
Crossroads: Satire and the Fantastic
NOTE: This week’s essay is actually an adapted form of an essay from December 18, 2012 that was originally published at The King of Elfland’s 2nd Cousin. Some changes, however, have been made from the […]
Zero-Magic Fantasy
Zero-magic fantasy is a growing subgenre. But can it ever rise above the level of thought experiment? And what are the tradeoffs?
The Greatest Fantasy Author of All Time
This week some in the world are celebrating the birth/death of the Bard of Avon also known as William Shakespeare. Shakespeare as you might have heard was a well-known English playwright and poet. Curiously enough […]
American Tolkien
There is a kind of writer whose name evokes not just the titles of their best-known novels or the characters in them, but a certain way of experiencing the world. If one hears the name […]
Crowdfunding Fiction River: An Interview with Kristine Kathryn Rusch
My post on crowdfunding a few weeks back generated some really great discussion and seemed to tap into something of interest to a great many people. This topic, like the rest of publishing these days, […]
Crossroads: The Importance of Parody to the Speculative Fiction Genre
Last week, we talked about how every piece of humorous speculative fiction inevitably gets compared to Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. But as I outlined, Adams’ comedy of the absurd operates very […]
Synthetic Voices #16 – March 2013 Top Picks
This was one of those wonderful, terrible months where there were simply too many good stories to choose from. Buckle up! [powerpress] Discuss on: Jimmy RogersRead My Profile www.scienceismagic.com
No. 13 – The Number Thirteen, Black Magic, Mysticism, Swordplay and Sorcery
Number 13: a 13th Amazing Stories post. I interrupt my regularly scheduled posts, in my ongoing series of discussing writers of classic science fiction (and the inner meanings therein), to consider the number 13 (and […]
Writers Writing About Writers Writing About …
There’s something unseemly about writers who write about writers. Many of my beliefs about writing have changed since I was a pink-cheeked little colleen getting up early to write before school, but this is one […]
CROSSROADS: Right Place, Time, and Tech – The Hitchhiker’s Guide
Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy trilogy (itself spread across five books with a six written by Eoin Colfer), with its friendly, green warning against panic, casts a huge shadow over the field of […]
About Author
Chris Gerwel is a science fiction, fantasy, and horror writer. Raised in New Jersey, he spent ten years in Central & Eastern Europe in the market research industry, and today when he isn’t reading or writing speculative fiction, he works in the software industry. He lives in northern NJ, with a beautiful wife and a rambunctious puppy, and also writes the weekly blog The King of Elfland’s 2nd Cousin.
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