This post isn’t just about the third book in the Ender’s Game series–it’s about the genocide of an entire alien race, which is actually a fairly important trope in science fiction. Of all the evils of our modern era, perhaps the most heinous is the systematic extermination of an entire race or ethnicity. These acts… Continue reading X is for Xenocide
Tag: Battlestar Galactica
W is for Wagon Train to the Stars
When Gene Roddenberry pitched the original Star Trek series back in the 60s, Westerns were all the rage. Consequently, he pitched his show as a “wagon train to the stars,” where a bunch of quirky characters on an awesome starship travel from adventure town to interstellar adventure town, exploring and pioneering the final frontier. Sound… Continue reading W is for Wagon Train to the Stars
N is for Nebula
Of all the objects in space, nebulae are some of the most beautiful and awe-inspiring. These giant clouds of gas and dust span light-years, and often contain stellar nurseries where new stars (and with them, new planets) are born. Few things can fill me with a greater sense of wonder than a detailed, high-res image… Continue reading N is for Nebula
L is for Lost Colony
As we discussed in I is for Interstellar, space colonization is a major theme of science fiction, especially space opera. Of course, things don’t always go smoothly. Space is a really, really, really big place, and sometimes, due to war or famine or simple bureaucratic mismanagement, colonies get cut off from the rest of galactic… Continue reading L is for Lost Colony
J is for Jedi
As much as science fiction looks to the future, it also of necessity looks to the past. And as much confidence as it places in the scientific method, it often turns to religion, simply because of the scope of the great cosmic questions that such stories inevitably pose. For these reasons, it should come as… Continue reading J is for Jedi
B is for Space Battles
If you fell in love with science fiction when you were twelve, chances were it was because of the awesome space battles. That was certainly the case with me. When I saw Star Wars for the first time, I spent hours running around the house pretending I was flying my own starfighter. In some ways,… Continue reading B is for Space Battles
Awesome writing group activity with Dan Wells
Went to an awesome Quark writing group activity tonight with Dan Wells. It was great. We critiqued stories, had a Q&A, and then played the Battlestar Galactica game. Good, good times. The new series of BSG is amazing. It quite literally inspired my first novel: a story set in a universe where a cylon-style humans… Continue reading Awesome writing group activity with Dan Wells