In the November issue of Locus magazine, Cory Doctorow wrote an op-ed piece defending Jeannette Ng and the decision to strip Campbell’s name from the Campbell Award. At least, that’s how it started out, but it quickly devolved into a hatchet piece against everyone in science fiction whose politics lie somewhere to the right of… Continue reading A Much Deserved Fisking
Tag: Thoughts and Reflections
2019-10-10 Newsletter Author’s Note
This author’s note originally appeared in the October 10th edition of my author newsletter. To subscribe to my newsletter, click here. I saw Joker yesterday. Don’t worry, I won’t give away any spoilers. It was every bit as incredible as I expected it to be, and yet in some key ways, not what I was… Continue reading 2019-10-10 Newsletter Author’s Note
2019-10-03 Newsletter Author’s Note
This author’s note originally appeared in the October 3rd edition of my author newsletter. To subscribe to my newsletter, click here. When Mrs. Vasicek and I got married, we decided that there would be no smart devices or screens in our house beyond the master bedroom. Our reasoning had mostly to do with personal health… Continue reading 2019-10-03 Newsletter Author’s Note
2019-09-19 Newsletter Author’s Note
This author’s note originally appeared in the September 19th edition of my author newsletter. To subscribe to my newsletter, click here. It’s September, which means (among other things) that it’s time to revisit my business plan and update it for the next year. Every January 1st, I print out a new and revised copy of… Continue reading 2019-09-19 Newsletter Author’s Note
2019-08-08 Newsletter Author’s Note
This author’s note originally appeared in the August 8th edition of my email newsletter. To subscribe to my newsletter, click here. A couple of days ago, Mrs. Vasicek and I had an old friend of hers over for dinner. This friend was visiting from out of state, and Mrs. Vasicek made it clear that politics… Continue reading 2019-08-08 Newsletter Author’s Note
Algorithms, social media addictions, and the endless churn of content
In the last 5-6 years, I’ve noticed a shift in most of the media content that I consume. Content has proliferated at an unprecedented rate, and the churn—or the rate at which new content pushes out old content—has become one of the driving factors for those of us trying to make our careers in this… Continue reading Algorithms, social media addictions, and the endless churn of content
Thoughts on Minimum Viable Product
So I read an article on Draft2Digital’s blog about Minimum Viable Product and what it means for writers, and it got me to thinking about what that means for books in general, and my own books in particular. From what I’ve managed to gather (and I could be totally wrong), the controversy in the indie… Continue reading Thoughts on Minimum Viable Product
Gotta go fast!
So they’re making a Sonic the Hedgehog movie, and the character design for Sonic is so bad that it’s spawned a bajillion memes. Within days of the trailer’s release, it got so bad that the director said they’d redesign the animation, and suddenly thousands of nine-year-olds became drunk with power. I have a few thoughts… Continue reading Gotta go fast!
Trope Tuesday: Future Primitive
From tvtropes: Evolution isn’t goal-directed. Sometimes …a species (often but not limited to humanity) will sometimes evolve into a more feral, less civilized, sometimes even non-sapient variety, regaining “primitive” characteristics. These “primitive” characteristics can include behaviors and/or physical traits… Most basic is the scenario common to Post-Apocalyptic settings After the End, where humanity (or another… Continue reading Trope Tuesday: Future Primitive
Will A Song of Ice and Fire stand the test of time?
A while ago, I wrote a blog post titled Why I don’t like George R.R. Martin, in which I laid out some of the issues I had with the Song of Ice and Fire series, and why I decided not to read past the first book. That post has been getting a lot of traffic… Continue reading Will A Song of Ice and Fire stand the test of time?