Category: Writing

The Geek Feminist Revolution [Review]

The Geek Feminist Revolution by Kameron Hurley Tor, 2016 Kameron Hurley is one of a new generation of feminist SFF writers who began to publish in the 2010s, when social media began is phase of near-ubiquitousness, a cornucopia of hype, much of a geek-related. By geek I mean SFF in its many media — games, …

Continue reading

Worldbuilding Wednesday 5/8/19: More Steampunk Novels

For all my fooling around with steampunk slang, clothing, and book titles, I doubt I’ll ever write one. Why? I don’t like the Victorian Age that much Oh, I’ve tried to like it. I had an older sibling who was infatuated with Victorian decor, china, and 1980s Victorian revival fashions. I liked them from an …

Continue reading

Worldbuilding Wednesday: 5/1/19: Deadly Snakes

  In Vonda McIntyre’s novel Dreamsnake a herpetologist/healer (also, rather creatively, named Snake) on a post-apocalyptic Earth relies on Mist, an albino cobra, Sand, a rattlesnake, and Grass, an alien creature that resembles a snake, to cure the patients she meets. By feeding them different chemical concoctions, their venom becomes a means of healing rather …

Continue reading

Worldbuilding Wednesday 4/24/19: Madeline L’Engle

Author Madeleine L’Engle wrote a heckuvalotta novels. In addition to the Wrinkle in Time (or the Kairos series as she called it) books pictured above, she also wrote a second generation series about the same family, plus the Chronos series about the Austin family, the Katherine Forrester series, and the Camilla Dickinson series. One thing …

Continue reading

Worldbuilding Wednesday 4/17/19: Lapine II

Since it’s the week before Easter, here’s some more Lapine words with generated meanings. Lapine Words Airn                Avathru       Elnurd           Elnarn           Esclay            Flayarn         Flysith   Fouthu         Frainda         Frowtha   Hith-ru-Hrin Hliefrag       Hlothlev     Hlymbroi             Hrussu                  Lembrath    Ifrai          Nolfai    Norp             Noospet            Olief                    Oori-elth          Piambre’     Pru-thaing    Sith-Mo       Sivra        Slesayn           Thivlal               Thrap           Thooflong     Vrelthai        Vulflay         Vyloo             …

Continue reading

Worldbuilding Wednesday 4/10/19: Lapine I

In the mid-1970s British Author Richard Adams forever re-defined the talking animal fantasy with Watership Down. “A group of adventurers flee their doomed city… and they are rabbits” was one of the taglines. Thrust into the wider world, they encounter predators, roads, hostile or indifferent humans, and unfamiliar territory as they search for a place …

Continue reading

Worldbuilding Wednesday 4/3/19: Steampunk Novels

Steampunk, a term coined in the mid-1980s, is a catch-all term for artistic design and subject matter that harks back to the Victorian Age, when steam-powered machinery and clockwork mechanisms began to drive the Industrial Revolution. The term was invented by SF writer K.W. Jeter in a tongue-in-cheek reference to Cyberpunk. But the term and …

Continue reading

Worldbuilding Wednesday 3/27/19: Superheroines

Captain Marvel, now riding high at the box office, debuted under the name of Ms. Marvel in 1977 as a spinoff of Spider-man. Maryjane is worshipful, Peter Parker dubious, and J. Jonah Jameson chomping at the bit at her arrival. How about some other superheroines courtesy of random generation…? Superheroines. Swamp Nymph Scarlet Stalker Ms. …

Continue reading

News from Planet LoCarb

I receive a smorgasbord of robot-generated spam on this site, most of which I delete. But every once in a while a receive a gem so perfect, so diamond-like in its sheer garbled incompetentness, that I have to share it. This one read like a randomly constructed SF novel. He was still stuck on thats …

Continue reading

Worldbuilding Wednesday 3/20/19: Cetaceans

BIG NEWS from the whale world! A group of cetacean experts identified and took a DNA sample from a mysterious sub-group of killer whales living in the Southern Hemisphere. The mysterious whales, called Type D, have been photographed in recent years, but not studied. They are slightly smaller than genotype species and have a tiny, …

Continue reading