I have this crazy idea. I want to get Stephen King, Carl Sagan, and Lord Dunsany (Edward Plunkett) in a room together ... At first glance, these writers could NOT be further apart in terms of tone and subject matter. One of the books I am reviewing for this post isn't even fiction. But as... Continue Reading →
In glimmers, in shreds of thought, in the aftermath of my reading, I wondered if he kept a journal still, or if the dolphin's eye had been familiar for a reason other than that it was so human. But soon enough I banished this nonsense; some questions will ruin you if you are denied the... Continue Reading →
Unless you've been living underground awaiting the coming apocalypse, or maybe you just don't like movies, you've probably seen the famous scene with Charlton Heston and the Statue of Liberty. Or perhaps you're a lot younger than me, and you watched the newer series with James Franco and the CGI apes. There is even a... Continue Reading →
No matter how advanced artificial intelligence becomes---even after a thousand years of quantum computing---novels written by AI will never be worth anyone's time because fiction isn't a math problem to be solved. Storytelling is the greatest form of human expression. It's how we share our lived experiences, our fears, our pain, our aspirations. But a... Continue Reading →
We were wrong about the future. Everyone had it wrong, in fact. The fears instilled in us from 80s and 90s films like The Terminator and The Matrix were off the mark. AI isn't going to kill us and it won't turn us into slaves (or batteries). But that doesn't mean we shouldn't be afraid... Continue Reading →
In today's podcast, Heather and I discuss Chinese novelist Cixin Liu's Hugo award-winning, The Three-Body Problem, a book President Barack Obama called "wildly imaginative." The Three-Body Problem is a welcome foray into the hard science fiction genre. When it comes to astronomy, mathematics, and the forefront of scientific theory, Liu knows his stuff. His ideas... Continue Reading →
When I was first introduced to Midjourney, I nearly panicked. I panicked for the sake of my daughter, who endeavors to become a professional artist someday, and for artists the world over, many of whom I work with to promote the Aenya series. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on your perspective), I found both Midjourney and Dall-E quite... Continue Reading →
Any fan of fantasy will tell you worldbuilding is a big part of why they love the genre. Ever since Tolkien hit the literary scene, authors of lesser imagination have been all too eager to cut and paste Middle Earth. Open any book from Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time to George RR Martin's A... Continue Reading →
A lot of people have pet peeves, but I have more of a PET LOATHING. With the deepest passion imaginable, I absolutely abhor automation. If automation were a person, I'd want to slowly torture them to death. Friends and family can't seem to understand this, why I go off into a mouth-foaming, profanity-laden frenzy when... Continue Reading →
I am not sure what the heck is going on here. Humanity seems to be going off the rails. First, we elect an incoherently rambling, narcissistic, racist, sex offending, billionaire conman as president, now YouTube is being inundated with "Flat Earthers," people so shameless in their ignorance, that they not only admit to believing in, but argue that the... Continue Reading →
The Art of Storytelling 
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