I’ve already posted my award thoughts concerning short stories, and the better novels I read last year. At the start of 2017, I made an effort to read some self-published books (and a couple of traditionally-published I hadn’t gotten to) to see if they might be worth nominating for best SFF book of the year. (I […]
I’m having trouble picking my favorite novel of 2016, just like I’m having trouble picking a short story. I don’t have as many novels to choose from, so I’ve expanded my candidates to include books that aren’t the first in a series. Joel Shepherd’s Drysine Legacy was in the lead, until I realized that although the […]
I haven’t made my choice for best short story yet, so I thought I’d share my top contenders with you. I read around 40 issues of SFF magazines in 2016, as well as several anthologies and a couple dozen stories off the web. I haven’t reviewed issue 125 of Space and Time Magazine yet, but I […]
Classic Science Fiction, Volume 1 I picked up volume 2, volume 3, volume 4, and volume 5 during a sale, so I decided to complete the series by going back for volume 1. There are three stories in this volume that fit with the rest of the series: they are by well-known authors, and were mostly published in the […]
Isaac Asimov’s Intergalactic Empires I’ve recently posted several articles about using a galactic empire as a story setting, and now it’s time to go old-school. Back in the old days, a galactic empire didn’t cut it, a real man’s empire had to be INTERgalactic. Short Stories Chalice of Death by Robert Silverberg (1957) Humanity once […]
In part 1, I described the enormous scale of a galactic empire. In part 2, I discussed the impact of FTL technology on the empire’s economy. In part 3, I wrote about the purpose of the empire, and ways it could be managed. Now, I ask: how does our empire maintain military and political control? […]
In part 1, I described the enormous scale of a galactic empire. In part 2, I discussed the economic impact of FTL technology on its economy. Now I ask: what is the point of our galactic empire? Why do some of the characters in the story support it and defend it? The empire’s purpose may […]
