Otherways- Fiction Fanatics

I have always been a fan of Star Trek, even from the very first corny episodes of the original series. Let’s face it, the show had a lot to love. One of the few things that ever gave me pause was the holodeck, where the crew could create pretty much anything they could imagine from, well, nothing. It led to some wonderful stories, it just seemed too easy to me. I mean, that isn’t how life works, right?

For one brief post, let’s talk about religion. Not your religion, my religion, ISIS, Islam or gay marriage, but the concept itself. Whether we agree with it or not, if we want to craft realistic worlds we must come to grips with religion. For good and ill, religious beliefs are a powerful force, shaping cultures, starting wars, inspiring art, or condoning genocide.

From the earliest evidence, i...

Armadillos are common where I live, and despite their strange desire to launch themselves into oncoming vehicles at night, they are one of my favorite creatures. Armored, fast, and sporting substantial claws, armadillos sound like something that might appear in one of the Jurassic Park movies. Of course, the fact that they feed mostly on earthworms would lower their threat level considerably, but they still look like something left over from a...

As you might have guessed from the lack of recent blog posts, I have been on vacation. This year’s adventure was Yellowstone National Park, where we spent a full week. As usual, the experience has got me thinking about a lot of different things. I promise we won’t get into the 3000 photos we took while we were there, but there is something I’d like to share with everyone.

To be honest, I was a little concerned before we set out t...

Genre Matching

I think the idea that some things pair perfectly together is at the core of a lot of our most closely held beliefs. Of course, the fairy tale idea that there is one perfect match out there for each of us is the most obvious expression of this, but it goes deeper than that. For example, in art, we use the color wheel, and opposite colors are said to be perfectly complementary.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not about to argue with hundreds of years ...

If you're writer, chances are you've read a few of the blog posts telling you how to write, followed by the avalance of comments that basically say that there is no one correct way. You've probably also burned through a million posts and comments where authors tell you how amazing they are, that they churn out forty correct, publication ready pages per day, never use spell check, have shiny, flake-free hair, and they'll be running a decathalon tomorrow ri...

I am not a purist. One of my all time favorite television series, the ill-fated Joss Whedon Firefly series, ignores a few minor laws of physics, and I seriously don't care. I'm a bit of a geek, and bad science usually bothers me, but sometimes it just doesn't matter. You can, in a story that revolves around the characters and action, just get away with never explaining how your ship has gravity. We in the audience are willing to accept a certain amount of...

You would have had to live a sheltered life indeed to have been born in the modern era and not have at least some association with the concept of a fallout shelter. Even if you have zero interest in the news, the concept has inserted itself quite deeply in our cultural psyche, probably starting the day after mankind split the atom and gave birth to nuclear warfare.

Video games, such as the aptly titled Fallout s...

Although I have two grown kids, I have to say I never really experienced this particular cliche, quite probably because we spent every car trip reading. Since this would obviously be a decidedly unhealthy proposition if the driver participated, and unfair if they didn't get to, we fell into the habit of the adult passenger reading aloud to everyone. This is how my family experienced a number of books, from Brian Jacques Redwall series, J. K. Rowling's Har...

My current writing project has me rather fascinated with the superstions that used to form the cloth of everyday life. It is actually hard to imagine a world in which we had no understanding of germs, for instance, and diseases could sweep through entire regions. Yes, they still can, and the idea still terrifies us, just look at the number of end of the world scenarios involving the spread of some contagion. How much worse would it be if we had no grasp o...