Tag: science fiction
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This Week @ KGB: We’ll Take Manhattan
Trust me, you won’t want to miss this month’s installment of Fantastic Fiction at the KGB. The place has been named the best literary venue in New York City by New York Magazine, the Village Voice, and others. And since the 1990s, the Fantastic Fiction Series has been the premier showcase for live readings in the sf/f/h genre.…
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Researching a Novel:
Trekking the Rain ForestThe untouched or virgin rain forest was called primary jungle. Primary jungle was what most people thought of when they thought of rain forests: huge hardwood trees, mahogany and teak and ebony, and underneath a lower layer of ferns and palms, clinging to the ground. Primary jungle was dark and foreboding, but actually easy to…
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Researching a Novel:
Lost Worlds above the CloudsIt was a dull gray landscape, and as I gradually deciphered the details of it I realized that it represented a long and enormously high line of cliffs exactly like an immense cataract seen in the distance, with a sloping, tree-clad plain in the foreground. That’s George Edward Challenger describing the Amazonian plateau in Arthur…
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Researching a Novel: Into the Abyss
It glows by night, filling the air with a blood-red cloud. By day, its rising steam billows dull gray from an active crater. Either way, it’s a wonder to behold, a doorway to a hot spot of subterranean fires that recalls the opening lines from Canto Three of Dante’s Inferno: Only those elements time cannot wear Were made…
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Researching a Novel: My Lost World
Rain forests, deserts, volcanic mountains, green-sand beaches. They’re all part of the alien landscape of a novel project that links and expands my novelettes “Daughters of Prime” and “The Others” (both of which originally appeared in F&SF). Since the alien setting will feature ever-more prominently in the book-length version, I figured it would be a good idea to experience such…