APB-SAL is a blog about education, science, science education, fiction, science fiction, literature, literary stories, poetry, and anything else that strikes the blogger's fancy. NOTE: This blog interrogates art. It rarely make moral proclamations. For that attend the church or politician of your choice. This blog concerns aesthetics, not propaganda. Consider this as interviews with books where the interviewer presents interviewees, so you get what you need to do your own thinking.
--Lisa Tuttle, Writing Fantasy and Science Fiction"[E]ven scientists read fiction for entertainment, not instruction. Novels which are thinly disguised essays are rarely popular. What's important is the human meaning of the science--how does it affect the characters? And why should the reader care?"
--Lisa Tuttle, Writing Fantasy and Science Fiction
Instructors:
Cat Rambo online offerings
- David Anthony Durham,
- Tempest Bradford,
- Mary Robinette Kowal,
- Nisi Shawl,
- and Cynthia Ward
Online Advice:
"[I]f you're a new writer, here's the question you've got to ask yourself: Are you working as hard as you possibly can to make yourself a better writer?"David Farland on precision:
"In order to really create a particular dog in your reader’s mind, you have to get down to details."
"Professor Henry Brubaker said: “Everyone is constantly freaking out, it’s like we’re a land of teenage girls."10 photos that will make you angry (The Onion)
"Love one another and stay out of trouble (i.e. go read a book or write one, quick! )"
--Lisa Tuttle, Writing Fantasy and Science Fiction
--Lisa Tuttle, Writing Fantasy and Science Fiction
"...[W]ith luck and skill, others will respond to it."
Khasar and Alagh fight over whether to move the clan out into the open to new ground or remain hidden from the dreaded Sorghul. Alagh bides his time to become the talahn through murder. When Khasar accuses him, they have to duel. The duel, though, is interrupted by an attack from the Sorghul, which is interrupted by something far larger.
"The sight of this forest climbing in tiers from the edge of the Euphrates.... [M]any had entered the gardens, and never returned."Nebuchadnezzar hands over a Canaanite priest, who initially appears old. Though he pities the old priest in tattered clothes, Seluku plans on the most painful deaths. On second glance, maybe Katuwas isn't so old? Katuwas gives a final warning, but who could believe anyone so doddered and frail?
"Many writers... have written stories directly inspired by other stories. SF is a genre in an ongoing conversation with itself.... [S]tories that annoy can be of more use to the writer than those that are perfectly enjoyable."
--Lisa Tuttle, Writing Fantasy and Science Fiction"Whether the authors 'invented' these ideas, or were the first to use them, isn't significant. It's how they used them, clothed them in story and made thme live, which matters. Often a number of writers are drawn to explore the same ideas at the same time, because these are questions which are very much in the public consciousness... Writers may consciously borrow ideas from books they've read wanting to argue or put their own spin on them, or they may absorb them unconssciously from the common culture. Ideas get recycled, reused, and some become such common currency within SF that their origins are forgotten."
--Lisa Tuttle, Writing Fantasy and Science Fiction
First appeared in WotF 27"Although it's good to read the classics, it's probably even more important to be aware of what contemporary SF writers are doing now."
--Lisa Tuttle, Writing Fantasy and Science Fiction
Since it first appearance in F&SF, September 1976, this has been reprinted in two anthologies edited by Isaac Asimov, Terry Carr, Jack Dann, Gardner Dozois, Martin Greenberg. 
This simple, little tale is doubly and profoundly tragic. A mariner has a plain child, so he sets sail. The mother, heart-broken, dies. The mariner, enraged, refuses to speak of his wife. His daughter, he refuses to love. 
Hippolyta and the Curse of the Amazons Jane Yolen, Robert J. Harris Open Road Integrated Media
Graphic Guides samplers on
Psychology, Postmodernism, Shakespeare and others
Various authors
Icon Books
William Gibson Gary Westfahl
University of Illinois Press
"She had already dwelt in that greatest of possibilities for an hour.... The universe was hers, no matter that she only lived in one tiny world.""World" here might mean Earth or remaining locked inside her house, for
"I do not need to travel farther than across this room."
"Ah — now you think I have been lying to you, that this is only a story. It has a king in it. And while a story with Death might be true, a story with a king in it is always a fairy tale. But remember, this comes from a time when kings were common as corn. Plant a field and you got corn. Plant a kingdom and you got a king. It is that simple."
[Quoting Lewis Carroll:] " 'Tut, tut, child!' said the Duchess. 'Everything's got a moral, if only you can find it.' "
“Take care of the sense and the sounds will take care of themselves.”
“[I]t's ridiculous to leave all the conversation to the pudding!”
“When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’
" 'The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’
" 'The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.”
[Yolen:] "I have tried to be master in these short stories. I am sure they have morals somewhere. I took good care of the sense.
"The rest is up to the readers--you, dear puddings."from Twelve Impossible Things Before Breakfast by Jane Yolen
FreeMidnight in Death by J. D. Robb
2.99Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino
Jane YolenThe Dragon's Boy
"A good short story throws long shadows. Like Coyote, the Native American trickster god, the short story throws a shadow that is not black and white but full of color."from Twelve Impossible Things Before Breakfast by Jane Yolen
Since it first appearance in F&SF, December 1979, this has been reprinted in a half dozen or so anthologies by Isaac Asimov, Terry Carr, Jack Dann, Gardner Dozois, Ed Gorman, Martin Greenberg, Marvin Kaye, Larry Segriff, and Charles Waugh. You can read it online here.
"I dare say you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."
[Yolen:] "The reading of fantasy and the writing of it take that kind of practice, too."from Twelve Impossible Things Before Breakfast by Jane Yolen
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Free ebookSiren Song At Midnight by David Farland
Books and AuthorsBook of Kells online (what is it? Wiki)
Interviews:Harlan Ellison
On SF & PerspectiveThe lure of science fiction: an insider’s view by Tom Purdom
Stories
World Current Events9 questions about Syria you were too embarrassed to ask
ScienceThank asymmetry, you're alive! (among other quirks of physics)
Motivation5 Things Mentally Tough People Don’t Do
