The Trouble With STEM – 7
My latest Substack post. This one is controversial.
How to Write Sci-Fi – 8
My latest on How to Write Sci-Fi – 8.
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Continuing my series of posts on how to write fiction with special emphasis on science fiction since that is what I write.
TROPES. Good writers don’t use tropes. These are off-the-shelf situations or characters that have been so overused that they have become unbelievable or tiresome to most readers. If you have seen it more than once before, it probably qualifies as a trope. TV commercials are awash in tropes, as are most Hollywood movies because it is easier to sell stereotypes than originality….
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My Latest Substack post: The Trouble with STEM – 6
To recap: I recently ran across an online post by a person trained in STEM, calling for colleges to no longer teach any subject except Science, Technology, Engineering, n Math. Others asked if he were serious n he said he was. Many people tried to get him to modify his position but he insisted that only STEM should ever be taught in colleges. IMO, this has led to serious mistakes n misunderstandings by this person, n by other persons, especially engineers in my experience, when they stray from their fields of expertise n decide they know something about human society when they may not.
- STEM types seem to think that A People’s History of the United States, by Howard Zinn, is genuine history when in fact it is mostly fake, n like King Leopold’s Ghost, it is not an academic work by an actual historian. Both works present a false picture to the public of what historians actually do n actually believe. STEM people, unfamiliar as they are with the discipline of history, remain unaware of this misimpression n accept the theses of these works uncritically….
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I have lots more coming. I’ll post more on this and similar topics soon.
Substack posts
I am continuing my series of posts on Substack on How to Write Sci-fi. I am not entirely sure if I am handling Substack correctly. I guess I’ll find out soon.
On the way: more articles on how to write. And more articles in my series on The Trouble with STEM. Not to neglect my posts on myth, religion, n the Cult of Wokism.
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More Writing Tips: How to Write Science Fiction – 5
When I worked for a publishing house, I edited dozens of manuscripts. In How to Write Science Fiction – 5, I discuss more common mistakes made by beginners. Please subscribe to my Substack to view the entire post.
I have lots more coming. I’ll post more on this and similar topics soon.
How to Write Science Fiction, from my Substack
Not to imply that there is something democratic about writing, with number of sales having something to do with quality, which it does not. Or to imply that some advanced degree might confer writing talent, which it does not if such talent doesn’t already exist. There is no such thing as a PhD in creativity.
Rather, I will simply report my experiences in running a writers’ critique group in my home for several years, devoted to developing the craft of writing fiction, in particular, science fiction, and my conclusions on how beginning writers can improve their work.
Dark Lotus Books entry from Substack
Back in the day, IOW when I was a raw kid of 20, I took a short break from college and decided to attempt to write a novel. In six weeks through a mist of cigarette smoke and a concoction of caffeine and canned chili, I cranked out a science fiction story of 80,000 words.
The first few pages were not bad, I thought and I still think, which was good news since I had never written any fiction before that in my short life. I called it Maalstrom, deliberately misspelling maelstrom while imparting the same meaning of that word. I think I stumbled on a Dutch spelling. Whatever. And as I wrote, my love of words began to spill onto the ancient manual typewriter faster and faster and with ever more of a sense of musicality as I discovered that words do not just have meaning but are mellifluous and ring like musical bells.
Since then I have lived my life floating on a sea of script with insane perorations emerging as from a dark forest in various tongues: twisted English, Arabic, Hebrew, Russian, Spanish, and French as I rampaged my way through college seizing upon each of these masterful means of expression.
Much of these manifold means seeped into my next work, the sequel to Maalstrom, which I wrote ten years later between other degrees, entitled The Selk King, 120,000 words.
Both of these books centered on the life of one Flores of the Turlicum, a warrior on an alien planet circling twin suns, engaged in life or death struggles in a harsh medieval world, much like a certain Greek warrior before the walls of Troy. And like Odysseus, in the sequel, Flores sets out across a turbulent ocean with bizarre aberrant life forms passing overhead, guiding as it were his ship and crew to a pyramid near the pole of the strange planet, a pyramid built around a solid black pillar in air, its hard stone carved with intricate ebony sculptures informing, or warning, penitents or assailants, of what the city in the clouds atop the pyramid of carbon holds in wait for those who would penetrate the mysteries of Heaven.
Readers of Maalstrom and The Selk King encountered a number of relics of an advanced civilization and were left wondering How could these exist in a purely medieval society that has no knowledge of firearms or motors?
My latest novel answers this question. I recently completed ‘Temple of the Double Sun’, my 10th novel, which is the Prequel (now Book 1 of the Maalstrom Series) to Maalstrom (now Book 2) and The Selk King ( now Book 3). Published by TWB Press, ‘Temple’ tells the story of one Milo-Psi 2, a shy ecologist who is one of 200 colonists from Earth who have been sent on a one-way voyage by the infallible Chaldeans to the newly discovered planet Maalstrom.
‘OUR NEW HOME’… For readers of Maalstrom and The Selk King who were wondering how it all started and why there are occasional remnants of a prior technical society, the novel Temple of the Double Sun answers those questions.
MORE NEWS. Book 4 is now out: SWORDS OF THE DOUBLE SUN. Perhaps the most masculine book ever written. You won’t understand that until you read it.
Just Woo is Marginalised?
The Vanishing White Male Writer
SFWA / Worldcon Banning White Male authors
Click here for Jon Del Arroz’s active take on the spread of the Woke Plague in sci-fi publishing
Who Needs Woo?
I have decided as an experiment to remove all payment systems from Equus due to being more trouble than they are worth, especially in view of the fact that all Equus books are listed for sale on Amazon n Ingram. So why should I keep bothering to maintain the Woo installations? They are unnecessary n just make this site vulnerable to bots that seek out Woo plugins.
Whoever wants to buy an Equus book will have to go to Amazon and buy them there.
Skills from former times that youth would do well to acquire
Skills I have that people born after 1990 may not have:
Thinking n studying before embracing an opinion.
Memorization techniques.
Longhand.
Shorthand.
Typing.
Reading at least one foreign language – n I don’t mean Spanish.
Reading a book a week.
Reading from an actual paper book instead of a screen (I can tear them, write in them, even drop them in water n they’re still good).
Being patient, not reacting with anger when not happy with events.
Being polite to cops.
Acknowledging the existence of Other People n their rights n feelings.
Repairing my own car.
Repairing my own computer.
Paying with cash n making change.
Able to tell time from an analog clock (that’s the round ones)
Knowing how to dress in something besides black bloc.
Knowing my gender based on fact, not feeling.
Speaking in terms besides meaningless slogans derived from media n Professors of Outrage.
Knowing vocabulary words more than 2 syllables in length.
Able to speak at length without ever saying ‘like’, ‘racism’, or ‘Trump’.
Not needing AI to help me write anything or sign my name.
Able to comprehend abbreviations such as ‘n’ for ‘and’.
And yes, taking paper notes with actual pens n pencils.
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