Features – Page 2 – Locus Online

Jonathan French Guest Post–“MFA vs…D&D?”

August 30, 2018 Alvaro Zinos-Amaro 0 Comments

A vagabond, a pit-fighter, a noblewoman, and a dung-collector stand in a crowded square to witness the execution of a dissident madman. Though strangers before that overcast day, the condemned man’s final ravings upon the scaffold will bind them inextricably. Marked to deliver his body safely to a doom-cult, the four hapless individuals discover that failure risks their sanity. And their souls.

That was the story hook for a roleplaying ...Read More

Features

Photo Story: Danzhai SF Camp

August 26, 2018July 31, 2018 locusmag 0 Comments

The Future Affairs Administration (FAA) and Dailan Wanda Group, in cooperation with the local government in Danzhai, organized the Danzhai SF Camp, bringing SF writers to tour anti-poverty initiatives in Danzhai County, Guizhou province, including Danzhai Wanda Village (recently transformed into a tourist destination) and Legend Tea. Invited writers included Jiang Bo, Alyx Dellamonica, Derek Künsken, Lucia Liu, Liang Qingshan, Kelly Robson, Lawrence Schoen, Bao Shu, and Han Song, who ...Read More

Features

Photo Story: CSSF YA Novel Writing Workshop

August 25, 2018July 30, 2018 locusmag 0 Comments

Tina Connolly taught a YA-novel writing workshop at the Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction at the University of Kansas, held June 24-29, 2018.

While you are here, please take a moment to support Locus with a one-time or recurring donation. We rely on reader donations to keep the magazine and site going, and would like to keep the site paywall free, but WE NEED YOUR FINANCIAL SUPPORT ...Read More

Features

“Another Planet”: APSFcon in Beijing by Terry Bisson

August 22, 2018July 31, 2018 locusmag 0 Comments

China!

3,000 miles from California, not across the Pacific but around it, over British Columbia, Alaska, the Aleutian Islands, Siberia, Kamchatka, and North Korea. Tossed over the broad left shoulder of the Earth, to land in Beijing.

APSFcon was perhaps China’s first major SF-themed gathering. It was put together by the Future Affairs Administration (FAA) of Guokr Publishing. AP is for Asia-Pacific but they also called it “Another Planet” Con. ...Read More

Locus Science Fiction Curtis C. Chen Interview

Features Interviews

Curtis Chen: Act Out

August 20, 2018October 1, 2018 locusmag 0 Comments Interviews

Curtis C. Chen (his middle name, Chih-Yu, is a phonetic spelling of his Chinese given name, 致宇) was born October 1, 1973 in Taiwan, and moved with his family to the US when he was five. They lived for one year in Cincinnati OH before settling in southern California. Chen attended Stanford and remained in the Bay Area after graduating in 1995, working as a software engineer at various companies, ...Read More

Features

Photo Story: 2018 Taos Toolbox

August 19, 2018July 30, 2018 locusmag 0 Comments

The 2018 Taos Toolbox workshop was held June 17-30, 2018, taught by Walter Jon Williams and Nancy Kress, with special guest lecturers George R.R. Martin, E.M. Tippetts, and Carrie Vaughn. Participants reenacted the sort of mass death scene familiar from so many of Martin’s fantasy novels, and temporarily renamed Taos Toolbox to the “Red Workshop.”

While you are here, please take a moment to support Locus with a one-time or ...Read More

Features

SF in Scotland by Preston Grassmann & Chris Kelso

August 17, 2018July 31, 2018 locusmag 0 Comments

Scotland has always had a rich storytelling history and the predilections towards the fantastical are evident in even the earliest oral incarnations of social-sharing. The folk tales and mythologies of the seanchai, village storytellers who passed down their tales at ceremonies and community events, extolled the virtues of brave warriors and the mythical adversaries they had to overcome – take the Orcadian (pre-Lovecraftian) folktale “Assipattle and the Stoor Worm”, or ...Read More

Locus Science Fiction Martha Wells Interview

Features Interviews

Martha Wells: Unburied Future

August 13, 2018September 17, 2018 locusmag 0 Comments Interviews

Martha Susan Wells was born September 1, 1964 in Fort Worth TX. She attended Texas A&M University, graduating with a BA in anthropology. She lives in College Station TX with her husband.

Her debut fantasy novel The Element of Fire (1993) began the Ile-Rien series, which includes The Death of the Necromancer (1998) and the Fall of Ile-Rien trilogy The Wizard Hunters (2003), The Ships of Air (2004), and The ...Read More

Commentary Features Kameron Hurley

Kameron Hurley: So You Still Have A Day Job….

August 6, 2018September 27, 2018 locusmag 2 Comments Commentary, Kameron Hurley

Welcome to the club. I’ve been writing and publishing novels for seven years now. I also have a robust Patreon following where I produce short fiction for members paying a monthly fee, and I am always hustling to re-sell projects, whether that’s short stories or foreign and film rights on novels. I still pick up the occasional freelance project and magazine column, because I still have a student loan and ...Read More

Commentary Roundtable

SF Crossing the Gulf — A Wrinkle in Time: The book, the movie

July 30, 2018August 1, 2018 locusmag 0 Comments Podcast, Roundtable, SF Crossing the Gulf

When a dearly loved but challenging book becomes a movie, where do you set your expectations? Karen and Karen discuss the alchemy of transmuting text to screen and the choices that must be made if the story is to not merely translate, but flourish. We also talk about how much the book meant to us growing up, and our belief that Ava DuVernay has given us a film that will ...Read More

Features

Photo Story: Hexagon Retreat VIII

July 28, 2018June 27, 2018 locusmag 0 Comments

The eighth Hexagon Retreat was held in April 2018 in Crozet VA.

This photo story and more like it in the July 2018 issue of Locus.

Features

Photo Story: Galactic Philadelphia Reading Series

July 21, 2018June 27, 2018 locusmag 0 Comments

Peng Shepherd and Michael R. Underwood read on June 12, 2018 at the Galactic Philadelphia reading series, sponsored by SFWA and curated by Sally Wiener Grotta and Lawrence M. Schoen.

This photo story and more like it in the July 2018 issue of Locus.

While you are here, please take a moment to support Locus with a one-time or recurring donation. We rely on reader donations to keep the magazine ...Read More

Features Interviews

Fonda Lee: When the Alien Invaders Win

July 16, 2018September 4, 2018 locusmag 0 Comments Interviews

FONDA LEE was born March 10, 1979 in Calgary, Canada, where she grew up, and lived in Toronto and the San Francisco Bay Area before settling in Portland OR. Lee received an MBA from Stanford University, and worked as a management consultant and business strategist before leaving the corporate track to focus on her writing. She is also an experienced martial artist, with black belts in karate and kung fu. ...Read More

Features Interviews

Laura Anne Gilman: Meet the Devil’s Left Hand

July 9, 2018August 20, 2018 locusmag 0 Comments Interviews

Laura Anne Gilman was born August 25, 1967 and grew up in New Jersey. She attended Skidmore, a liberal arts college in upstate New York, where she majored in English and history. She did internships at the Book of the Month Club and William Morrow while in college, and after graduation spent six months as an assistant at Putnam. She then made a lateral move to the Berkley Publishing Group ...Read More

Commentary Cory Doctorow Features

Cory Doctorow: Zuck’s Empire of Oily Rags

July 2, 2018August 27, 2018 locusmag 11 Comments Commentary, Cory Doctorow

For 20 years, privacy advocates have been sounding the alarm about commercial online surveillance, the way that companies gather deep dossiers on us to help marketers target us with ads. This pitch fell flat: by and large, people were skeptical of the efficacy of targeted advertising; the ads we got were rarely very persuasive, and when they did work, it was usually because the advertisers had figured out what we ...Read More

Features Interviews

Theodora Goss: Monstrous Voices

June 18, 2018August 13, 2018 locusmag 0 Comments Interviews

Theodora Goss was born Teodóra Eszter Muszbek, September 30, 1968 in Budapest, Hungary. She left with her mother and brother at age five, and lived in Italy and Belgium before immigrating to the US when she was seven. They lived in New York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland before settling in Virginia. She graduated from the University of Virginia in 1990 with an English degree, then attended Harvard Law School and worked ...Read More

Features Interviews

Jeffrey Ford: Leviathan

June 11, 2018July 16, 2018 locusmag 0 Comments Interviews

Jeffrey Ford was born November 8, 1955 in West Islip NY. He flunked out of community college and took various jobs until he earned enough to buy a clam boat at age 18. He worked as a clammer for several years while writing on the side, until he decided to go back to school. He returned to the same community college, then attended New York State University, Binghamton, where he ...Read More

Commentary Features Kameron Hurley

Kameron Hurley: On Patience, Goal-Setting, and Gardening

June 4, 2018September 27, 2018 locusmag 0 Comments Commentary, Kameron Hurley

I’m coming off a 16-hour editing day working on a novel called The Light Brigade, which comes out next year. The editing flurry was my fault – the book was three months late. Any later, and it was going to have to push to another publishing season.

Pushing a book out is a pain to everyone involved: the publishing machine is a capitalist enterprise like any other, and a writer ...Read More

Roundtable

Warren Hammond Guest Post–“Why I Took the Indie Route (This Time)”

June 4, 2018June 11, 2018 Alvaro Zinos-Amaro 0 Comments

I was between projects when Joshua Viola of Hex Publishers bought me a beer and pitched me his idea for a new science fiction franchise called Denver Moon. To this point in my career, I’d been fortunate enough to have four novels published by big-five publishers. I’d done many of the things aspiring writers dream about: book signings, media interviews, responding to fan mail. Nobody would confuse my career with ...Read More

Roundtable

Fonda Lee Guest Post–“The Case for YA Science Fiction”

May 29, 2018August 27, 2018 Alvaro Zinos-Amaro 5 Comments

On a recent plane ride home from a major book festival, I ended up chatting with a woman next to me who had also been at the festival. “So, what do you write?” she asked, when she discovered I was an attending author. I reluctantly told her that I write science fiction and fantasy. “Oh, that explains why I didn’t see you on any panels this weekend,” she said. “I ...Read More

Features Interviews

Nick Harkaway: A Little Bit Quantum

May 21, 2018July 2, 2018 locusmag 0 Comments Interviews

NICK HARKAWAY is a pseudonym for Nicholas Cornwell, born November 26, 1972 in Cornwall England, son of author David Cornwell (better known by his pen name John le Carré) and editor Valérie Jane Eustace. He attended University College School in North London, and Clare College, Cambridge, where he studied philosophy and earned a degree in social and political science. An avid martial artist, he has studied Shorinji Kan Jiu Jitsu, ...Read More

Features Roundtable

Cat Rambo Guest Post–“Whatever Works”

May 21, 2018May 21, 2018 Alvaro Zinos-Amaro 0 Comments

One of the things I insist to my students is that no writing advice is one-size-fits-all, aside from the general notion is that one should put words down in some form or another. Some people do what we affectionately call “pantsing” after the notion that one is writing by the seat of one’s pants, flying into the wordcloud and seeing what collects on one’s wings along the way. Others outline ...Read More

Features

SF in SF with Michael Moorcock

May 18, 2018May 9, 2018 locusmag 0 Comments

SF in SF hosted Michael Moorcock at the American Bookbinders Museum in San Francisco on April 9, 2018, coordinated by Rina Weisman and moderated by Terry Bisson. The event featured readings and signings, a Q&A session, a full bar, and time to mingle. Books were available for purchase thanks to Borderlands Books; Tachyon Publications sponsored the event. For more information, see the SF in SF website.

This and more like ...Read More

Books New Books New Titles & Bestsellers Roundtable

Nicholas Sansbury Smith Guest Post–“Paranoia or Pragmatism?”

May 15, 2018May 8, 2018 Alvaro Zinos-Amaro 1 Comment

Prior to my career as a writer, I worked for Iowa Homeland Security and Emergency Management in disaster mitigation. My job was to help communities prepare for natural and man-made events, some of them bordering on apocalyptic. I spent most of my time working with communities to prepare for these disasters, but I also spent time in the field observing and documenting the aftermath when disaster struck. Seeing how devastating ...Read More

Features Interviews

Ada Palmer: Beyond the Exponential Age

May 14, 2018June 18, 2018 locusmag 0 Comments Interviews

ADA LOUISE GRACE PALMER was born June 9, 1981 in Washington DC. She grew up in Annapolis MD and went to college two years early, at age 16. She attended Simon’s Rock College of Bard for two years, then transferred to Bryn Mawr College, where she studied Renaissance history. She did her PhD at Harvard, spending time studying in Florence and Rome, partly funded as a Fulbright fellow. She graduated ...Read More

Locus Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine

Features

Chinese SF New Year Gala

May 11, 2018April 30, 2018 locusmag 0 Comments

The third SF New Year Gala, a special online publication project organized by Future Affairs Administration (FAA), went viral over the Chinese New Year in February 2018. Twenty-one SF stories and artworks by distinctive SF writers and artists from China, Korea, and US were published daily on multiple major new-media publication platforms during February 5-25, receiving a total of 9.2 million views. A follow-up writer’s workshop took place in Beijing, ...Read More

Commentary Cory Doctorow Features

Cory Doctorow: The Engagement-Maximization Presidency

May 7, 2018June 11, 2018 locusmag 0 Comments Commentary, Cory Doctorow

Incentives matter.

The dominance of ad-supported businesses online created an odd and perverse incentive to “maximize engagement” – to go to enormous lengths to create tools that people used for as long as possible, even when this made the product worse. Think of how Google added a “trending searches” dropdown to the default search-bar on Android, so that any time you went looking for a specific piece of information (the ...Read More

Features

Rainforest Writers Village

May 4, 2018April 30, 2018 locusmag 0 Comments

The annual Rainforest Writers Village retreat, hosted by Patrick Swenson and Fairwood Press, was held at Lake Quinault WA in three sessions: Feb 21-25, Feb 28-March 4, and March 7-11, 2018. For more information, see the Rainforest Writers website.

This and more like it in the May 2018 issue of Locus.

While you are here, please take a moment to support Locus with a one-time or recurring donation. We ...Read More

Commentary Roundtable

SF Crossing the Gulf — Season 3 Debut!

May 3, 2018July 31, 2018 Alvaro Zinos-Amaro 0 Comments Podcast, SF Crossing the Gulf

A Marvel movie, an afrofuturistic dream, a box office phenomenon… and more? We take a side step from page to screen to comment on the many ways that Black Panther works, and works well. We also hint at future podcasts to compare text to film in other adaptations such as A Wrinkle in Time, Annihilation, and Arrival (2016).

https://locusmag.com/sfcrossingthegulf/sfgulf19.mp3

Download mp3 file.

Note: This podcast and all previous SF Crossing ...Read More

Features Spotlight

Spotlight on: Sarah Pinsker

April 30, 2018April 30, 2018 locusmag 0 Comments Spotlight

Sarah Pinsker’s first professional sale was “20 Ways the Desert Could Kill You” in 2012. She followed that with the Sturgeon Award-winning “In Joy, Knowing the Abyss Behind”, also her first Nebula Award-nominated story. She has since won the Nebula Award for novelette “Our Lady of the Open Road.” Her 40+ stories have appeared in Asimov’s, Strange Horizons, F&SF, Lightspeed, and Uncanny, among others, and numerous anthologies. Her first collection, ...Read More

Features Spotlight

Spotlight on: Michelle Sagara

April 23, 2018April 30, 2018 locusmag 0 Comments Spotlight

Michelle Sagara was born in, and has spent all her life living in, what is now called Toronto. Her long-suffering husband and two children have learned that there’s nothing terribly mystical or magical about being a writer, although the experience of watching their mother has made imposter syndrome and lack of critical objectivity about one’s work seem completely normal.

Reading is one of her life-long passions, and she is sometimes ...Read More

Features

Galactic Philadelphia Reading Series

April 19, 2018April 30, 2018 locusmag 0 Comments

Malka Older and David Walton took part in the Galactic Philadelphia reading series with an appearance on February 13, 2018. Sally Wiener Grotta and Lawrence Schoen curate the series.

For more, see the Galactic Philadelphia site.

This and more like it in the April 2018 issue of Locus.

While you are here, please take a moment to support Locus with a one-time or recurring donation. We rely on reader donations ...Read More