“A perfect egg is a slash of light on a gray day.” “The War of Light and Shadow, in Five Dishes” by Siobhan Carroll is a bittersweet short fantasy story about cooking, grief, beauty in the midst of war, and teaching the next generation. (Previously.) “…
Ecologies, empathy, parenting, robots, and unanticipated consequences
Two scifi stories about tech inventions that don’t work out as their designers planned. Ken Liu’s “Quality Time” (from last year) looks into “unsolved problems in home automation” and a friendship at a startup. “Nobel Prize Speech Draft of Paul Winterh…
“it smelled good, but… in my mind it already belonged to someone else”
piratefsh wrote a short series of blog posts about allowing herself to become a perfume aficionado, starting with “Every month or so, about two weeks before my period starts, my nose gets hypersensitive.” (Content note for vomiting.) Part two: “Sales a…
“The Computronic Program-o-Mat was deeply unpopular”
“i am assuming for these purposes that wayne enterprises is a privately held conglomerate…” Kitty Unpretty (previously) lays out a plausible corporate structure for Wayne Enterprises (the fictional company owned by Bruce Wayne, a.k.a. Batman). Highli…
leather, gray suits, motorcycles, folding chairs, and queer history
Aphyr, a gay leatherman, writes a history of “the relationship between queer leather and the larger LGBTQ community” covering the first few decades of Pride celebrations. “I want to give fellow LGBTQ people—both kinky and vanilla—an understanding of th…
sign read: “PERMANENTLY CLOSED.” The lock on the door was busted.
Two short, bittersweet scifi stories about people changing their journeys. “Personal Trainer” by Meg Elison has a new way to exercise and a new kind of hammock to relax in. “Wait Calculation” by Derrick Boden has political intrigue aboard a generation …
“I am here on business and my accountant’s a real wizard.”
Alexandra Erin (previously) posts short speculative fiction stories on her Patreon, including a one-sided conversation about dead people posting status updates on Facebook, a fairy tale about a healer’s price, a political horror story about scars that …
“they were persuaded by the immediacy of suffering”
“Byzantine Empathy” is a novelette by Ken Liu about virtual reality, moral reasoning, atrocities, institutional philanthropy, geopolitics, and two very determined women at odds with each other. Content note: violence, including harm to children.
Screenwriters directory
The Writers Guild of America “Find a Writer” search is fun. IMDb has a ton of ads these days and the WGA site is, in contrast, calm and text-based. See TV and movie writing credits for writers such as Naren Shankar, Gretchen J. Berg, Glen A. Larson, Su…
volunteering, mistakes, & “when we get the least signaling about it”
“We have to be willing to let someone else make mistakes and do it worse sometimes.” Marissa Lingen reminds us that it’s important to step back from particular volunteer jobs if you’ve been doing them for a long time — for your own sake, and for the h…