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ote of the day june 9 2026 june 9 2026 photog 0 comment quote of the day charles augustin sainte beuve quote of the day despair itself if it goes on long enough can become a kind of sanctuary in which one settles down and feels at ease charles augustin sainte beuve 09jun2026 quote of the day june 9 2026 june 9 2026 photog 0 comment quote of the day charles augustin sainte beuve quote of the day silence is the sovereign contempt charles augustin sainte beuve 10jun2026 photo of the day june 9 2026 june 9 2026 photog 0 comment photography flower lemon photo of the day sony 90mm f 2 8 macro lens sony a7 iv 09jun2026 photo of the day june 9 2026 june 9 2026 photog 0 comment photography new england spring photo of the day snow sony 90mm f 2 8 macro lens sony a7 iv guest contributor tregonsee 09jun2026 tregonsee s three pronouncements about stuff june 9 2026 june 9 2026 photog 0 comment book reviews guest contributors reviews science fiction fantasy sf f book reviews tregonsee guest contributors long ago my wife and daughters found my pronouncements amusing i codified them in a set of rules which became referred to as the rules of acquisition after the ferengi rules in st deep space 9 i have three related to fiction and opinions 16 opinions are like certain bodily orifices critically important but not something decent people expose in public 17 in fiction written visual or interactive i desire a story and escape if i want morals i ll hear a sermon if i want to work at something i ll go to work and get paid for it 18 this is not to say a writer or other content producer may not provide meaning or morals just don t shove it in my face unceasingly remember that orifice in rule 16 you wouldn t shove that in my face either and yes clarke and asimov are far more of the idea arm of scifi asimov often has to work to make his male characters two dimensional his female characters rarely rose to that and are almost literally paper cutouts clarke uses some stereotypes in his early short stories but almost all his stories even the big ones like 2001 childhood s end and rendevous with rama depend far more on story and the first two are reusing parts of several short stories pasted together than on character i think it is why asimov and clarke excel in the shorter forms up to about novella but struggle more ion the longer forms this may also stem from the fact that from mid 40s to mid 60 s the primary form and most financially viable form of scifi was the magizines either as short stories or serialized for longer pieces these forms make character development harder i would think photog s second law of science fiction june 9 2026 june 8 2026 photog 3 comments book reviews my fiction photog s corner reviews science fiction fantasy sf f book reviews yesterday i formulated my first law of science fiction photog s first law of science fiction thou shalt not change more than one basic law of physics when making a good story well that was so much fun i thought i d try for another one photog s second law of science fiction thou shalt not bore the poor reader to death and really this should be the first law because it really is essential honestly if the reader is interested he will probably forgive anything else excessive use of time travel repetitive battle scenes gratuitous sex and violence even scurrilous attacks on political enemies as long as the story keeps the reader s interest it s a success now this is an iron law for any kind of fiction but because different genres have different readers it behooves the author to pay attention to what his particular genre considers interesting so if you write romantasy you must make sure you include plenty of female protagonists being ravaged by minotaurs or some other equally absurd mythical beast but if you write science fiction and especially if you write hard science fiction you have to make sure you can pass the science literacy test when it comes to the gadgets and phenomena that you hang your tale on so that s step one step two is to make the characters and the plot interesting and this is where some of the best hard sf writers are found lacking for myself personally arthur c clarke seemed to have a hard time writing characters that were actual people most of the time there just didn t seem to be a recognizable human being on the page and i m not saying he was a bad writer he wasn t he was quite skilled it just seemed that he didn t care about the human aspect in the story now compare this to isaac asimov when i recently four or five years ago reread the foundation books i thought the plot was at times marginal but even the less developed characters seemed to have recognizable voices and personalities asimov managed to make the characters seem somewhat alive and live humans are interesting to live humans and since the people buying books are for the most part live humans it becomes critically important to write characters that appeal to the book buying public and that is why even the most technically savvy sf author must in my opinion learn how to simulate human characters and that is okay because we don t expect tolstoy you can make the characters resemble almost any humans you ve ever met in fact it s better if you mix it up and include a bunch of different types this will help to avoid the serious problem of all your characters sounding and thinking exactly like you and believe me that is a big problem so i guess the second law means that a good science fiction writer must also be a good writer in general if he doesn t want to fail miserably is astrophage science fiction june 8 2026 june 7 2026 photog 6 comments book reviews reviews science fiction fantasy sf f book reviews andy weir project hail mary review reviews science fiction last week i reviewed project hail mary and i approved of it as high quality science fiction but am i being consistent should i be calling it fantasy in other words can a story based on a completely impossible premise be considered science anything so let s talk about this andy weir used a microorganism of extraterrestrial origin as the basis for his story this lifeform which he called astrophage had a complement of remarkable properties that made it both the source of an existential threat to human existence on earth and the key to human interstellar travel astrophage can convert light into mass and it can also convert mass into light this is explained by claiming that it can harness the energy produced when neutrinos and their anti matter opposites which apparently are also just neutrinos annihilate each other forming light so somehow the living cell can store neutrinos and then harvest them to produced light that can be used as a motive force to propel the astrophage at velocities approaching light speed okay this is gibberish none of those things can be done in a particle accelerator never mind inside the protoplasm of a cell so all of this is no different than e e doc smith pointing to his inertialess drive that allows the galactic patrol and their boskonian enemies to hurtle through interstellar space at many time the speed of light it s just hand waving to allow the action in the story to occur in a time period that allows for a fun story now granted weir at least restricts his velocities to the limit that general relativity permits and he allows time dilation and other relativistic effects to govern the fate of his astronauts but having his starship reach 0 92 c is based on an energy production method that is completely inexplicable by any physics or biology that we can point to so why isn t that fantasy i think i m going to invent a rule of science fiction photog s first law of science fiction thou shalt not change more than one basic law of physics when making a good story so if andy weir wants astrophage to have a biological basis for matter antimatter conversion then everything else about his story has to be legit so he can use astrophage as his workaround for amazing energy density for things like interstellar flight but everything else still requires the laws of physics chemistry and biology to work the way they do in the real world now some folks might begrudge him xenonite because somehow he turned a noble gas into unobtanium but there s enough wiggle room in chemistry so that depending on what else besides xenon is in xenonite we could imagine all the properties of this make believe material without calling down the lightning of the gods of the periodic table so i think that s fair if you only make up one crazy make believe macguffin to allow for the action in your story then i won t cry foul and demote the story to the depths of the fantasy dungeon i mean who could ask for more than that 08jun2026 photo of the day june 7 2026 june 2 2026 photog 0 comment photography new england winter photo of the day snow sony 90mm f 2 8 macro lens sony a7 iv 08jun2026 quote of the day june 7 2026 june 7 2026 photog 0 comment quote of the day quote of the day william howard russell i saw a steady stream of men covered with mud soaked through with rain who were pouring irregularly without any semblance of order up pennsylvania avenue towards the capitol i ran down stairs and asked an officer who was passing by a pale young man who looked exhausted to death and who had lost his sword for the empty sheath dangled at his side where the men were coming from where from well sir i guess we re all coming out of virginny as fast as we can and pretty well whipped too what the whole army sir that s more than i know they may stay that like i know i m going home i ve had enough of fighting to last my lifetime why beauregard does not come i know not nor can i well guess the inmates of the white house are in a state of the utmost trepidation and mr lincoln in despair my diary north and south 1863 ch 51 pp 467 470 describing the aftermath of first manassas william howard russell word count june 7 2026 june 6 2026 photog 2 comments book reviews literature photog s corner reviews book fiction writing novellas short stories what is the perfect length for a story well i m sure there is no agreement in the world on that and i must confess i have enjoyed books that go over a thousand pages counting the lord of the rings as one story and short stories that barely cover a handful of pages but i have an opinion and since i get to throw it out onto the internet for as long as i can pay for my hosting costs i feel i should elaborate after all i have to write my five hundred words tonight although that length is hardly a perfect length for a work i believe that between 10 000 and 35 000 words is the sweet spot for telling a story i think that s somewhere between a long short story and a good sized novella so i ve rejected the majority of modern novels and definitely all of the thousand page potboilers that have been in fashion for the last few decades and look that rejects the lord of the rings well hear me out i think long books are by nature composite creations they consist of a bunch of chapters strung together to get our hero from point a to point b and in my opinion each chapter or at most a few chapters together is a separate story this is like a play or a movie having multiple acts or scenes you string those together and you tell a larger story but usually in a movie or a play there is a climactic scene when all of the emotional power of the story is unleashed if the writer is exceptionally skilled he can drag out the emotional interest from the beginning of the story until this climax but no matter how well written the longer story is it doesn t have the same impact as a shorter work that can be digested in one sitting even a long movie has the danger that it can overtax the watcher s attention and patience i think that if i kept my work within that 10 000 35 000 word range i could make the maximum impact on the reader of course 10 000 is really close to the minimum that can result in a rich word picture but i think if an author works carefully to paint a vivid sketch of a scene even the 10 000 should yield a memorable story of course i am painfully aware that the commercial market for shorter fiction is essentially nil i was reading recently that science fiction short story magazines and collections don t sell at all so that guarantees that authors will continue to pump out door stops and honestly the longer episodic genre books are perfectly enjoyable just as they are but in my opinion the true masterpieces of writing are a shorter type of story that weaves a tapestry in front of the reader s mind in a unified effect that goes from beginning to end in a single story arc that satisfies the reader s interest in the subject and provides a legitimate conclusion to the story well anyway that s how it seems to me previous whatfinger the better drudge e mail notification of new posts subscribe name email please leave this field empty subscribe via rss pages 404 error content does not exist anymore beginning posts stuff to buy the sniper by jake barter book launch page wpms html sitemap recent posts 10jun2026 quote of the day 09jun2026 quote of the day 10jun2026 photo of the day 09jun2026 photo of the day guest contributor tregonsee 09jun2026 tregonsee s three pronouncements about stuff recent comments tregonsee314 on photog s second law of science fiction photog on photog s second law of science fiction photog on 07jun2026 photo of the day ed brault on 07jun2026 photo of the day ed brault on 07jun2026 quote of the day archives june 2026 may 2026 april 2026 march 2026 february 2026 january 2026 december 2025 november 2025 october 2025 september 2025 august 2025 july 2025 june 2025 may 2025 april 2025 march 2025 february 2025 january 2025 december 2024 november 2024 october 2024 september 2024 august 2024 july 2024 june 2024 may 2024 april 2024 march 2024 february 2024 january 2024 december 2023 november 2023 october 2023 september 2023 august 2023 july 2023 june 2023 may 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