Hard and Soft Alternate Histories: The Time Roads by Beth Bernobich, The Shadow Master by Craig Cormick and Rod Duncan’s The Bullet Catcher’s Daughter
“There are no correct alternate histories, there are only plausible alternate histories.” – Will Shetterly Will Shetterly’s statement above hinges on the word plausible. Shetterly’s statement is facile, but it hinges on the unspoken assumption that everyone can agree on what a ‘plausible’ alternate history is and is not. For example, to a first approximation […]
Mining the Genre Asteroid: PAVANE by Keith Roberts
In 1588, Queen Elizabeth, the Faerie Queen, was assassinated. Without her leadership, and with the rise of English Catholics in response, Spain found it easy to occupy England and bring her back to Mother Church. And with England so tamed, the throne of St. Peter took back the entirety of Europe from Protestantism, and then […]
My Superpower: Michael Panush
My Superpower is a regular guest column on the Skiffy and Fanty blog where authors and creators tell us about one weird skill, neat trick, highly specialized cybernetic upgrade, or other superpower they have, and how it helped (or hindered!) their creative process as they built their project. Today we welcome Michael Panush to talk […]
Mining the Genre Asteroid: The Big Time by Fritz Leiber
Mining the Genre Asteroid is Paul Weimer’s look at the history of the science fiction and fantasy field, bringing to light important, interesting and entertaining books from science fiction and fantasy’s past to you. The Snakes and the Spiders continually alter and change history in an unclear conflict in order to control the flow of […]
