Category Archives: SF Criticism

I Have to Side With the Adults in the Movie ET

There are two major scenes that made up my mind against E.T. But just think of the idea that these creatures glow in the dark. Obviously they have lorded it over all the other animals on their homeworld and for … Continue reading

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Why Do Extreme Right Wing Authors Glorify the Left?

Robert A. Heinlein was an extreme right wing author with his assertion that he was libertarian. Some of you may correlate libertarians with liberals but there is no real connection. Libertarians largely believe that the government should provide a military … Continue reading

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Dysing Dystopias II

Dystopias can largely be thought of as a series of setbacks for the protaganist, none of which are significantly overcome. This is the problem of the dystopia for me. Setbacks can be thought of as the machinery of plot. The … Continue reading

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Dysing Dystopias I

I don’t like dystopias in science fiction although I see how popular some of them are. I am young enough to have taken science fiction books (that’s right plural) in some of my English classes. I was disappointed with every … Continue reading

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C’mon, High School Teachers, Teach Sensawunda

For this post, I was just going to bitch that the fiction gatekeepers in high school, the teachers, seem to ignore genre fiction. But then I thought back to my education more carefully and realized that grade 11 was a … Continue reading

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Being Negative About Positronic

Isaac Asimov filled his robots with positronic brains. Positronic was largely a buzz word. The recently discovered (1940’s) positron inspired the name. Asimov may have known more. Like for instance the positron was the antimatter version of the electron. So … Continue reading

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Anchored in Past Tense

The first thing I thought as I perused my sister Laurie’s draft of her novel Inconstant Moon was that it was unfortunately in present tense. ‘Why is this unfortunate?’ you might ask, and I would tell you that I immediately … Continue reading

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The Invisible Man Problem

Have you heard of the invisible man problem? The typical invisible man, as envisioned by H.G. Wells, must somehow change food into something invisible during the digestive process else the invisible man will not stay invisible. Even if he does … Continue reading

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What I Don’t Like About Asimov’s 3 Laws of Robotics

Isaac Asimov wrote many stories and books containing his 3 Laws of Robotics. I would argue too many stories utilized the 3 Laws, and indeed I remember those who expressed concern that Asimov was tying together too much of his … Continue reading

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