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#sciencefiction

126 posts89 participants12 posts today
Zumbador

If you're in Cape Town this Saturday, 19th of July, I'm taking part in the Otherworld panel at Exclusive Books at the Waterfront. We'll be talking about reading, writing, and publishing fantasy and science fiction.

I'm on the "Bent and Blended" panel, for my sins...

#ScienceFiction#Fantasy#CapeTown
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Mattia Pelli

Trovato in una cabina telefonica a Portoferraio. La prima volta che ho letto Van Vogt è stato più o meno 40 anni fa, in piena adolescenza, quando ho divorato tutti i volumi dell'Editrice Nord. Non ricordavo che la fantascienza USA (lui era canadese...) degli anni '50 potesse essere così innovativa e originale. E le edizioni Libra hanno sempre queste copertine deliziosamente vintage. Perfetto per il mare.
#libri #books #fantascienza #sciencefiction

SciFi/Fantasy Magazine Covers

Amazing Stories vol. 28, no. 2 (May 1954)

Love the image, love the lighting, real Magic Hour stuff. I really like that the robot apparently has no idea it's been found, it's still going about its business.

Maybe the robot is like those Japanese guys who kept on fighting WWII until 1975 because nobody told them it was over.

Original magazine: archive.org/details/Amazing_St

#Magazine#MagazineCover#PulpMagazine
Replied in thread
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Spooky Panda 🇺🇦

#PennedPossibilities 729 — Tell us about one place your MC would love to either visit or revisit.

Whenever Alexios needs a holiday, he takes off to the forest. He enjoys visiting the citrine gemstone cliffs. No one ever ventures out past the city, past the desert, to head into the forest and mountains. It's a beautiful area on Citune. The moonlight make the cliffs sparkle and shine. Alexios would love to take Trick out there with him someday. He wants someone to share the peace and beauty with, despite how unwilling he is to admit that fact to anyone.

#LGBT#LGBTQIA#TheCityOfOpulence
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RS, Author, Novelist, Prosaist

#WordWeavers 2025.07.16 — SC POV: What do you do to calm down when you’re angry?

[Bolt closes her eyes in obvious emotional pain. As tears gather in her eyelashes, the day angel wraps her upper body in her wings to hide as she talks:] My friend calls it anger management; 'parently I keep on inflicting "life lessons" on myself. As a dumb, stupid, ignorant fledgling, I didn't calm down; I acted out. Rarely listened, got myself into fun trouble that was still trouble all the same, flew with hunky guys who were no good, and generally made my family regret I'd been born. Haven't tried to contact 'em since I threw that brick through the Hauler Guild's window 'fer rejected me, and rolled that pretty van down a hill. Ya could say I got to the point of calming down by breaking things and people's trust in me.

Running from the law has the effect of ya losing the privilege to be protected by that same law. I… [coughs] Okay, bad things happened and I lost control of my life, including the bein' able to fight being controlled. Not a child no more. How did I calm down?

Turned it inward.

My friend calls it "apathy." A-pathy: means "not feelin'." Got to the point where I ceased remembering my life, worked through criminal things I had no choice but to do, and, well, felt so very little I'd've been happy ta have suddenly died. I lived to 27 years surprisingly fast feelin' surprisingly numb, most days (surprisingly) blacked out from memory.

Friends changed that. They pointed out the good things I also did, and helped me find new dreams beyond my restrictions. Now, surprisingly often, I find that I cry. [She has lowered her blue feathered wings as she's talked, and you see tears streaming down her cheeks.]

[Author retains copyright (c)2025 R.S.]

#BoostingIsSharing

#gender #fiction #writer #author
#mystery #thriller #romance #sf #sff #sciencefiction
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion
#RSstory #RSReluctanceStory
#microfiction #flashfiction #tootfic #smallstory

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RS, Author, Novelist, Prosaist

#WordWeavers 2025.07.15 — How emotionally intelligent is your MC?

Referring to the definitions below: The devil-girl is very emotionally intelligent, or not emotionally intelligent at all.

She is intelligent enough to understand that her logical and mathematical intelligence doesn't cut it, which isn't at all helped by her being somewhat autistic. She knows she fails definition 1 below. However, she is very well trained, and has been trained from the age of five to be so, when she lost her family and ended up being raised by a guardian (a proxy for the main series antagonist)—until she ran away.

She could (and chooses to) convincingly act the part of definition number 2, including managing her own emotions no matter how infuriatingly stupid, stubborn, or vapid the vast majority of people she has had to deal with have turned out to be. Her internal dialogue is hilarious in this respect.

What she likes is being skilled, earning praise, and being challenged into learning something. What had been indoctrinated into her is that other people are like her, feel like her, and want normalacy like her (albeit differently), which is why she's unerringly willing to choose to "have the backs" of those she becomes responsible for. She's very skilled at putting herself in other's shoes.

Don't confuse this with empathy†. She occasionally toys with people, or acts with deadly logic. She doesn't tolerate continued stupidity for long. The "good" she has done thus far is by choice. Her choice. Forced to interact with people, she reframes the situation as being fun, or learning how to make it fun for herself.

emotional intelligence

noun

  1. Intelligence regarding the emotions, especially in the ability to monitor one's own or others' emotions.
  2. The ability, capacity, or skill to perceive, assess, and manage the emotions of oneself, of others, and of groups.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
† There's the empathy she demonstrates (the reader gets to decide) and the empathy she'll admit to (which is none). If you practice something long enough it becomes reflexive. She may or may not get this.

[Author retains copyright (c)2025 R.S.]

#BoostingIsSharing

#gender #fiction #writer #author
#mystery #thriller #romance #sf #sff #sciencefiction
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion
#RSstory #RSReluctanceStory

RS, Author, Novelist, Prosaist

#PennedPossibilities 728 — Write about something your antagonist (or villain) frequently forgets.

Rainy Days frequently forgets how difficult and painful giving birth is, especially when she's distracted in the moment.

[Author retains copyright (c)2025 R.S.]

#BoostingIsSharing

#gender #fiction #writer #author
#mystery #thriller #romance #sf #sff #sciencefiction
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion
#RSstory #RSReluctanceStory

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Jon Hancock

Checking a half-remembered detail from Fred White's 1903 disaster tale "The Invisible Force," after @RogerBW kindly identified the source from my garbled recollection; of course, I've been sucked in immediately and am now re-reading the whole thing. I am reminded of the risk-oblivious approach to the unexpected taken by most adventuring parties:

“All right,” Lord Barcombe agreed, “I hope the clubs are safe. Is it wise to strike a match with all this gas reeking in the air?”

“Anything’s better than the gas,” Sir George said tersely.

(As it happens, it's because of a roleplaying game that I first read this story: it's included in Marcus L. Rowland's "Forgotten Futures"—www.forgottenfutures.com—which has an entire sourcebook full of terrible things happening to London, all very jolly if you're from further north.)

#ScientificRomance#RPG#ScienceFiction
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