Zero-Gravity Fashion

Your otherwise-transparent hamster ball, painted and decorated! Hats on your elbows and knees! Extravagant hooks used to clip yourself to the inner hull! Zero-gravity fashion! They're shaped like dolphins. Nothing's classier than dolphins. Does your space helmet have a space between two transparent plates that you can put water and fish in? It had better. Zero-gravity fashion!

The Christmas Endurance Challenge

Can you bear Christmas for more than a month? If not, you'd better learn how, because none of us get a choice.

Interregnum

The clouds before the sun proved the king was dead, and the keening in the city confirmed it. Who did not mourn? Even the river ceased in its course for an hour, unwilling to flow as the king's blood did.
The council chose a regent, who wore the mask and the cloak so no god would glance that way and think him a king. He arranged the effort. One crew set out to establish camps along the way while a second began the road to the chosen pyramid. Priests blessed every step of the route. The rich sacrificed and the poor prayed that the pyramid held an excellent king inside.
Pessimists instead called the people to think what would become of them when the pyramids were all demolished, plundered for their kings. Once there had been forty; now eight. Did the end of the kingdom wait after those eight generations?
Not so, said the new king. Soon they would learn to build pyramids again. A river might cease for an hour, but not longer.
Finis

Big Decisions

Suppose I'm going to grab stuff straight out of mythology. Do I change the names or not? Familiarity might increase interest, but maybe it will seem old and creaky like Star Wars. One option is to compromise by making their middle names the same, but having Benjamin Orpheus McFadden explain that his parents were a musician and a Greek language professor will not come off as being as clever as the writer would hope.

Holiday Prediction

Eight hundred years from now, historians will theorize Black Friday commemorated a plague or something like that.

Twisted Fantasy

What if your fantasy country has turkeys instead of chickens? Oh man, I'm losing my mind!

Happy Thanksgiving

Have you remembered to include holidays that pressure people into eating food they don't like that much in your setting? Here's your reminder if not.

Liven Up Your Descriptions

Worried about colors? Here are the important colors to know in fantasy:

Red
Crimson
Scarlet

That should do it.

On Urban Fantasy Adaptations

They should be radio shows. An hour per episode, twice per week, most of them two-parters. Desired advertisers: antacids, boxed wine, vacuum cleaners.

Unconventional Legal Strategies

Whatever crimes ex-governor Letenlo committed during his administration of his province, and no observer doubted there were many, the dignity with which he bore the haranguing of the city's greatest orator who had both technique and the facts on his side resembled that of the statues of his ancestors or the very gods so that everyone watching felt a lump in his stomach that whispered, oh, what a loss that a man suited by nature for every kind of excellence devoted himself to iniquitous gain, oh, what an age this is, what a grievous world.
Letenlo's serenity deepened during the trial. No doubt the certainty of his approaching conviction that promised at last to terminate his misspent career satisfied his soul within that yearned for the right. So far did his mood improve that when at last he delivered his final defense, he smiled as easily as an innocent man. Nor did he resort to lies about the character of his prosecutor as the guilty often do, thereby proving what before had only been suspected, that their quality was the same as the vermin that skulk and steal cattle and chickens.
Indeed, so intricate was his address and with such clearness did he deliver it that he got a skill point in the middle. Observers joked that he might put it in Oratory and improve his position in that manner, but of course ten points would not make up the gap. And yet, Letenlo paused when he earned the point. To say he paused understated the situation, for he stopped entirely, smiled wider than before, slammed the point into Acrobatics, and bounded out of the court. The orator who brought the suit on behalf of the mistreated province attempted the chase despite having 0 Acrobatics, but no less certain could be the result of that contest than that of the legal one which had proceeded so well for him.
Finis

Score Tour

Q. What sort of music should a Mistborn adaptation have?
A. Drum and bass.
Q. Dragon Riders of Pern?
A. Trance with a harp in it.
Q. Starfishers?
A. 90s dance.

If You're Looking for a Hot Reveal

Wait till near the end of the story, then reveal in a casual aside that every single person in the setting is a redhead. Readers will recommend it to all their friends.

Kind of Tone Deaf

How can Owlcat make Rogue Trader with all these rogue traders causing problems right now? More importantly, I don't think that's a good way to say "xenos."

Addender

Or Postumus, but that's a little depressing. Use that name to achieve a darker, grittier feel.

Addendum

Don't worry. They're all named Gaius, Caius, Cnaeus, Publius, Marcus, or Lucius. You're a third of the way there already!

A Fun Calendar to Try

Instead of having your story take place in 937 After the Dark God's Descent, why not do it like the Romans and name it after whoever's consul that year? You'l only need to come up with 937*2 consuls to fill in the backstory!

The Difficulties Are Perhaps Insuperable

A pebble bounced down the hillside and straight off the island. Doanu watched its progress while Ferdin stared at the ships entering and leaving port. "You know, Doanu."
"Doubt it." He kicked another pebble.
"I bet we could apply some of the construction principles of our ships to build ships suitable for other environments. Obviously we'd have to make all kinds of adjustments, but I really think it could be done."
"'Other environments?' Come on. What are you talking about? I shouldn't ask. I know you have no idea either."
"I'm talking about seaships, lakeships, riverships. All kinds of ships. Waterships!"
"Uh huh. Why would we want those?" Doanu swept his hand as if to mark all the sky surrounding the island with gold paint. "What are we missing here?"
"You never know."
"Hey! I'm not going up there after you clowns!" They looked to the foot of the hill and saw Ranoal waving for their attention. "Chief Lanneoru wants us! The order came down! We gotta reduce the oil usage!"
"Geh. Stupid oil." Doanu began to tromp down the slope. "What a pain. Where do you think those 'whale' things come from, anyway?" "I don't know. Maybe we can find them someday. With waterships!"
Doanu snorted.
Finis

Addendum

Which is to say, E+, E-, and !E.

The Three Science Fiction Subgenres

1) Earth is doing great.
2) Earth isn't doing too hot.
3) Earth?

A Better Bet

Write scifi stories about a future where people love reading old scifi stories. Nobody will ever know if you're wrong.

The Problem With Post-Nuclear Apocalyptic Fiction

Suppose you're writing in, say, 1959, to pick a random year. If a nuclear exchange between the US and USSR fails to occur, your understanding of politics and indeed humanity looks pretty poor. If it does happen, nobody will read your book after it. What a terrible bet.

Protagonist Power Level

Many people will tell you your protagonist needs to slapped around for 80% of the story, if not 100%. Those people don't want you to succeed. One to three times is sufficient. Just look at James Bond. Or Cobra. Or Indiana Jones. Or any kung fu hero who has to train after getting beat up.

Astronomy Chat

I'm not telling anyone how to name things, but blood moons should be in October, idiots. Morons. Dummies.

The Size of Apples

How far had the colonists of the hundreds of settled planets diverged? Discussion of that started before the first ship landed. Public intellectuals and college freshmen debated the issue in terms of genetics, language, culture, and politics at every hour of every day somewhere within humanity's habitational sphere. Out of those, only genetics was susceptible to evidence. When the science reporter had space to fill, nothing was more usual than to grab the latest statement about haplogroup concentrations.
Little by little, a less vital but absolutely crucial concern arose about something not so profound, but ineffably deep. Food. Did a tomato grown on Earth taste the same as one from the engineered soil of Saint Georges? Was cheddar cultivated on Montjoie even cheddar? An article here and there prompted idle speculation everywhere.
Sharmazem Zujenne loathed the idle. He applied his considerable resources to gather samples and invite guests known for their discerning palates to the banquet to end all controversies, the Interstellar Judgment. At last, experts would determine whether potatoes from settled planets ought to be given a different name, and whether the outrageous size of that famous watermelon was a trick of photography.
An occasion of that sort inevitably became the occasion. The wealthy and people who liked to be near the wealthy requested, demanded, begged for, or wangled invitations. Entire industries sprung up to supply their excessive wants. The tasting of tastings became the party of parties. For all that, Zujenne maintained strict security to ensure the samples from various worlds remained separated. On the first official day of the event, though celebrations had gone on for three, he ordered the vault opened, only to discover . . . nothing. Nothing but a note from Phantom Thief Sirius thanking him for all the produce.
"I don't know much about food, but I'm sure about one thing. Crime is the same everywhere." The detective-inspector got on the case.
Finis

Dream Sequences

The thing with dreams is, they aren't real. OR ARE THEY? They'd better be if the author bothers putting them in the story.

Zombievember

Or we can talk about them right now. Zombies are terrible. They're just humans minus. Whatever's causing the zombification is worse than the zombies, and that isn't as bad as whatever's causing the vampires and demons. Bottom tier threat, one out of thirteen, not even worth Turn Undead.

November Is the Cruelest Month

Denying us genre-related discussion material. Let's turn November into October II so we can talk about zombies and dullahans.

Game Demos and Their Consequences

Harvestella's coming out! Durst you try it? I durst not. As for Fred Durst, what happened to his streaming career? I thought he really could have been somebody.

A Little Shutdown Humor

"I thought you said Crossing Noid!"

The True Horror

Now that Halloween is over, Halloween itself is now a spooky ghost. Yikes!