Differences & Overlaps, Essay. 1400 words, 7-minute read. Mapping Alternate History and Time Travel Tales By Ray Tabler One of the reasons I attend science fiction conventions is that they almost always spark ideas for essays, rabbit holes to fall down and write about. This past weekend, Archon 48, near…
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Alien Psychology
Xenopshrinkology. Essay. 1300 words, 7-minute read. Alien Psychology By Ray Tabler How do aliens think? Good question, and one which has frustrated more than one science fiction writer over the years since the genre began. Lacking any real information, writers have speculated all over the place as to what makes…
Ray’s In Writers and Publishers Network!
One of my essays was featured in Writers and Publishers Network! https://writersandpublishersnetwork.com/the-care-and-feeding-of-heresy/
The Center Cannot Hold
Tap dancing with cosmology. Essay. 1100 words, 6-minute read. The Center Cannot Hold By Ray Tabler Galileo Galilei was a pioneering, renaissance astronomer. But he is most famous for being dragged before the inquisition for daring to state that the Earth orbited about the Sun. Trouble was that the Catholic…
Business As Usual During Alterations – A Review
When the music changes tempo. Essay. 1100 words, 6-minute read. Business As Usually During Alterations – A Review By Ray Tabler There are some short stories that lodge in the memory, popping up unexpectedly years later when events stir the sediment of the mind. Such a story is Business As…
1941 – More Dangling Threads
An underappreciated classic. Essay. 500 words, 3-minute read. 1941 – More Dangling Threads By Ray Tabler Recently, a friend (Dharma Windham) posted about re-watching a movie, Stephen Spielberg’s 1941, a 1979 screwball historical comedy. The film is set in Los Angeles, weeks after the Pearl Harbor attack, not an obvious…
The Care and Feeding of Heresy
Heresy is the whole point. Essay. 600 words, 3-minute read. The Care and Feeding of Heresy By Ray Tabler There are no limits upon the writing of science fiction and fantasy. Any crazy, improbable, even impossible situation the human mind can conceive is fair game. The only constant is the…
Novel Lengths Revisited
A more commercially-focused dataset. Essay. 800 words, 4-minute read. A few months ago I posted an essay which looked at the word counts/page lengths of novels over the past century, or so. (https://raytabler.substack.com/p/novel-lengths-over-the-years) This was an effort to verify (or disprove) the anecdote that novels used to be a lot…
The Diesel-Powered Starship, Incoming!
My latest novel releases soon. Early copies of my latest book, The Diesel-Powered Starship arrived yesterday! She’s not out officially until September 30. But you can order ahead from here: https://histriabooks.com/pro…/the-diesel-powered-starship/ As a bonus, the good people at Histria Books have featured The Diesel-Powered Starship in their ad on page…