We send out a twice-monthly newsletter to our subscribers. Each one contains something of interest to our readers, news of our books and stories, reviews of books that we’ve recently read and liked, and promotions to help you find other authors to read. Each one is short, to-the-point, and useful.
- Newsletter December 2024
A few years ago, I wrote Midwinter Knots as a holiday companion for my novel Knots and made it free to all subscribers of this newsletter. Simply follow the link below to download it. Whether this is your first visit to the world of Knots or a chance to reunite with its characters (especially Trefoil the cat), I hope you enjoy this little story.
- Newsletter September 2024
On a recent vacation, my wife and I were driving through West Virginia and saw that Green Bank Observatory wasn’t far from our itinerary. We drove through the rolling countryside to the remote location. The Observatory is within the National Radio Quiet Zone, where there are no cell towers, forcing us to use paper maps for about two hours each way. It was worth the drive; we had a fascinating tour of the radio telescopes from a guide knowledgeable in the history of their use for the SETI program.
- Newsletter August 2024
I was reading the latest issue of Symmetry Magazine when an article caught my eye. This is a publication that presents news from Physics in layman’s language, written by SLAC National Lab (where I spent 25 years) and its sister lab Fermilab. In the article, the former director of communications at CERN reminisced about the challenges of explaining the science that they do, especially in the face of public misconceptions.
- Newsletter July 2024
Most of you will probably finish that headline in your head with the toothless warning from banks and brokerages: “Past performance is not a guarantee of future returns.” So too with authors. We often pick up books by authors we’ve liked in the past, only to be disappointed. Or sometimes, surprised.
- Newsletter June 2024
Lying is like farming, or draining marshland, or terracing a hillside or planting a grove of peach trees. It’s an attempt to control your environment and make it better.
- Newsletter May 2024
My own contribution, Charon, is a poignant tale of loss and reconciliation. It follows Simon Aeneas Kost on his solitary voyage to Pluto and its moon, Charon. He confronts his deepest fears as he encounters our first interstellar visitor while far from human company, wandering the desolate banks of the river Styx.
- Newsletter April 2024
Even a cloudy eclipse is worth experiencing. Even better, we gathered at one of our favorite wineries. An afternoon of sipping wine took the sting of the clouds away.
- Newsletter, March 2024
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you probably know that an eclipse will sweep across the United States on April 8.
- Newsletter February 2024
While in Japan for New Year’s Day, we encountered a shrine dedicated to cats. The place was the former residence of a progressive feudal lord who experimented with bringing western technologies to Japan.
- Newsletter January 2024
My wife and I made our annual New Year’s Day trip to Japan. This year, that day was interrupted by the massive Noto earthquake. Fortunately, we were far enough away that we only felt a rolling sensation, like the deck of a ship cresting a wave. We were in a store at the time; the overhead signs swayed a few inches, but the main effect was everyone’s cell phones simultaneously sounding an emergency alert. For those who were closer, the quake shifted the entire coastline of the Noto peninsula by up to 800 feet. The destruction was immense. The TV networks showed nothing else for the next week.
- Newsletter December 6, 2023
Lampworks Lamplighter Jólakötturinn: The Yule Cat and other tales The Lampworks Lamplighter SF & Fantasy News & Reviews It appears that your email client isn’t displaying the newsletter correctly. Please view the web version for
- Newsletter November 6, 2023
Lampworks Lamplighter Short Fiction The Lampworks Lamplighter SF & Fantasy News & Reviews It appears that your email client isn’t displaying the newsletter correctly. Please view the web version for the best experience. In this
- Newsletter October 6, 2023
It was the museums that were perhaps the most memorable, from the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, the National Museum, through the Museum of Seafaring built into the walls of an old drydock, to the one that deserves some special mention, Moesgaard Museum.
- Newsletter August 6, 2023
How I caught a lightning strike on my iPhone.
- Newsletter July 6, 2023
We spent a four-day weekend in Ottawa two weeks ago. We soaked up the ambiance of the architecture, the river, and the canal on the first day. When the wind changed and blanketed the town in thick smoke, we made the next day one to explore many of the city’s fine museums, plus the Canadian Mint. Outside the National Gallery of Canada is a 10-meter-tall sculpture of a mother spider named “Maman.” It’s an imposing presence, but beyond that, it could be an illustration from my short story “Charon,” which is due out in the Gods and Globes anthology in the fall.
- Newsletter June 2023
I am delighted to share the news that my short story, “Charon”, has been accepted for publication in the third volume of the award-winning anthology series, “Of Gods and Globes”.
- Newsletter May 6, 2023
Her mother was a ship’s navigation system, and her father was a military-grade firewall.
- (no title)
I just watched the SciFi series Killjoys. I didn’t take notice of it when it first came out, but when I heard it mentioned on a podcast, I watched the series. It’s fast-paced, full of quirky characters, and has an engaging story line and character development. It follows three bounty hunters as they gradually uncover a far-reaching plot against their planetary system.
- Newsletter January 2023
I’m writing this newsletter from a tatami mat in an old house in Japan. Far from the big cities, we have a bamboo-forested mountain rising in back of the house and rice fields stretching in front.
- Newsletter December 6, 2022
This week, my wife and I watched Amazon’s new documentary, “Good Night Oppy.”
- Newsletter November 6, 2022
I fell into a rabbit hole today when I encountered this word. No, this isn’t a new public health menace or something teenagers say to confuse anyone over thirty.
- Newsletter October 6, 2022
I got something fun in the mail this month. Howard Tayler, of
the Schlock Mercenary webcomic series, released a fun jigsaw puzzle. It features
some iconic worlds from hard science fiction crossed with magical fantasy. It was
a fun and sometimes challenging puzzle (expanses of stars don’t offer a lot of
clues for how they fit together).
- Newsletter September 6, 2022
Roger Zelazny is one of my favorite authors, so I was delighted to find that several of his long-out-of-print titles have been republished, including a few stories that I had somehow never read. Check out their reviews below.
- Newsletter August 6, 2022
From old Greek words Peri- for walking, and -phage for something that consumes.
- Newsletter July 6, 2022
We’ve been enjoying Strange New Worlds this summer. They’ve had a variety of storylines, from the comedic to the horrific, that show off the versatility of their format, writers, and cast.
- Newsletter June 6, 2022
It’s June, with longer days, warmer weather, and a lot of gardening to catch up on. The fireflies have started their nightly shows; they’re booked to continue until the first week of July, at least.
- Newsletter May 6, 2022
Reviews of Kaiju Preservation Society, Nettle and Bone, and The Sword of Happenstance
- Newsletter April 6, 2022
Stories that can be told in less than a page, perhaps even in a few lines.
- Newsletter March 6, 2022
Long winter nights are good for catching up on movies and shows that we’ve been wanting to watch. Here’s our list of recent finds.
- Newsletter February 6, 2022
In Ticonderoga, NY there is a complete and full-scale replica of the set of the USS Enterprise from the Original Series (TOS). It includes the bridge, engineering, medical bay, conference rooms, officer’s quarters, and the iconic curved hallways. Every detail has been recreated as accurately as possible with loving attention, and using period materials and methods when possible.
- Newsletter January 6, 2022
We made it through the dark days at the end of the year and at long last it’s 2022. (Or the bright days at the end of the year if you live in the Southern Hemisphere.) We can all hope that we start to put the world on a better footing this year.
- Newsletter December 6, 2021
I spent some time recently reworking the cover of Knots. I’ve added a cloaked figure and a misty light to better convey the atmosphere of the book. It also suggests that the main character is a loner who struggles to discover who he can trust in the strange world into which he’s stumbled.
- Newsletter November 20, 2021
Haiku are concise
Science can be elegant
Understanding blooms
- Newsletter November 5, 2021
Sellenria now has a hardcover edition! Amazon finally added the ability to print hardcover books on demand, and at an affordable price. After some stretching and tweaking to make the cover image fit the slightly larger area, it’s now live. I know it’s not for everyone, since most of the sales are for the Kindle edition, but it’s nice to have the offering for people who really like a hardcover on the bookshelf. All editions have been updated with the new cover design and the revised first chapter. If you haven’t picked up a copy yet, now’s a good time.
- Newsletter October 20, 2021
Got to keep things fresh. In the next week or two, we’ll be re-releasing Sellenria with some improvements. First is a new cover in brighter colors, with larger fonts and a zoomed-in graphic. It will be easier to see in the postage-stamp-sized previews that you often get — especially in the mobile devices that people increasingly use. There’s a preview below, though it’s not live on Amazon yet.
- Newsletter October 6, 2021
I’ve now watched the first three episodes of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation on Apple TV. I’m starting from a place of having read the original trilogy multiple times over the years but not in the last ten years…
- Newsletter September 20, 2021
Last week we took a mini vacation. We rented a cabin on a private in the Catskills near Lake George, did some kayaking, sightseeing, and just relaxing. It was good for story ideas in more ways than one.
- Newsletter September 6, 2021
Following up on my webcomic list last month, here’s another few that I find worth reading.
- Newsletter August 20, 2021
What is a clockmaker doing in a spaceport? This particular clockmaker is unassuming but innovative, crafting ornate atomic timepieces of exquisite quality. He has become aware of a conspiracy to steal an ancient prototype of a small nuclear reactor of immense power. He is part of a daring plan to prevent the theft of this artifact but the result will disrupt the flow of time on the station and make it impossible for him to ever make reliable clocks here again.
- Newsletter August 4, 2021
There’s a wealth of independently-produced comics on the web. I’m speaking not of ‘funny pages’ comics, but of illustrated stories with a strong narrative. Many of these are the equal of the commercially-produced ones, although it takes some sifting to find the gems among a large pile of good efforts. Then there’s the ones that start out so promisingly, and then suddenly go silent as the author discovers there’s not enough hours in the day to follow through on everything. Here are a few of my favorite ones that are either consistently updating or are completed.
- Newsletter July 20, 2021
I got to thinking about taboos in Science Fiction recently. Not the sort that SF has so famously challenged, starting with Stranger in a Strange Land and Dangerous Visions back in the Sixties. That’s become so mainstream that I can hardly think of a taboo that Game of Thrones didn’t break. I’m thinking of the new taboos that authors invent to add depth to their worlds.
- Newsletter July 6, 2021
The news this week that Tim Berners-Lee sold an NFT of the source code to the first web server sent me searching through my archives. Yep, I have a copy of the source code only slightly later than the version that was just sold (unsigned, of course). You see, when I worked at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, a colleague came back from a visit to CERN with a copy of Tim’s web server on a tape. Soon it was running on the VM mainframe at SLAC that my team managed, the first web server outside of Europe. One of the first things it served was a connection to the Physics Preprints database, which has evolved into today’s well-known ArXive database of scientific articles (housed at Cornell where I work today).
- Newsletter June 20, 2021
We get to talking about fireflies. My wife remembers the ones in Japan, which come out in the thousands for just a week in mid-June. They’re larger than New York fireflies, and they hover in the creekbeds, gradually rising higher as the night gets darker. In contrast, ours hang out in the trees and grasses, and are active for four to five weeks from mid-June to mid-July, far longer than the short-lived Japanese hotaru (ホタル).
- Newsletter June 6, 2021
About a week ago, I packed up everything from my office at Cornell University and brought it home. No, I didn’t retire or quit or anything like that. After fifteen months of pandemic, working at home has became the new normal. Leadership decided that our department along with several others will pioneer a new hybrid workplace. Most of the IT staff will work at home and our building will be remodeled as meeting rooms, teamwork spaces, and Zoom rooms. It will be more like a conference center than a traditional office building.
- Newsletter May 20, 2021
I’ve recently read three hard science fiction tales set in near-present time, centered around an existential threat to Earth, and featured a desperate space flight to seek a salvation. Those three were The Hail Mary Project by Andy Weir, We Are Legion by Dennis Taylor, and The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal.
- Newsletter May 6, 2021
When the protagonist of Knots walked through a fold in the world into a alternate land, it seemed only natural that he would be befriended by a talking cat. Trefoil was only a walk-on character at first, but quickly became a central part of the narrative. I dedicated the book to the cats who kept me company while writing.
- Newsletter, April 20, 2021
In Stellar Horizons, you build your own space program and advance out into the solar system, first tentatively with fragile robotic orbiters and rovers. With each success or failure you slowly gather scientific data and technical experience and move to more and more sophisticated crewed ships, and then bases, perhaps first on the moon, and then other planets.
- Newsletter, April 6, 2021
It’s finally showing signs of spring here in Upstate New York, even though friends from warmer climates have been posting pictures of blossoms for many weeks now. The Ume trees are the first to burst forth (their cousins in Japan have been out for a couple of months now and are already producing fruit.)
- Newsletter March 20, 2021
After finishing the excellent (but long and relentless) Otherland series, I was in the mood for something lighter, so I picked out some stories in a more humorous vein. I came up with three that satisfied the need, and reviewed them below. It started me thinking about how they used humor in different ways.
- Newsletter March 6, 2021
I’ve used a lot of aphorisms in my career, short sayings to make a point. Some of my favorites were:
Sufficient unto the day are the meetings thereof
Cheap hardware isn’t
Anything can be accomplished given sufficient caffeine
To explain simply, understand deeply
- Newsletter February 20, 2021
Time is something that humanity has always known and measured. Early humans marked the days of the year to know when the solstices were, when to plant crops, when to expect the monsoons. But we tend to think of timekeeping as a more modern device. Clocks to tell workers their shift at the factory, or when to expect the next train. (Time zones were the creation of the railroads to allow them to synchronize their schedules.)
- Newsletter February 6, 2021
This month we are featuring graphic novels, those beautiful volumes that marry artwork with storytelling. The stories can be as deep and as moving as novels that employ only prose, but their form brings both freedom and constraints to tell stories in a different way.
- Newsletter January 20, 2021
The writing of Sellenria II is moving along. It takes up the story of how Stenn’s ancestor Jonan came to be on Sellenria and explores how events can be surprisingly different than the legends told centuries later. Here, Perrhen is telling of the legends of even more ancient figures in the Kir Leth civilization.
“Gleomere was Polnedra’s greatest creation. In some tales, that was literally true, in that she shaped him to be beautiful, and admirable, and quick, and intelligent, and then imbued him with a portion of her own creative spirit.
- Newsletter January 6, 2021
If this were a normal year, I would be in Japan with my family. I call my wife’s mother’s house “the last house at the end of the rice fields before the mountains.” It’s in a small village at the edge of a populous river valley. Beyond it are steep hillsides, often planted with rows of tea bushes. Wild boar and monkeys make their home there, requiring a defensive perimeter around the family gardens to stop their depredations. There is probably a local legend of the gaijin who once a year walks over the mountain to see the temple on top and the ruins of a castle that stood there four hundred years ago. The few other hikers stare, but bow when I wish them akemashite omedetou – happy new year – as I pass. Even up here, small shrines and buddha statues are tucked along the path, hiding among the gnarled tree roots.
- Newsletter December 20, 2020
As 2020 draws to a close, we want to say thank you to all of our loyal readers.
This has been a year like no other, the sort of tale for which you sincerely hope no sequel will ever be made. It appears that we’ll turn the corner on the virus, and with luck, on the economy. There’s more to do, on climate action, on equality, on moving from discord to discourse in our public forums. Perhaps this is the year we can say we made a start on those.
Whatever you celebrate – and we have readers all over the world, so we know that includes Christmas, Hanukka, 正月, the solstice, and probably Beltane as well — we wish you the very best of
fortune in the new year.
- Newsletter December 6, 2020
We often talk with each other about what books we’ve read, so this month we decided to share our list of all-time favorite sci-fi and fantasy books with you. We have similar interests, such as historical fiction, sci-fi grounded in real-world science, realistic characters, and epic fantasy world-building, so there was some overlap. We also learned some things about each other and ourselves. We seem to both gravitate toward classical sci-fi and “Golden Age” authors such as Asimov, Clarke, and Bradbury, and our shared enthusiasm for Neil Gaiman’s works rang out clearly in the fantasy arena. But we each found something new in the other’s picks as well.
- Newsletter November 20, 2020
Connecting Science Fiction and Historical Fiction
The wind softly moans through the chinks in the drystone walls. The 2,000-year-old broch tower entrance is half sunk in the ground, and I bend low to scramble inside. Centuries of use as a resource for building stones have reduced it to a shadow of its former self. Still, as I emerge onto the rubble pile inside the old ruin, lit by the fickle sunlight of a Scottish afternoon, a familiar feeling begins to grow. Looking out across the water lies the island of Mousa, with its archaeological treasure clearly visible against the sky – another broch tower, dramatically different than the one in which I stand, for it is the only one in existence that is largely undamaged, standing over 40′ tall. Not a single other person, or indeed any hint of the 21st century at all, can be seen in any direction from this low promontory by the sea. There is a sense that comes in places like this for me, an almost palpable feeling of a connection to another time. Mixing passions for archaeology and science fiction together, my mind turns to wonder (again) about the idea that all of time might, in fact, be happening at once. Our limited ability to process time causes it to play sequentially in our heads like a movie. If true, they could still be here, these iron age people, still living their lives, and if I could peer around the right extra-dimensional corner at just the right moment, I might catch a fleeting glimpse of someone from another age drifting past, catch the scent of their smoky peat fire and hear the murmuring of speech in a language long lost.
- Newsletter November 6, 2020
Escape the Dark Sector
In these days of spending remarkable amounts of time at home, board games can be a fun diversion, so here’s a mini-review for a quick-playing mini-adventure game!
Trapped on an alien space station, you and your companions are imprisoned in a detention block and your ship has been impounded (and why is this you might ask? Don’t ask. It’s not important.) You must escape, running through the corridors of the space station, taking advantage of every opportunity to better equip yourselves, defend yourselves, or make the best of a situation. Some people you meet will be quick to offer assistance. Others will be just as quick to draw a blaster or report you to the authorities. If you overcome the dangers, traps, monsters, cyborgs and other nasties, and (literally) play your cards right, you just might survive the trip to the launching bay. Where the boss monster and final battle awaits!
- Newsletter October 20, 2020
When I first wrote
The Starship and the Citadel I didn’t start out calling it a series. It was a standalone story with a beginning, middle, and end. The main threads are wrapped up by the conclusion of the book, although there are a few deliberately unanswered questions (who is The Other)? But as I finished the epilog there were already stories I wanted to tell. Stenn’s ancestor, Jonan, had changed the world and brought to life legends from a long-ago war. What was his journey from starship engineer to dark warlock? How did Rowena ad Aulem become the general who opposed him? As Perrhen says, in his usual inscrutable way:
“It can be akin to a great rockfall that blocks a river. The rock did not ask to fall there, but still the river goes a different direction. One valley dries up, a new valley begins to form. All that live nearby, on either path, must adjust. The rock is mitthragentor, those who live nearby are mitthragorn. Jonan is mitthragentor.”
- Newsletter October 6, 2020
Imagine if the Lord of the Rings had been laid out as a pile of 3×5 cards: characters, plot lines, events, and turning points. Now imagine shuffling those cards and dealing them out on a table. What is the likelihood of them making sense? This is the challenge of creating a narrative board game. The designer wants to avoid “railroading” the players, but also wants to tell a story that the players experience as though they were characters in that story.
- Newsletter September 20, 2020
There is a drawer, every house has one,
where the old keys gather.
They huddle in their camps,
telling of the lost door, valise, or drawer
that they can open, if only they can find it again.
Some are seconds, or thirds, copies of copies,
but still they remember in their teeth
that there is a lock for them out there.
Somewhere.
- Newsletter September 6, 2020
The Year that GenCon Went Virtual
There is a magical world where elves, androids, Jedi Knights, and superheroes hang around together and where fantasy and science fiction stories play out all day long. Normally, that world is in Indianapolis around the start of August each year, and it’s called GenCon, the largest board game convention in the US. Around 60,000 people attend each year.
- Newsletter August 20, 2020
Review: Terraforming Mars
The year is 2400. Over the next several thousand years, players lead large corporations who are working together to transform Mars from a barren landscape into a living, breathing world. Still, only one will prove the most successful and win the game. Over time they carry out projects to adjust the temperature, oxygen, and ocean levels, plant forests, build cities and carry out activities represented by over 200 unique project cards to make Mars ever more habitable. With the game maker’s attention to scientific detail, the game also provides a reasonably realistic high-level view of what a real-life terraforming effort might look like on the Red Planet.
- Newsletter August 6, 2020
Characters come to life in different ways during story development. Some characters tell me their stories as I write them, much as Gilwyr did in Sellenria. An orphan, raised by the Kir Leth with their unique color-based language, and trained as an assassin. I could hear her cocky, quirky voice from the first scene. As I wrote her in different situations, I realized that she would be hiding some insecurities. She was neither Kir Leth nor Human but caught between the two. It was fortunate that she had good friends who helped her see that as a strength instead of a weakness. She is summed up well in the line with which she starts the sequel I am writing: “The sky ship drew a sword across the night, as blue as chance.”
