Science fiction author and technology blogger.
Paul 
There is no better way to improve as a writer than to sit on the other side of the editor’s desk. Linda Ditchkus and I did exactly that when we volunteered to lead RMFW’s 2024 anthology project in early 2023. Buy a copy today! It’s available in print and Kindle eBook, and proceeds benefit RMFW, … Read more
Celebrate with me! More Than Electric Sheep is now online. In May 2023, Uncharted Magazine announced their AI Flash Challenge. The rules of the contest were straightforward. Write a story in any genre about how we interact with AIs. Stories could not exceed 1000 words and had to be submitted within a one week deadline. … Read more
Between acting, podcasting, and photography, I have know idea how Amy Amantea has time to put together her weekly Access Radio show, which broadcasts on Vancouver’s Co-op Radio. Each week, Access Radio features an hour-long interview with disabled persons working in the creative arts. When Amy heard that my flash fiction piece, More Than Electric … Read more
I’ve been consuming short story podcasts by the dozens, and that has cut into my novel-reading time. I’m nowhere near the three or four a month I’ve managed in the past. Here’s sixteen, still not too shabby for nine months.
As a kid growing up on Asimov, Bradbury, Burroughs, Clarke, and Verne, somehow James Graham (J.G.) Ballard flew under my radar. Ballard would probably appreciate that analogy. His work frequently highlights civilization’s dependence on dysfunctional technology. But when web searches for climate fiction repeatedly turned up The Drowned World, I could no longer ignore this … Read more
Books are like windows. Open a book and breathe in the fresh air, or close a book and suffocate. Here’s what I’ve been breathing lately. Climate Fiction has been calling me, enough to read the gargantuan Overstory—three times the length of most books I read, and well worth it. Along with that, I recently read … Read more
Image credit: From the Mark Talbot-Butler collection on pota.goatley.com. The sun sags in its low October arc, eclipsed now and then by the Douglas Firs that line the rural two-lane highway in Washington’s Snohomish Valley. Our destination: Bob’s Corn, a working farm that annually transforms into a fall-themed amusement park. Hundreds of cars park haphazardly … Read more
A few miles north of Alliance Nebraska, an occasional silo sprouts from the quilt of corn and soybean fields. It seems plausible that we might drive for hours and see nothing else. Maybe Carhenge doesn’t really exist. It’s urban legend, a consensual hallucination with no basis in reality. Then, there it is, writhing within the … Read more
I had a note to get this out by end of January, but what’s the point of a deadline if I meet it? Only by my being three months late does my deadline truly attain fulfillment. Break the deadline, be the deadline. It’s not like I didn’t have an excuse. Let’s see. Mother-in-law passed away. … Read more
Fresh off the North Pole workshop assembly line: Thirteen Christmas-themed sci fi flash fiction stories, just in time to stuff the stockings of the sci fi fan in your life. The reindeer scientists at Blitzen Genetics Laboratory have discovered why noses turn red, and they present their research in my very short story, Mutations of … Read more