The world is overwhelmed by the Coronavirus to a degree that no other topic is significant. I’m currently reading The Sun Also Rises and Lisa Randall’s Knock...

My dad took me into center city Philadelphia to the Mastbaum Theater one evening in the mid-1940s to watch “Wonder Man,” a comedy starring Danny Kaye. I was ...

Neil DeGrasse Tyson published Letters from an Astrophysicist last year. It’s a collection of questions and comments posed to Tyson by readers. The questions ...

Mitt Romney made history last week. He is the only senator in U.S. history to vote against party lines to convict an impeached president. Which brings us to ...

I don’t think I’ve ever met a reader who hasn’t mentioned an inclination, or a flat-out determination to become a science fiction writer. Ask why it hasn’t h...

I just finished Charles Gannon’s Marque of Caine. It’s a wild ride through alternate universes and star systems controlled by a variety of aliens. The protag...

Christmas always arrives with intriguing gifts, jigsaw puzzles, communication devices, Eagles sweaters. Most interesting, usually, are books. This year I rec...

People ask: “Where do you get your ideas for science fiction stories?” Harlan Ellison’s famous answer was ‘Sheboygan.’ I suspect, if Harlan had been caught i...

Why You Say It, by Webb Garrison, is an intriguing collection of why certain phrases have taken hold in our language. For example, the term pipe dream was co...

The most common question that comes up at workshops is how can I know whether I have enough skill to write professionally? The answer is simple enough: If a ...

One of the advantages writers experience, one that people generally don’t hear about, is that publishers and other writers send them a lot of free books. I h...

There’s evidence that what we make of our lives is largely determined by where we are born and grow up. We are all influenced by our environment. Kids who sp...

Readers with writing ambitions frequently ask about the common mistakes they might make. What are the most frequent errors made by someone trying to get publ...

Recently I posted a statement that Midnight in Paris was the best time-travel film I’d ever seen. A week or so ago I saw The Final Countdown for a second tim...

Astronomy Magazine has a cover story: life on other worlds could be more diverse than on Earth. I haven’t gotten my copy yet so I’m not sure what they mean b...

My last blog mentioned Gregory MacAllister, the journalist who appeared in several of the Academy novels. I should have added that Mac is the viewpoint chara...

Gregory MacAllister, the discursive critic of the Academy novels, was inspired by Henry Mencken. That doesn’t mean he writes anywhere close to Mencken’s leve...