Tag: Saskatchewan Writers Guild

The Space-Time Continuum: Reality in Fantasy

By Edward Willett in Blog, Columns, Science Fiction Columns, Writing and Editing
February 14, 2014
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Here’s my latest column for the Saskatchewan Writers Guild‘s magazine Freelance… *** When someone writes a hardboiled police procedural novel, we expect it to adhere to correct police procedures in the city in which it is set. When someone writes a historical novel set in 19th-century India, we expect the details of life and governance …

The Space-Time Continuum: Workshops

By Edward Willett in Blog, Columns, Science Fiction Columns, Writing and Editing
January 14, 2014
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Today, while writing the next installment of my regular SF/F-writing column “The Space-Time Continuum” for Freelance, the magazine of the Saskatchewan Writers’ Guild, I realized I’d never posted the previous column online…and so here it is! *** Over the years I’ve participated in a number of science fiction and fantasy writing workshops, to great effect: …

Science fiction vs. fantasy: what’s the difference?

By Edward Willett in Blog, Columns, Science Fiction Columns, Writing and Editing
August 27, 2013
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My column for the latest issue of the Saskatchewan Writers Guild magazine Freelance… Although science fiction and fantasy often overlap in both bookshelves and readership, they aren’t actually the same genre. Exactly where you draw the line between them, of course, is a matter of some debate. (Because, well, what isn’t?) Just do a Google …

The Space-Time Continuum: “Dammit, Jim, I’m a storyteller, not a social worker!”

By Edward Willett in Blog, Columns, Science Fiction Columns, Writing and Editing
February 15, 2013
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My latest “Space-Time Continuum” column from the Saskatchewan Writers’ Guild‘s newsletter Freelance… *** This column I want to return to the World Fantasy Convention held in Toronto last November…and a panel that rubbed me the wrong way. Entitled “The Changing Face of YA Fantasy,” the panel was described this way: “Fantasy works for young adult …

The Space-Time Continuum: Cynicism vs. hope in science fiction

By Edward Willett in Blog, Columns, Science Fiction Columns
September 22, 2012
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The Hunger Games may be getting all the attention right now, but there’s a long history to dystopian science fiction. War of the Worlds, Brave New World, 1984, A Canticle for Leibowitz, A Handmaid’s Tale…the list goes on and on. I’ve written some myself. Dark and dangerous futures are, of course, ripe settings for fiction. …

The Space-Time Continuum: The shape of things to come – science fiction predictions

By Edward Willett in Blog, Columns, Science Fiction Columns
July 28, 2012
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(My Space-Time Continuum column from the May issue of Freelance, the magazine of the Saskatchewan Writers Guild.) Science fiction is popularly perceived as being concerned with predicting the future. It’s not hard to see where that notion comes from: after all, over the years science fiction has gotten quite a few things right about the …

The Space-Time Continuum: These Are a Few of My Favorite Links

By Edward Willett in Blog, Columns, Science Fiction Columns
February 9, 2012
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We already live in a science fictional future: your pocket, after all, probably contains a powerful communicator/computer with which you can log onto a world-spanning information network. Not surprisingly, science fiction (though not overly successful at predicting its rise) has taken to this futuristic resource in a big way. But how to choose which sites …

The Space-Time Continuum: You got science in my fantasy!

By Edward Willett in Blog, Columns, Science Fiction Columns
November 17, 2011
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As I write this, I’m about to fly off to the World Fantasy Convention in San Diego, where I’ve been assigned to moderate a panel entitled “You’ve Got Science in My Fantasy!,” featuring fellow writers Gregory Benford, Yves Meynard, Brent Weeks and L.E. Modesitt. The panel is described this way: “In Operation Chaos, Poul Anderson’s shapeshifters’ …

The Space-Time Continuum: Steampunk

By Edward Willett in Blog, Columns, Science Fiction Columns
August 13, 2011
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Here’s my latest column for the Saskatchewan Writers’ Guild’s newsletter Freelance… *** They’ve become a fixture at science fiction conventions: people wearing goggles, leather coats, high laced boots and aviator caps, carrying strange devices of glass, brass and leather. They look old-fashioned and futuristic at the same time. They’re aficionados of a sub-genre of science …

The Space-Time Continuum: Science fiction poetry

By Edward Willett in Blog, Columns, Science Fiction Columns
June 15, 2011
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My latest column for Freelance, the newsletter of the Saskatchewan Writers Guild… *** In his novel Time Enough for Love, science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein included a number of aphorisms supposedly taken from the notebooks of his centuries-old central character, Lazarus Long. One of these I have ever since taken a kind of mischievous …

Bless me, Father Rhysling, for I have sinned…

By Edward Willett in Blog
May 30, 2011
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Inspired by the column about science fiction poetry I wrote today for the next issue of the Saskatchewan Writers’ Guild‘s magazine Freelance, I have done something I rarely do, and committed the act of poetry; specifically, the act of science fiction limerick. An unpublished writer of rhyme Travelled three hundred years back in time. He …

The Space-Time Continuum: In praise of Locus

By Edward Willett in Blog, Columns, Science Fiction Columns
April 1, 2011
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Here’s the latest of my SF/fantasy columns for the Saskatchewan Writers’ Guild’s magazine Freelance. *** For most of the world, Charlie Brown is only a beloved cartoon character with a round head. But for those immersed in the science fiction and fantasy genres, Charlie Brown was also the nickname (though he hated it) of Charles …