Tag: science fiction

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

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 …

Continue reading

Bundoran Press buys my SF novel Right to Know

I’m very pleased to announce that Bundoran Press, a small Canadian press that’s put out some terrific books in its short life and has a new owner and managing editor, Aurora Award-winning author Hayden Trenholm, has bought my science fiction novel Right to Know (that’s the working title–it could still change), with the goal of …

Continue reading

My introduction to science fiction for non-SF audiences

I’ve occasionally been called on to talk to various groups—teachers, librarians, others—about science fiction. It’s an interesting challenge, since you can’t be sure that your audience knows the first thing about the topic. I start, of course, by establishing my bona fides: talking about my own writing and publications. Then I go on to say …

Continue reading

Planets, planets everywhere

[podcast]https://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/uploads//2013/01/Planets-Everywhere.mp3[/podcast] You don’t have to be very old to remember a time when we didn’t know if there were any planets anywhere else in the universe beyond those in our own solar system. Oh, sure, scientists and science fiction writers had long assumed these extrasolar planets existed, but the stars were so distant it seemed …

Continue reading

Gerry Anderson and me

So Gerry Anderson has died. I don’t know that I could say I was a huge fan of his shows—well, I liked UFO a lot, but the Supermarionation things, though I watched quite a few of them, weren’t just in the “uncanny valley” for me, they’d pretty much fallen into the “uncanny canyon” and were …

Continue reading

My future city: I dabble in public prognostication

Later this morning I’m expecting a phone call from a reporter at the Regina Leader Post, who wants my science-fiction-writer take on the future of the city, ca. 2035. Of course the city has its own rather boring (well, from an SF writer’s perspective) plan for the futuristic city of Regina, which is full of …

Continue reading

Writing for an audience

My wife and I have had season tickets to the Globe Theatre here in Regina for many years. One of the great things about having season tickets is that you go to shows you might otherwise not have chosen to attend, because you’ve committed yourself to taking in whatever the artistic director decides to present. …

Continue reading

On suffering the affliction of Editor Brain

It’s always a mistake to make a grand pronouncement that one is going to make a valiant attempt to post regularly to one’s blog again, especially after having made similar grand pronouncements in the past and then not following through, but… Consider this my grand pronouncement. It’s not as if I can’t come up with …

Continue reading

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

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. …

Continue reading

Chicon 7: the 70th World Science Fiction Convention

(Note: if you’re thinking this doesn’t exactly read like a typical convention report from a SF writer, that would be because this is actually my weekly science column. A slightly different version will be my column for the next issue of the Saskatchewan Writers Guild newsletter Freelance. Never let a convention go to waste! (The …

Continue reading

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

(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 …

Continue reading

Nice review of “A Little Space Music”

Speculating Canada, a relatively new blog focusing on Canadian science fiction, fantasy and horror, has a nice review of “A Little Space Music,” my humorous “amateur theatre in outer space” short story just published in OnSpec. It begins: In “A Little Space Music”, Edward Willett demonstrates his creative wit and humour. He plays on an …

Continue reading

Easy AdSense Pro by Unreal