Saturday, October 28, 2017

Welcome to Dystopia!



The future is now.

Have you had this feeling lately? Snuggling with your next dystopian novel looking forward to the spectacularly failed futures and grim alternate history lines that you can explore and experience while protected by a force-field shield of a book page, did you realize suddenly: wait a minute, this is no longer a parallel universe. No longer an alternate history that had been split away from the main, robust stalk. This is not even in a safely distant future! ... This is... this is much too close to home..... wait.... WAIT, damn it! Let me out! HEY! This is no longer funny!........

You are right. WELCOME TO DYSTOPIA.
welcome to dystopia cover

This is an anthology of visions of the beautiful, beautiful future where America is made great again.
Edited by GORDON VAN GELDER, the anthology is coming out in December 2017 from OR Books. It features short stories by forty five authors and includes work of eight Clarion West alumni, counting myself.

Tuesday, October 24, 2017

From Words to Worlds

Neurophysiology and neuropsychology of reading? Psychonarratology? What are these things?
These are some new developments in the humanities that borrow techniques and insights from the experimental sciences to tackle age-old questions: why and how do stories hold our attention? What happens between a story and its reader (or viewer)?  On November 12 I will be teaching a  One-Day Clarion West workshop about it because as an author and a scientist, I find some of this research incredibly exciting, and I believe writers can use it to hone their craft.