Where’s my robot?

As a kid who grew up obsessed with robots, I have to wonder why I’m still mowing my lawn or grocery shopping. Where’s my personal robot? Perhaps the same place my flying car got lost. Oh well. More seriously, we are on the verge of some very cool robotic things. I had the opportunity to …

BOOK REVIEW OF The Girl in Red

I was conflicted about The Girl in Red. On the one hand, I’d read (and reviewed) Christina Henry’s work before, and knew her to be an excellent writer; on the other, the idea of a “Red Riding-hood” themed novel seemed a recipe for silly cliché. As it turns out, The Girl in Red is hard-core …

“The Road Not Taken” Published!

The Road Not Taken is in the April 2019 Bards and Sages Quarterly William Tobias found a way to loop around space-time and meet a young version of himself. Can he change the destiny of his younger self?   My story “The Road Not Taken” is now published in the April 2019 issue of Bards …

The Science of Memory Implants

A recent article talks about MIT researchers Steve Ramirez and Xu Liu, who successfully implanted a false memory into the mind of a mouse. This is the real world catching up with science fiction, where the possibility of implanted memories has been around since Isaac Asimov’s “Foundation” series in the 1940’s. In fact, I used …

“A Matter of Nurture” Published!

A Matter of Nurture in Neo-opsis 29 Dani Díaz is a virtuoso in a dark but necessary profession. Or is she? A job gone horribly wrong makes her doubt everything she thought she knew, including her own identity. My story “A Matter of Nurture” is now published in issue 29 of Neo-opsis Science Fiction Magazine. I …

Book Review of Mary’s Monster

Mary’s Monster by Lita Judge is a book that defies category. This is too bad, because it will get categorized anyway, which means many people will miss it. I can’t express how sad this is, because Mary’s Monster is an otherworldly great book! If you were to ask me what type of book, well…that’s where …

BOOK REVIEW OF PLANK’S LAW

I must admit that I was first drawn to this title because I’m a physicist and I inadvertently read the title as Planck’s Law, the law of physics involving blackbody radiation. I was curious to see how somebody could make fiction out of this physics principle. Of course, the title is actually Plank’s Law, and …

Ishiguro Wins Nobel!

One of my all time favorite novelists, Kazuo Ishiguro, has won the Nobel Prize in Literature. This could not be more well deserved. While there is much that can, and will, be said about his work in the coming days, what really stands out for me is the one foray he made into science fiction, his …

Why I don’t Deserve to Live Beyond Today

Cancer took my mother too soon. One can look at the disease and speculate why it took her when it did, but such reasoning brings no comfort. The essential unfairness of the situation still torments me. Though many years have passed since the day she died, I still can’t get over the feeling that something …

Robots in your blood

Nanobots (very small robots, potentially as tiny as molecules) have been a staple of science fiction for decades. But, despite massive investment in scientific research that has produced amazing things, actual nanobots haven’t made it into the real world. However, that may be about to change. This article talks about research at the University of California …