The fear agenda
The machine needs you broken and compliant. But...
rogue planet
Universe devoured alive by madmen
Subtle psychological terror transforms boring slasher movies into nightmare fuel that will keep you up all night wondering...
Halloween highlights on the dark side of the rogue planet
When science and horror hold hands you get mind-bending stories
Putting the product on a pedestal
Get past your "oneitis" for that perfect article, story, book, or course.
Dark synthwave roundup #3
Dark synthwave music found on Bandcamp
They want to govern you like children in preschool
You don't live in a free democracy when you're treated like an incapable 5 year old
No glorious libertarian future in space
We're long past the heady days of 90s optimism.
The problem with theories of consciousness
Science wants to explain what it can't even explain.
Zombie star attended by death-defying planet
The gas giant orbiting this dead star really makes you wonder what else could be there
Nerds play video game to discover that Venus is totally hot
What's going on with all these simulations of simulations?
Dark synthwave roundup #2
Dark synthwave music found on Bandcamp this week
You ain't free unless you care
Why clever AI machines will never be free
Freedom to create
You can't be free if you aren't free to express yourself...
Liberal democracy free to a good home
Humanism isn't a total wash but it's less reliable than a Ford Pinto
This postmodern relativist defends your rights and freedoms better than you do
The missing ingredient to liberty isn't electing better politicians
The machines stole your freedom
When theory meets practice it's always a catastrophe
Dark synthwave roundup
Dark synthwave music found on Bandcamp
"Character is destiny"
Ancient Greek self-help lessons for creative writers and artists
The universe is already weird and alien
You think we understand things? Nice try.
Writing stories in the age of reddit
Nobody ever did anything great by chasing the herd
You don't get an AI by making a better nerd
Your mind isn't a mini-scientist whipping up theories from observations
Pulp heroics for broken modernity
When your heroes believe in nothing, your culture is on its last legs.
Why you already live in a cybernetic universe
What you're really seeing when you look at space pictures
Character creation lessons from a medieval religious thinker
You don't understand much about people if you haven't spent any time wondering about people.
The little-known untapped power of casual criticism
A hard-won lesson from academia
Why Artificial General Intelligence hangs out with Bigfoot
You'll discover cryptids before geeks will code a superintelligent machine out of Bayes's theorem
Sterling stigmatizes Singularity sycophants
Nerds get all bent out of shape over this author's moderately critical comments on AI
Storytelling in the Singularity
What can you say about a world where you can't say anything?
They say cyberpunk is dead but we're living in it
Cyberpunk can't be dead when it's right outside
Addicted to writer-porn
It's a billion-dollar distraction cult full of bitter people
Science fiction when you're skeptical of The Science
Not quite the contradiction you might think.
Aliens are up to no good at the center of the galaxy
Nothing to see here, just a mysterious radio source at the center of the galaxy with no explanation
The man who destroyed the heroes (and why he's repenting)
Why Alan Moore believes The Killing Joke turned heroes into angsty anti-heroes
The Web 3.0 future
What it looks like when the future is like the 90s
How to control your head space
Create and curate a rock-solid shock-proof head-game
The magical transformational power of art (even silly pulp stories)
Why art has a purpose far beyond simple entertainment
Financial guru accidentally gives out excellent advice for your writerly exploits
You start to notice the same "tracks left in the snow" by successful people in any category
Health experts want to wire you up with AI for your own good
Spoiler alert: it's never for your own good
Hard-headed materialist Sam Harris endorses soft-brained California voodoo
Why is it that hardline Science Believers fall for the most shameless mysticism?
Systems theory for your online creative business (the fun and easy way)
When you change your point of view you change everything
They call it "The Accident" but this old planet is hauling like a sports car
Watch this brown dwarf break all the rules
The effective altruism scam is a nerd fantasy
This altruism isn't effective... and it's not even altruistic. What a ripoff.
Marauding marketers make a mess of a serious pulp fiction artist by selling lots of books
The old myth of the struggling romantic artist who can't compete with the carnival-barkers just won't die... we won't let it
A rogue planet brand check
In which I riff on the Bigger Vision animating the lifeless universe around here
Scientists find new kind of water-world, Kevin Costner not involved
You may not find ET there but it's a pretty cool idea to play with
She's sick of the Substack hype and I don't blame her one bit
This publishing consultant takes a shiv to the pretty lies propping up the latest disruptive gold-rush
How to think like an entrepreneur when you're a serious artiste
Even the most pretentious creative can benefit from business acumen
Karl Marx's ideas help greedy capitalist creators grow a profitable brand for once
A lesson from this communist hero that even the most exploitative fat-cats must know
Puzzling out Prometheus through fan theories
I don't care that they took their helmets off OMG scientists so stupid rite? It's still a great watch.
Your ethical imperative to be excellent
Forget about your craft. You've got to think bigger.
The immortality scam sold to you by the medical-industrial complex
Who wants to live forever?
New report finds weird things lurking in the desert
Pulp authors prose proves prescient
Being the public face of your brand is asking for trouble (unless you take these steps)
Keep your nose clean and your opsec tight
Dan Simmons' Hyperion proves that love is better than science
With spaceships and cool monsters and stuff too
Why you must think like a business leader if you are a creator
The writers, musicians, and artists who survive and thrive understand the business
Is Elon Musk's Neuralink brain chip an evil scheme to destroy your sense of self? (Part 3)
Having an implant wired into your brain might do a lot more than speed up your communication...
AI gone wild in The Terminator
Forget the "franchise"... there's surprising depth in this classic 80s sci-fi action/horror
Authors don't sell books
They don't sell reader relationships or personal brands, either.
How to think about ideas?
That's far too ambitious a title for what you're about to read
Are you blind to the systems around you?
Don't think you're exempt from systems thinking just cause you're a writer or artist or creative
Why should SF writers care what philosophers think when you've got The Science?
There's a total breakdown between the experts and the artists... and you get to pay for it with sub-par stories
Will Elon Musk's Neuralink brain chip turn you into a stupid robot? (Part 2)
What words mean is more than "word games"
What's the point of uplifting stories if the world is going to hell?
Inspiring stories have far more power than feel-good comfort food
The Space Jockey was the real eldritch horror in Alien
And I don't mean the 8 foot tall albino bodybuilder in the flight suit from Prometheus
Marketing is culture change (even if the product is your writing)
Just write the next book... sorta.
What's going on with Fermi's paradox?
How this physicist's harmless question opened the gates for an existential crisis of cosmic proportions
The Killing Star and other tales of ecological doom
Strike first, strike hard, no mercy. John Kreese got nothing on these aliens.
Why Elon Musk's Neuralink brain chip will be the end of you
Think twice before getting excited about this ambitious project to rebuild human beings in the image of machines
How this weird Danish philosopher supercharged his writing brand by using pen names
There's good business reasons besides the privacy paranoia
Is Disney's Star Wars Hotel a ripoff or a marketing masterclass for writers?
Shameless pandering it might be... but the keen-eyed will get a free education in selling to a hungry niche
Living around a rogue black hole
Interstellar menace or life-giving gardens for space travelers?
Do you "trust scientists"?
You're supposed to trust "The Science"... but what is that and what makes it an authority?
Is "who are you?" the ultimate sci-fi question?
You find yourself at the bottom of a shocking number of remarkable science fiction stories
Hard science fiction is more philosophy than science
RP continues to flog this horse well into rigor mortis
Is your bug-eyed space-monster a person?
Space opera assumes that aliens will be people, but maybe that's not what intelligence looks like
All manned spaceflight is fantasy so you may as well own that
There's no realistic way to send human beings to live on other planets... but that doesn't matter to storytellers
Marketing your writing isn't hard, you're just lazy
Why the incurious and self-indulgent personality will always fail
The harrowing horrors and heroics of the Robert E. Howard story
These "pulp tales" still entertain even when there's no surprises
Creative writers don't look backwards
Writing to the market's demands can work, for awhile. But you won't build a career unless you do this...
Are you playing these finite games without realizing it?
In which RP lectures the reader on the hidden dynamics of your life and business
Why worldbuilders need to grow up
Sub-created worlds are vital to speculative stories, but nerds ruin storytelling with obsessive worldbuilding
When they caught the worldbuilder disease
How nerdish obsessions ruined storytelling
Where's the space in space opera?
Most "space opera" is sword & sorcery with a futuristic aesthetic
Wear a mask to help stop The Thing
What John Carpenter's cult classic shows about the futility of giving into fear and paranoia
The sublime terror of a distant galactic catastrophe
The Hubble telescope peeps up the universe's dress and shows us a miracle
Why determinism isn't true and human freedom is real (Part 2)
Free will isn't what you should be worried about
Why determinism isn't true and human freedom is real (explained in about 15 minutes)
Physicists may talk a big game but it's all show
Why didn't Tolkien believe the fantasy genre was incompatible with science fiction?
Genre boundaries were put there to sell books in bookstores, not tell you how to write a story
Why weird conspiracy theory stories are so fun to read
The human mind finds great pleasure in connecting the dots... and nothing gives you more dots than a good conspiracy theory
Why Rob Halford couldn't sell out a night club without Judas Priest
The hidden secret is in the 'name'
Are you amazed by excellence (in anything)?
You must be ruthless in selecting the quality and sources of your attention
Are you protecting yourself from mental contagion?
Who you hang around with can make or break your goals
Should authors care about reader feedback?
Authors care too much about what unimportant people think
How the "music meltdown" of the 90s made everyone miserable
Keep your head clean and clear with the inspiring music of 80s
Why a "ticking clock" is the best productivity tool you'll ever use
How these simple techniques used by all the top writers can help you create more works, faster
Why fiction authors should be good marketers (but usually aren't)
If you write fiction, you've got the skills to be a top-flight self-promoter. But few authors are willing to do it.
That time John Carpenter found the devil in quantum physics
The surprising depth in this little-known gem by a legendary film-maker
Why Blindsight isn't all that great a story
Peter Watt's grimdark nihilism mixes the best of SF speculation with unlikeable people and a depressing message
The "dark side" of futuristic science fiction stories
What happens when sci-fi storytelling gets taken over by superstitious materialists
When the "write to market" advice goes south
The market doesn't know what it wants... but your readers know what they love
Writing speculative fiction without finger-wagging gatekeepers
The moralizers wanted to eliminate 'adventure stories' and gave us garbage moralizing with shallow characters instead
Confused writers blindsided by unruly Creator Economy
You aren't going to grow an audience by writing a newsletter that nobody wants to read
Weyland-Yutani's got nothing on these mega-corporations
Cyberpunk isn't dead, but it has changed since the heyday of the 80s style
How cybernetics became the metaphysics of death worship
When we study humans as if they were machines, we lose everything that makes a life worth living.
Great stories aren't subversive
When the writers try to critique everything, they're only telling bad stories
How fast do you create a story?
The gatekeepers aren't looking out for the writers.
Why religion belongs in science fiction (even if you're an atheist)
Atheism has a place in speculative fiction but it shouldn't be the default assumption
Is it a good idea to colonize other planets?
Don't pack your bags just yet...
Space is terrifying
Lots of people could be watching you right now (and they aren't in Silicon Valley for once)
How to sell books when everybody's selling books
What happens when books become a customer acquisition tool?
How nerd culture turned curiosity into a vice
Why listening to fans is a horrible idea for any creator
Why your heroic moral character shouldn't be a saint
When writing characters becomes an exercise in virtue signaling, you've lost the plot (and your readers)
How are your readers using your stories?
What you think you're doing when you write... and what you're really doing
Why different is better than better (authors, pay attention)
"Write to the market," say the experts to the writer. "There's a hungry crowd out there. Give them what they want and your book will be successful." The lesson is that, what worked before will continue working as we move ahead. Keep writing those zombie vampire romances topping the charts
What a quiet painter can teach fiction authors about creativity (and building your business)
Why the business of writing isn't really about getting a book deal with a publisher
Is science fiction a myth?
What happens when fanboys and bean counters take control of the writer's imagination?
Can you write an existential "anti-hero" without the grimdark?
Fiction needs real good guys & bad guys.
The limits of cosmic indifference if science is real
The hidden conflict in all science fiction stories
The missing human element in galactic settlement scenarios
Solving the problem of space travel isn't about getting the right rockets.
There's a first time for everything
In which I explain who this site is for, what it's for, and why you might care.