Interview: Carl Frederick

CF2Nebula nominee, frequent Analog byliner, Writers of the Future first place award winner, 2 time Phobos Fiction Contest winner, 6 time Analog Readers Choice Award winner, Odyssey graduate, and longtime Critters member Carl Frederick is camera shy. As you can see from the photo, even his pet cat is shy. He likes cats and dogs and they are prominent characters in many of his stories. Frederick is known for his hard science stories. He’s had 40 plus short stories published in Analog. Lately, without letting up on the hard science stories, he has delved deep into character driven stories and even literary science fiction. Or rather, stories with strong character development well blended into the hard science element – and vice versa.

Our Hugo/Nebula Eligible Work 2012

The SF award nomination season is here. The Nebulas (the writer-voted award) have been open for a while and close in February. The Hugos (the fan-voted award) opened on January first. Both sets cover works published in the 2012 calendar year. About this time of year, every writer and their dog posts a list of their eligible works.

In Loving Memory of Aria Steffen

This is the story of my first dog. This is the story of the first dog that Heather was really responsible for. This is the story of Aria the papillon. She had the name Aria when we got her–we thought of renaming her Oreo but it didn’t stick. Over the years we had many nicknames for her–Ariana, Missy Lu, Missy Moo, Lu Lu Bell, many others.

Daily Science Fiction: September 2012 Review

We would like to share an announcement for the opening of the third year of Daily Science Fiction. The very successful publication has been running on the sheer determination of two editors. Well, the weight of responsibilities of putting out a fresh story five days a week, and the reading of the enormous pile of submissions, has been much to bear for Jon and Michele. So they did what any wise and overworked editors would do, accept help.

Daily Science Fiction: July 2012 Review

Riddle time! Where would you find Shakespeare, Merlin the magician, the Green Lantern, time machines, aliens, dragons, dead worlds, the afterlife, creation and (most impressive of the bunch) is over 900 pages long? The answer is below…

Interview: Leah Cypess

Leah Cypess is a fantasy author with 2 novels under her belt (“Mistwood” and “Nightspell”, 2 recent stories in Asimov’s (“Twelvers” and “Nanny’s Day”), another novel due in early 2014 (“Deathsworn”), and a fist full of rave reviews. A free anthology of her short stories is entitled “Changelings and Other Stories” and is available from B&N, Amazon, and Smashwords. Her website is www.LeahCypess.com.

Review: Writers of the Future XXVII

This marks the fourth year in which I am reviewing the Writers of the Future contest. As a long time reader (I bought Volume I when it came out), and frequent submitter of the past few years, I have come to appreciate the work K D Wentworth and her predecessors have done putting this mammoth endeavor together every year. In the past, I’ve read issues and thought I can do better than that. It wasn’t until I started writing did I realize it wasn’t as easy as it looked. When I started reviewing, I had begun to marvel the work the authors put into each story.