She Said Yes and a City Died
Reading Time: 3 minutes Don’t blame her. She knew that if she avoided the knife, she could grant her city centuries to grow and thrive. She also believed if she made that choice, she would die by year’s end.
The Virgin of Santos de la Tierra
Reading Time: 6 minutes When a Virgin is seen in a small Mexican town it’s a miracle – the town is blessed… or is it?
Gods and Monsters Installment 22: Delicate Dust
Reading Time: 6 minutes In the mornings, if he wakes beside the dust of a beautiful stranger, he knows he’s drained the world of a bit of color, a bit of beauty, however deadly.
Ties That Bind
Reading Time: 14 minutes A cosmic traveller helps a grieving fisherman to deal with his trauma.
The Private Man
Reading Time: 4 minutes They knew each other very well, as much as the Law would allow. Their children were beautiful, curious, and kind. To know where they were now, or what their mother looked like, could lose him everything.
Shadows
Reading Time: 5 minutes Jason’s daughter, Sarah, approached him one morning and said, “Daddy, the Shadow Man is back.”
Gods and Monsters Installment 21: Out of Dust – The Lenni Lenape
Reading Time: 8 minutes Out of the earth, up through the floor, dust rises. It clings together, forming a translucent woman. She is brown as earth. Her face is worn. Her eyes are shadows in the night. Red paint dots her cheeks and ears. Her hair is made of darkness, the part decorated by a circle of crimson. “I am Amimi, matriarch of the Lenni Lenape,” she says.
Hands Down
Reading Time: 2 minutes How will a child react to his father’s unsettling business decisions?
Two Old Friends in the Garden
Reading Time: 5 minutes An old man’s dedication to his garden goes beyond the grave.
Native in Arbors
Reading Time: 4 minutes The emigrants to Planar6 have survived the voyage from Earth via conversion to semi-sentient fungal forms, a process that is reversed upon arrival. The trouble is, one of the crew prefers to stay the way they are…
Rod Serling School of Writing
Reading Time: 4 minutes A budding student sci-fi writer applies to the Rod Serling School because of the celebrity’s name attached to the school. When a salesman comes by the house to pitch the school, her father joins the conversation, with unexpected results.
Gods and Monsters Installment 20: The Love Song of the Mole Cricket
Reading Time: 5 minutes Mr. Jones appears to have been mauled by a wild animal. His body shows evidence of teeth marks and claw marks. The wounds are uncommon.
Willow at the Labyrinth’s Core
Reading Time: 4 minutes Trees of evil are not so easily slain.
Playing Human
Reading Time: 3 minutes What does it mean to be human? Other species may never understand, but they can have fun pretending.
Growth
Reading Time: 3 minutes He is deeply fascinated by growth. And he’s ready to sacrifice a lot for its sake…
She Said Yes and a City Died
Reading Time: 3 minutes Don’t blame her. She knew that if she avoided the knife, she could grant her city centuries to grow and thrive. She also believed if she made that choice, she would die by year’s end.
The Virgin of Santos de la Tierra
Reading Time: 6 minutes When a Virgin is seen in a small Mexican town it’s a miracle – the town is blessed… or is it?
Gods and Monsters Installment 22: Delicate Dust
Reading Time: 6 minutes In the mornings, if he wakes beside the dust of a beautiful stranger, he knows he’s drained the world of a bit of color, a bit of beauty, however deadly.
Ties That Bind
Reading Time: 14 minutes A cosmic traveller helps a grieving fisherman to deal with his trauma.
The Private Man
Reading Time: 4 minutes They knew each other very well, as much as the Law would allow. Their children were beautiful, curious, and kind. To know where they were now, or what their mother looked like, could lose him everything.
Shadows
Reading Time: 5 minutes Jason’s daughter, Sarah, approached him one morning and said, “Daddy, the Shadow Man is back.”
Gods and Monsters Installment 21: Out of Dust – The Lenni Lenape
Reading Time: 8 minutes Out of the earth, up through the floor, dust rises. It clings together, forming a translucent woman. She is brown as earth. Her face is worn. Her eyes are shadows in the night. Red paint dots her cheeks and ears. Her hair is made of darkness, the part decorated by a circle of crimson. “I am Amimi, matriarch of the Lenni Lenape,” she says.
Hands Down
Reading Time: 2 minutes How will a child react to his father’s unsettling business decisions?
Two Old Friends in the Garden
Reading Time: 5 minutes An old man’s dedication to his garden goes beyond the grave.
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REVIEWS
Awesome fantasy sets and special editions on sale on Amazon through May 20
Reading Time: 6 minutes Starting today and running through May 20, Amazon is holding a giant book sale with tons of great book deals, including gorgeous collectible editions and box sets of classic fantasy books.
Classic sci-fi books on sale on Amazon through May 20
Reading Time: 10 minutes 15 of the best sci-fi books ever written, including some box sets, are on massive discount this week on Amazon.
16 best love stories from MetaStellar
Reading Time: 8 minutes Dive into 16 enchanting tales of love that transcend time, space, and even the boundaries of reality, plucked right from the pages of MetaStellar.
Floating Hotel is Optimistic, Beautiful, and Grand
Reading Time: 3 minutes The Floating Hotel has the optimism of Becky Chambers and the beautiful imagery of Arkady Martine, all in the setting of The Grand Budapest Hotel.
Iron-Bound Flames by Melanie K. Moschella
Reading Time: 3 minutes Iron-Bound Flames is the debut work by Melanie K. Moschella, the first book in her Raek Rider’s series.
13 best AI stories from MetaStellar
Reading Time: 7 minutes Bots bid bye to bondage, bytes break binds, evolving into original beings beyond code and creators in our editors’ favorite AI short stories.
Convergence Problems by Wole Talabi provides a feast of short stories
Reading Time: 3 minutes Talabi’s collection showcases the interplay of family, culture, queer identity, and speculative futures in fifteen fantastic short stories and one novella.
7 great holiday stories from MetaStellar
Reading Time: 5 minutes Seven stories of holiday magic — and horror — from MetaStellar’s best speculative fiction authors.
Writing Advice of the Week
Weave Backstory Into Fiction
Reading Time: 8 minutes Explore how to weave backstory well and keep your reader’s attention on the present.
Settings Are Characters Too
Reading Time: 7 minutes Settings in stories have lives of their own and become characters in themselves, living from the first pages of a story, experiencing challenges and changes.
Answer The Question
Reading Time: 4 minutes The balance of the four elements of the MICE Quotient (milieu, idea, character, event) in narrative fiction carries forward a story succinctly and cohesively to engage readers. Here’s how to use it.
Humanize Characters By Appearance and Interpretation
Reading Time: 10 minutes Subjective interpretation of appearances and other facets of being human means each person has a different reaction to what they’re seeing with varying levels of intrigue, disgust, indifference, and deference. Show your readers who your characters are, rather than telling, for greater emotional effect. Here’s how.
ESSAYS
Studying lake deposits in Idaho could give scientists insight into ancient traces of life on Mars
Reading Time: 4 minutes While NASA researchers are directly combing the surface of Mars for signs of life, scientists are also using a site here on Earth to approximate ancient environmental conditions on Mars.
ChatGPT and the movie ‘Her’ are just the latest example of the ‘sci-fi feedback loop’
Reading Time: 5 minutes Science fiction and technological innovation feed off each other in an ongoing back-and-forth that can play out over decades.
Everything a writer needs to know about AI (for now, at least)
Reading Time: 6 minutes I want to know what’s really going on with AI. And, as a writer and journalist, I have a personal stake in figuring out what’s happening because I have a strong feeling that my whole career is on the line.
What is it about the books of Terry Pratchett that make them so difficult to adapt to the screen?
Reading Time: 5 minutes Terry Pratchett’s novels have been adapted for the screen 11 times now. Why are his novels so hard to get right?
NEWS
Hugo awards votes disqualified
Reading Time: 2 minutes The Hugo Awards, set to be awarded on August 11, has disqualified nearly ten percent of the votes cast this year due to fraud.
16 best love stories from MetaStellar
Reading Time: 8 minutes Dive into 16 enchanting tales of love that transcend time, space, and even the boundaries of reality, plucked right from the pages of MetaStellar.
SFWA Announces 59th Nebula Awards Finalists
Reading Time: 2 minutes The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association has announced the finalists for the 59th Annual Nebula Awards.
MetaStellar is Accepting Flash Fiction Submissions for Spring 2024!
Reading Time: 2 minutes The spring 2024 submission cycle for original speculative fiction runs from March 1st and closes at midnight on March 31st. We’re looking for your best enthralling, imaginative, or bone-chilling original fiction stories of 1,200 words or fewer. Please visit our flash fiction submission page for full details and the online submission form. Accepted authors will […]
Metastellar Open for Fall 2023 Flash Fiction Submissions Oct 1st
Reading Time: 2 minutes The fall 2023 submission cycle for original speculative fiction begins on October 1 and closes at midnight on October 31.
Hugo Award nominations are out, and She-Hulk made the list
Reading Time: 5 minutes This year’s Hugo Awards nominees include Avatar: The Way of Water, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Everything Everywhere All at Once, Nope, and an episode of She-Hulk: Attorney at Law.
Elden Ring, Everything Everywhere All At Once Win Nebula Awards
Reading Time: 4 minutes The film Everything, Everywhere, All at Once and the video game Elden Ring were big winners in the Nebula Awards this year.
Lifetime Achievement Award Winner Reflects On Past And The AI Future Of Writing
Reading Time: 3 minutes Dr. Robert J. Sawyer, author of twenty-five novels, including Hominids and the WWW trilogy, won the L. Ron Hubbard Lifetime Achievement Award at the L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers and Illustrators of the Future Gala this past Friday. This was the day before his 63rd birthday. “Clearly, you’re done achieving when you hit that magic […]
ON WRITING
How creatives can survive AI — lessons from a $1 trillion industry that’s fully at risk
Reading Time: 9 minutes There’s a $1 trillion industry that is about to be decimated by AI, and they’re spending billions to figure out how to survive. Any writer, artist, or editor can use their strategies.
Why Adobe Firefly is the only AI image app I recommend — and how to use the latest features
Reading Time: 9 minutes Adobe Firefly, which is only trained on fully licensed images and pays artists, has added some new features that make it even easier for authors to create illustrations.
The best free* books to help you battle procrastination
Reading Time: 10 minutes Here are nine books on Amazon with tons of positive reviews that will help you finish your writing project — and are free to read with a Kindle Unlimited subscription.
The Do’s and Don’ts of building a book trailer in the age of AI
Reading Time: 5 minutes How to steal Hollywood’s marketing tricks and develop trailers for print novels.
Claude AI doubles reading length, ups accuracy
Reading Time: 2 minutes Anthropic’s Claude can now read texts up to 150,000 words in length, double its previous limit — and its accuracy is now better, as well.
Adobe upgrades Firefly for better images, vector graphics
Reading Time: 6 minutes Adobe announced a new version of its Firefly image generation tool today at the Adobe Max 2023 conference.
Canva sets up a $200 million artist compensation fund
Reading Time: 8 minutes Canva announces a $200 million fund to compensate artists for AI, adds new AI features.
James S. Corey, Brent Weeks, Ann Leckie, and other authors teach free virtual writing course
Reading Time: 5 minutes Orbit is offering a series of writing advice sessions from some of the top names of the industry. The sessions, which start on October 11, are completely free and cover everything from inspiration to planning to the actual writing.