Here’s a little exercise to explore a character, possibly someone from a piece you’re working on.

Premise:

Your character is driving a car, waiting for the stoplight to change at a busy crossroads.

Your character looks in the rear-view mirror and sees a car speeding up the road behind them that will crash into them in three seconds.

What would this person think and do in those three seconds? Remember that stress slows down time, so there might be a whole lot of time.

The intent of this exercise is to get as deep into this person’s point of view as possible. How can you immerse the reader in this character’s feelings and reactions? Remember to be direct and to live out the story in the character’s head and body with all the emotional intensity and emotional range that you can.

What result did you get from this exercise? If you want, you can try it again with other characters from the same piece and see how they would differ.

How would you react?

The Wright Brothers first flew at Kitty Hawk in 1903. Paper airplanes began to be made only several years afterwards.

And yet, any child can make a paper airplane. The Chinese invented paper 2000 years ago and had kites. Birds have been flying since dinosaur times, and humanity has dreamed of flying since the stone age. Paper models of sailing ships, hot air balloons, and dirigibles were available before 1903. Japanese origami had already reached wonderful sophistication. Nothing was stopping anyone from making a paper airplane.

Except one thing: no one knew what an airplane looked like or how it would work. No one could imagine it. Orville and Wilbur had to develop an accurate understanding of how wing shape affected air pressure and created lift in order to make a real airplane, and by 1899 they had built intricate gliders and harnessed wind power. Their discoveries would eventually be transferred to a simplified three-dimensional paper model. The rest is history.

This leaves me sitting here staring at a sheet of paper, wondering what unprecedented things it could do, things that would delight any child, if we could only imagine them.

Alex Kingsley has interviewed me about the Semiosis trilogy for Interstellar Flight Magazine. You can read the interview here.

Alex asked: In Usurpation, there’s a pandemic. Was this pandemic inspired by our real-life pandemic? How did COVID-19 affect your portrayal?

I answered: In the 1980s, I was covering HIV as a journalist, and one day before a meeting, I was chatting with the Wisconsin state epidemiologist. He explained that while AIDs was awful — and as a gay man, he knew exactly how terrifying and destructive it was — a different new disease could be a lot worse. He described the many ways in which it could be easier to transmit, harder to detect, more resistant to treatment, and more deadly. COVID wasn’t my first pandemic, it wasn’t the worst, and it wasn’t at all inspiring.

I’ll be at the Sci-Fi & Fantasy Book Club at Linda Sokol Francis Public Library in Brookfield, Illinois, at 7 p.m. Wednesday, February 5. We’ll discuss the novel Dual Memory.

New participants are welcome!

More news: I translated the short story “Bodyhoppers” by Rocío Vega for the February 2025 issue of Clarkesworld Science Fiction & Fantasy Magazine. Read it here.

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The story I translated for Clarkesworld Magazine last year, “The Coffee Machine” by Celia Corral-Vázquez, is a finalist for Best Short Story of 2024. More information is here.

From anime to video games, science fiction to Dungeons & Dragons, and mainstream comic book movies, we live in the age of the geek. Capricon 45 will celebrate dorks, nerds, and geeks with the theme “Let your geek flag fly” at the Sheraton Grand Chicago Riverwalk hotel from February 6 to 9, 2025.

Capricon is a four-day science fiction convention held annually in the Chicagoland area since 1981. It celebrates science fiction and fantasy with a focus on literature. As part of the world-wide fannish community, diversity is encouraged and all are welcome. The convention is created and run entirely by volunteers, so this is a non-commercial gathering of about a thousand friends and friends-to-be.

During the day, members attend programming on a variety of topics: books, movies, television, anime, space exploration, and science. There’s a special children’s track and a teen lounge. Say hello to the mascot, Capricious the goat. Visit the dealer’s room, see the art show and auction, get into gaming, filk, or party all night long. You can still register to attend.

 Here’s where you can find me:

Speculative Literature Foundation Deep Dish Reading — Bridgeport Room, Friday 5:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. Scheduled readers will be followed by an open mic. Moderator Mary Anne Mohanraj; Shaun Duke, Sue Burke, Richard Chwedyk, K.M. Herkes, Angeli Primlani, Llewella Forgie.

What’s Hot in Speculative Poetry? — Bridgeport Room, Saturday 10:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. Speculative Poetry is having a moment. Former Capricon guest of honor Brandon O’Brien writes spec-po. At this year’s Worldcon in Seattle, he is behind a Special Hugo Award category for Speculative Poetry. Where should you start exploring this genre? Moderator Brandon O’Brien; Mary Turzillo, Sue Burke, Brian U. Garrison.

Geeky Gardening — Bridgeport Room, Saturday 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. How to grow weird, wonderful plants for the backyard, balcony, or windowsill. Moderator K.M. Herkes; Kim Kofmel, Sue Burke.

Living in Space — Sheraton III Ballroom, Saturday 2:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. So you want to live in space. Permanently. Raise your kids there and eventually age and die there. Never see a gravity well again. What will it be like? How will your habitat generate centrifugal gravity? Or would it be better to float free, with no gravity at all? What about trade with other habitats, asteroids, and planets? What will your society and government be like? The possibilities are endless! Moderator Sue Burke; Henry Spencer, Thomas Barclay, Jeffrey Liss.

Putting the “Science” in Science Fiction — Columbus Room, Saturday 5:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. Some authors have technical knowledge, others do not. Learn from science fiction authors as they talk about what to research, how to research, and what, if anything, you can fudge for the sake of story. Moderator Sue Burke; Brian U. Garrison, Jonathan Brazee, Geoffrey A. Landis, K.V. Peck.

Generation Ship Economics — Gold Coast Room, Sunday 1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. What does a generation ship need to keep its humans alive? Who’s going to pay for everything at the beginning, and what economic systems may develop onboard and at their destination? Moderator Sue Burke; Geoffrey A. Landis, Jeffrey Liss, Thomas Barclay.