SCIENCE FICTION MAGAZINES: "The Triumvirate, Vol. #4" - Journal of Fantasy, Science Fiction, and Horror

I have an obscure science fiction story (entitled, My Own Private Earth) in the latest edition of David Oliver Kling’s speculative fiction journal, The Triumvirate. Volume Four. The Triumvirate features tales of science ficiton, fantasy, horror, even a little bit of poetry. It is available for your Amazon Kindle (digitally), or as a very affordable paperback in the $7.00 range. It is one part…

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Alcatraz in the distance

San Francisco, CA

forgot where i took this.

i think in general when it comes to worldbuilding, you should know how the real world works, not because you have to follow the real world slavishly, but because that way you can break the rules in more interesting ways.

in LOTR, mirkwood is notoriously in the middle of what should probably be a big rain shadow--there could be a really interesting reason for that, but the actual reason is that tolkien didn’t know or care much about climate or geology or astronomy or any of the hard sciences for that matter. as a result there is no elaboration of this forest existing there, or consequences for the world or stories that take place there; it’s just a “meh, this’ll do.”

personally i think that’s kind of boring. even saying explicitly “this is explicitly A Mystery,” is a more interesting violation of expectations than “i don’t know what a rain shadow is, my story just needed a big forest, and i thought i’d put it immediately east of a mountain range tall enough to alter weather patterns.”

the actual earth is big and old and complex enough that you can find plenty of specific reasons to violate general rules of thumb like “mountains tend to create big rain shadows” and “equatorial regions tend to be full of rainforests,” and even if you don’t develop the world in sufficient resolution to know exactly why a particular microclimate or regional variation occurs somewhere, at least asking yourself that question is a useful exercise!

this goes for more than climate, obviously--the same is true for language, economics, politics, warfare, and any other field of human endeavor or experience you care to name. if you’re too content to rest on “well, it’s fantasy/science fiction/mythopoeia, it doesn’t need to be realistic,” i think you’ll end up with endless lonely cities, cookie-cutter fantasy kingdoms, ISO fantasy races, and overall blandness. knowing the rules, even if it’s just to violate them more creatively, will help you understand just how big and complicated and diverse the real world is--equally or more so than any work of fiction--and help you to ask questions about your world that might never occur to you otherwise.

Disappeared.

San Francisco, 2023.

for @coffeeisfortheresponsible’s dtiys- used a transfem lloyd headcanon of mine for this one and had so much fun ^^

(alternate ver under the cut)

my style recently has been a little more chaotic so i did make a second version leaning that way.. but i figured since the theme of this dtiys is more about uh. just giving lloyd a fucking break tm. i’d have the actual submission be a little more peaceful lmao

SF, May 2023

It's true! I have a podcast, called Paper Cuts! The format is something I like to call Live Audiobook, where I go live, and read a book aloud to you, the audience! I then edit that down into what goes on the podcast feed.

Also, I have the book on screen during the stream AND it's in the vod, so people have a fallback to my automated captions!

We're live friday nights, generally, and specifically, this coming Friday, The 13th, is the launch of season 3 of the podcast! It's a new era for paper cuts, we're getting author permission for modern books to get air alongside the public domain classics that got us this far! I'm so excited to show off some more recently-made favorites of mine, and hopefully make some new favorites along the way, too!

Does the thought of a long backlog of episodes sound daunting to you? Don't worry about it, each time we start a new book, the episode is the title of the book, so there's plenty of places to start! We've done some of the big "english class" hits, like Dracula, The Cask of Amontillado, or The Picture of Dorian Grey, but also some weird little hidden gems I think you'll love, like The Five Jars, The Last Man, or even some issues of Astounding Stories!

Long story short, if you like audiobooks, you'll love them live, come drop by and enjoy Paper Cuts!

That's the link for when we go live!

And there's the podcast feed! (I'm also available in your podcatcher of choice, like spotify, or iTunes, for example!)

by joel schekman

Seraphina, 2023

This post is a replacement for one I removed earlier today to comply with Instagram’s suggestion. I was recently informed that I could no longer be suggested to non-followers because of an offending post. I thought I didn’t care but in my totally ridiculous quest to reach 1,000 followers I opted just go ahead and remove it. Here’s the thing, I purposely chose that image because the offending nipple was totally burred out and obscured by the glass, and wasn’t Meta relaxing their policy on things like nipples? Of course there’s a gotcha in there! Yes, there is a more relaxed policy on things like nips, but they come at a cost, that being just how visible your content is on the platform. Across the board this is norm, tumblr, instagram, wherever else, you can get away with posting more but it’s going to be seen by less. I hate talking about social media censorship and I know everyone hates listening to it at this point. Thing is, that removed image was one of my favorite pictures, well, I’ll have to find somewhere new for it to go, maybe my website, maybe a gallery. At this moment I chose three new images that evoke the same feeling.

Twin Peaks by Joel Schekman Via Flickr: Hasselblad 500c/m Kodak Portra Allied Photo Lab Hasselblad Imacon Flextight Scanner Since I purchased a Hasselblad Imacon Flextight Scanner I have been re-scanning my negatives at home here and am posting photos that have previously been uploaded- I see a huge improvement in color density and vibrancy, not to mention resolution. To have as many negatives scanned at this resolution as I have done so far would have easily paid off this machine. It's slow going but hopefully I will get to some new stuff soon! Enjoy

The Painted Ladies

San Francisco, CA

Found Slide 1969 by Thomas Hawk Via Flickr: date stamped on slide, January 1969

Les périls de l'écriture de hard-SF...

J'y explique l'inspiration pour ma nouvelle "Living on the Trap" (Analog Nov-Dec. 2023) Je préfère ma SF bien dure et croquante!

Dans la série les joies de l’écriture de hard-SF… mon article en anglais dans le blog d’Analog. J’y explique l’inspiration pour ma nouvelle “Living on the Trap” (Analog Nov-Dec. 2023) qui se passe sur un monde isolé, inspiré du système Trappist A. Il y a chez nous des villages éloignées et difficile d’accès où la pauvreté subsiste par manque de travail (quand le principal employeur a quitté les…

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