Features and Columns
Regular columns and articles by The Fix’s feature writers.
Distillations: Visions of Time
Around here, March is when spring starts making its tentative appearance. If fall and winter are about remembering the past, spring is all about the future. In many ways, this idea of change is where science fiction began. What will happen next? What will the world be like if X happens? What will […]
Continue ReadingThe Day Job: Get Out of the House
When writing isn’t the day job, then your writing “office” is probably in your house. Of course, for writers who do make their living through words, their office is probably at home too. For many, the idea of working from home is the ideal. Sleep late. Trundle down to the computer […]
Continue ReadingFrom the Podosphere: February 2008
Wolf Brother by Michelle Paver is a free podcast from BBC Radio 4. It’s a coming-of-age tale set in an unspecified prehistorical period. Young Torak’s father is viciously killed by a bear possessed by a demon. The boy is left alone in the ancient forest and sets out on an odyssey to a mystical mountain […]
Continue ReadingFlickers on the Wall: Masters of Horror (Part 3)
I return for the final time to season one of Masters of Horror. It’s taken me three columns to cover this momentous project, but there were thirteen films; anything shorter would have been negligent. The series was the creation of writer/producer/director Mick Garris, who may not have an impressive directing résumé, but does […]
Continue ReadingAudiobook Fix: Audio Stross
Over the past several years, Allen Kaster and his crew at Infinivox have selected and produced consistently excellent short fiction in their Great Science Fiction series of audiobooks. Amongst their recent releases are three stories by Charles Stross: “Antibodies,” “Lobsters,” and “A Colder War.”
Charles Stross’s work is dense with tech information and […]
The Day Job: Writing Thoughts to Contemplate
I like short, pithy advice about writing. Maybe I’m just a simple guy, but I think more about the easily digested suggestions I’ve read than the long, theoretical essays contained in the several dozen writing books on my shelves. For example, when I had a chance to have Connie Willis sign a copy […]
Continue ReadingFlickers on the Wall: Masters of Horror (Part 2)
Last month, I started an examination of Masters of Horror, a short film horror anthology conceived as a direct-to-video project. Broadcast on Showtime and seen by almost no one, all thirteen movies have now been released on DVD, separately and in a box set. The title, or at least the label of “Master,” was a […]
Continue ReadingDistillations: Scifaiku
Even during a leap year, February is the shortest month. For this month’s column, we will explore the haiku form, which is short by design. Unlike the miserable cold of February (at least for those in the northern hemisphere), haiku is delightful. Everything unnecessary has been pared away. All that remains are the seventeen syllables, […]
Continue ReadingFrom the Podosphere: January ‘08
This month, From the Podosphere offers something other than the usual short story roundup: two audio dramas and one novella.
Podcast audio dramas, particularly genre work—which seems to be the majority of it—are like the bastard offspring of 50s and 60s radio serials, such as The Shadow and Sexton Blake, and audio space operas that were […]
Flickers on the Wall: Masters of Horror (Part 1)
There’s nothing equivalent to the fantastic fiction magazines of literature for film, nothing you can subscribe to in order to get the most exciting and skillfully conceived short movies (or poor ones that somehow got past the slush viewers) each month. There were no Weird Tales, Astounding Stories, or Worlds of IF to shepherd […]
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