Free Articles and Fiction

Free Articles and Fiction

This section is intended for any non-fiction articles I may write that I think warrant being preserved, and for any short fiction I publish via the blog.

Pages currently available in this section include:

Building a Better Barsoom – A fairly lengthy article analyzing the “planetary romance” genre and laying the groundwork for a PR setting of my own.

Departure – A short story about star-crossed lovers, and the sacrifices they may be forced to make to follow their dreams. Hard SF genre.

Encounter in the Dawn – A vignette set in the late Paleolithic era, about a confrontation between two bands of humans. Historical genre.

Fermi’s Nightmare – A short article on the so-called “Fermi paradox,” offering an empirical rule of thumb for the design of plausible space-opera universes.

A Fire in Winter – A short story about a man and his mission, in the early stages of an American Revolution that isn’t going as well as the one in our history. Alternate-history fantasy genre.

Fragment – A short story about a Bronze Age war that never took place in our world. Alternate-history fantasy genre.

Guanahani – A short story about a scientific mystery, and also about people struggling to survive amid the chaos of human history. Hard SF genre.

Kráva and the Skátoi – A short story about sudden death and revenge, essentially the first chapter of the first draft of my novel, The Curse of Steel. Low fantasy genre.

A Prince of Tanȗr – A short story about a roving adventurer, a prince, and a king, in which very little is as it seems at first glance. Planetary romance genre.

Roanoke – A novelette in the Human Destiny setting, about the fate of the first human outpost on Mars. Hard SF genre.

Safe Haven – A short story about events after the Trojan War, in a world not quite the same as the one familiar to us from Homer. Alternate-history fantasy genre.