Sunday, July 31, 2011

My writing week: Issue 31, Year 4

Hi all,

Another week has passed without me overindulging in writing. Everything in moderation they say. Well at least with writing I seem to be getting that right.

Characters with Disabilities in Science Fiction.

I wrote an article for Divine online magazine about characters with disabilities in science fiction. Before I started doing some research I was scratching my head a bit to think of such characters. In the end I discovered/remembered plenty of paraplegics, vision impaired and those with artificial limbs. Not so many hearing impaired and characters with intellectual disabilities. When I wrote the article, word constraints had me cutting out a number of examples.

My article is much more than just a list. It questions the use of technology in relation to characters with disabilities, and I comment on the future of characters with disabilities in science fiction.

Turing Evolved.

I finished reading David Kitson’s excellent self-published ebook, Turing Evolved. I reviewed it in my last post. It’s about artificial intelligence, virtual reality, androids and what it means to be human. The plot really moves along with plenty of action. Only problem with it is that it needs a good edit, but I only occasionally found myself shunted out of the story by its changes in tense and occasional typos.

The download was free. I suggest you download it from Smashwords as there are no paragraph indents in the copy on Amazon. David asks for a donation at the end of the novel. I sent him $8 using paypal. I am prepared to pay $10 for a fully edited ebook.

Melbourne Writers' Festival.

I had a look through the Age Writers' Festival program today and there was nothing that had me wanting to spend three and a half hours travelling to Melbourne. No science fiction that I could see.

So, hopefully, this week it will be back to writing a short story which was progressing nicely last time I did some work on it.

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