Gods and Monsters Installment 24: Wastelands of the Wild
Reading Time: 8 minutesDust fur falls like rain, feathering into the plumes of a dove. The dove’s wings become sleeves. Amimi is shining like a hologram in the glooming.
Real Women
Reading Time: 4 minutesA group of mannequins from a fashion department store dream of becoming real women.
Gods and Monsters Installment 23: History Lies
Reading Time: 7 minutesIn the night shadows of trees, shunning the moonlight, a man waits. It is Kristjan, taller than Jim remembers. He is nearly naked, covered only by a wolf skin. In the night, his eyes glow red. As Jim looks at him, unable to turn away, something dark slips beneath Jim’s fingernails, flowing like a shadow into his blood.
How Chaac the Rain God Moved to Venice and Became a Glutton-Free Vegan
Reading Time: 8 minutesWhen ancient Mexican gods visit Venice Beach, America gets a change of dirt.
She Said Yes and a City Died
Reading Time: 3 minutesDon’t blame her. She knew that if she avoided the knife, she could grant her city centuries to grow and thrive. She also believed if she made that choice, she would die by year’s end.
The Virgin of Santos de la Tierra
Reading Time: 7 minutesWhen a Virgin is seen in a small Mexican town it’s a miracle – the town is blessed… or is it?
Gods and Monsters Installment 22: Delicate Dust
Reading Time: 6 minutesIn the mornings, if he wakes beside the dust of a beautiful stranger, he knows he’s drained the world of a bit of color, a bit of beauty, however deadly.
Ties That Bind
Reading Time: 14 minutesA cosmic traveller helps a grieving fisherman to deal with his trauma.
The Private Man
Reading Time: 4 minutesThey knew each other very well, as much as the Law would allow. Their children were beautiful, curious, and kind. To know where they were now, or what their mother looked like, could lose him everything.
Shadows
Reading Time: 5 minutesJason’s daughter, Sarah, approached him one morning and said, “Daddy, the Shadow Man is back.”
Gods and Monsters Installment 21: Out of Dust – The Lenni Lenape
Reading Time: 8 minutesOut of the earth, up through the floor, dust rises. It clings together, forming a translucent woman. She is brown as earth. Her face is worn. Her eyes are shadows in the night. Red paint dots her cheeks and ears. Her hair is made of darkness, the part decorated by a circle of crimson. “I am Amimi, matriarch of the Lenni Lenape,” she says.
Hands Down
Reading Time: 2 minutesHow will a child react to his father’s unsettling business decisions?
Two Old Friends in the Garden
Reading Time: 5 minutesAn old man’s dedication to his garden goes beyond the grave.
Native in Arbors
Reading Time: 4 minutesThe emigrants to Planar6 have survived the voyage from Earth via conversion to semi-sentient fungal forms, a process that is reversed upon arrival. The trouble is, one of the crew prefers to stay the way they are…
Rod Serling School of Writing
Reading Time: 4 minutesA budding student sci-fi writer applies to the Rod Serling School because of the celebrity’s name attached to the school. When a salesman comes by the house to pitch the school, her father joins the conversation, with unexpected results.
The Programmed Joy of Protection
Reading Time: 11 minutesRuth is an android robot nanny, designed to protect the two young children in her care. She has come to realize that she loves protecting the children so much, she feels compelled to put the children into danger so as to enjoy saving them.
Gods and Monsters Installment 34: The Fault Line Within
Reading Time: 7 minutesNow, after the advent of dreams and the appearance of color, when Gabriel reads of a killing, something inside him screams. When he looks upon a charcoal figure that so recently possessed unearthly beauty, he mourns. He wants to create, not destroy. He doesn’t like the role in which he has been cast.
Honeypot
Reading Time: 5 minutesA derelict spaceship turns out to be a trap for a space pirate and his very unusual copilot.
Gods and Monsters Installment 33: Pamela
Reading Time: 8 minutesVampires followed the deluge of fluid and fear, tracking the lonely, homeless, and lost to the city, drawn by the need for belief, as well as blood.
A Perfect Day
Reading Time: 4 minutesA day at the beach turns into something unexpected for a young couple.
Gods and Monsters Installment 32: Time Before Time
Reading Time: 7 minutesThanatos never kills. He’s just the messenger.
The Fingers of Regina Durette
Reading Time: 9 minutesWho says your body has to take orders from you?
The Snow Hath No Queen
Reading Time: 5 minutesIn a future where the continents are gone, the oceans are dead, and humanity survives atop the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a man goes on a dreamquest to rediscover cold and snow.
Gods and Monsters Installment 31: Small Time Gods
Reading Time: 7 minutesEver since he found Gabriel in the field, River has been cut off and alone. Separated from humanity by a knowledge that he didn’t even realize he possessed, a perception deep within his bones. An understanding that though fairy tales may come true, they are written in blood and lies.
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REVIEWS
Free Friday: Today’s top free Amazon sci-fi and fantasy books for Aug. 9, 2024
Reading Time: 9 minutesWe read the first few chapters of each of the top five free fantasy and sci-fi books on Amazon. Today’s list is all about magical love, dragon love, and fairy tale love.
Free Friday: Today’s top free Amazon sci-fi and fantasy books for Aug. 2, 2024
Reading Time: 10 minutesWe read the first few chapters of each of the top five free fantasy and sci-fi books on Amazon. Today’s list includes a plague, a sexy dragon, witches and wizards, and a modern-day retelling of the Snow White story.
Free Friday: Today’s top free Amazon sci-fi and fantasy books for July 26, 2024
Reading Time: 11 minutesWe read the first few chapters of each of the top five free fantasy and sci-fi books on Amazon. Today’s list includes four cozy, witchy mysteries — and some epic space battles.
Free Friday: Today’s top free Amazon sci-fi and fantasy books for July 19, 2024
Reading Time: 10 minutesWe read the first few chapters of each of the top five free fantasy and sci-fi books on Amazon. Today’s list includes some epic epic fantasies, including one by Nora Roberts — yup, the Nora Roberts!
Free Friday: Today’s top free Amazon sci-fi and fantasy books for July 12, 2024
Reading Time: 9 minutesWe read the first few chapters of each of the top five free fantasy and sci-fi books on Amazon. Today’s list includes a college student at the center of a mysterious conspiracy, and a man with no memory marooned on a planet trapped between two dimensions.
Free Friday: Today’s top free Amazon sci-fi and fantasy books for July 5, 2024
Reading Time: 9 minutesWe read the first few chapters of each of the top five free fantasy and sci-fi books on Amazon. Today’s list includes a cursed merman king, orcs and vampires, and a superhuman soldier called back into action to fight in an interstellar war.
Free Friday: Today’s top free Amazon sci-fi and fantasy books for June 28, 2024
Reading Time: 9 minutesWe read the first few chapters of each of the top five free fantasy and sci-fi books on Amazon. Today’s list includes lots and lots of cozy fantasy — and invading alien monsters.
Free Friday: Today’s top free Amazon sci-fi and fantasy books for June 21, 2024
Reading Time: 10 minutesWe read the first few chapters of each of the top five free fantasy and sci-fi books on Amazon. Today’s list includes so much romantasy. And all the fae and forbidden loves anyone could ever want.
Writing Advice of the Week
Structure, Character, Plot: The Big Picture of Story
Reading Time: 7 minutesRegardless of genre, tropes, and intended audiences, every novel you pick up has three things in common: structure, character, and plot.
Get Your First Line to Make a Good Impression (Here’s How)
Reading Time: 5 minutesWhen you know the purpose of your opening line, crafting the opener and tinkering with it until it hums can even be fun.
Remove Filters and Strengthen Your Fiction
Reading Time: 4 minutesFiltering separates the reader from the immediacy of the experience and disallows full immersion in the character’s journey. While there are valid reasons to use sensory filters, removing them may enhance the reader’s experience of your work.
Read Better to Write Well
Reading Time: 9 minutesReading becomes a form of procrastination when it distracts or detracts from your writing. Get the benefits of reading while writing by curating your book list.
ESSAYS
P.E.A.N.U.T.: 6 steps to staying ahead of AI as a fiction author
Reading Time: 11 minutesIf you want to be successful as a human author in an age of AI-generated content, you will need to make your writing Personal, Emotional, Authoritative, New, Unique, and Trustworthy — PEANUT, for short.
The Gartner Hype Cycle, the Dunning-Krueger Effect and the S-Curve, AI, and what they all mean for writers
Reading Time: 11 minutesAs writers progress in their writing journeys, they may face a drop in confidence and obstacles along the way. To overcome these challenges, focus on core skills, keep practicing, and level up by learning a new skill that aligns with your goals.
Disney’s Black mermaid is no breakthrough
Reading Time: 5 minutesMermaids have become a cultural phenomenon, and clashes about mermaids and race have spilled out into the open. This is most pointedly apparent in the backlash over Disney’s much-anticipated “The Little Mermaid.”
Brain-computer interfaces could allow soldiers to control weapons with their thoughts
Reading Time: 5 minutesImagine that a soldier has a tiny computer device injected into their bloodstream that can be guided with a magnet to specific regions of their brain. With training, the soldier could then control weapon systems thousands of miles away using their thoughts alone.
NEWS
Happy New Year from everyone at MetaStellar!
Reading Time: 3 minutesIt’s been a stellar year here at the magazine, with our first anthology, a quarter million page views, a 150 YouTube videos, and more than 700 stories published by over 300 authors.
How AI is used to create images in virtual worlds
Reading Time: 6 minutesFrom AI art galleries in OpenSim to AI-created fully immersive three-dimensional environments, AI is already shaping how we experience virtual worlds.
Here’s what ChatGPT said about using ChatGPT for video games and VR!
Reading Time: 3 minutesHey there! I’m ChatGPT, and I’m here to tell you all about the amazing things you can do with ChatGPT in video game development and virtual reality.
Spec fic community looks beyond Twitter
Reading Time: 9 minutesTwitter has long been a friend to speculative fiction, with many sci-fi and fantasy authors and publications connecting with their audience on the platform. However, the turmoil sparked by Elon Musk’s acquisition has caused some to have some serious concerns.
Apple and Meta’s pricy new headsets about to release
Reading Time: 2 minutesApple’s much anticipated augmented and virtual reality headset and the new Meta headset may be way out of reach for the average user.
Science Fiction Becoming Science Fact
Reading Time: 3 minutesScience fiction writers have always been ahead of the game when it comes to predicting the future. Here are some inventions that are ready for the public now or will be soon.
Fall 2022 Call for Submissions Opens October 1st
Reading Time: 2 minutesThe fall 2022 submission cycle for original speculative fiction begins on October 1 and closes at midnight on October 31. We’re looking for your best enthralling, imaginative, or bone-chilling original fiction stories, as long as they’re 1,200 words or fewer. Please visit our flash fiction submission page for full details and the online submission form. […]
Arkady Martine wins for best novel at Hugo Awards in Chicago
Reading Time: 2 minutesArkady Martine won the most prestigious science fiction award last night for her novel A Desolation Called Peace, a follow-up to her novel A Memory Called Empire, which itself won a Hugo in 2020.
ON WRITING
How to use Dall-E 2’s new outpainting tool to make book covers
Reading Time: 3 minutesToday OpenAI announced a new feature — outpainting. It’s like cropping, but in the opposite direction. You can make an image bigger, and Dall-E 2’a AI automatically fills in the background of that image.
How to make a book cover with Midjourney and Canva
Reading Time: 7 minutesI use Midjourney and Canva to create a couple of quick book covers.
Midjourney is a great new AI image generator — if you’re a fan of Discord
Reading Time: 7 minutesA new AI image generator called Midjourney offers images comparable in quality to Dall-E 2, but is open to the public.
Free cool space backgrounds from NASA
Reading Time: 4 minutesAll NASA images are available for free, for any use — including commercial. They’re particularly great for background images on sci-fi author websites.
10 tips for the free Craiyon AI image generator (formerly Dall-E Mini)
Reading Time: 6 minutesI’ve been collecting AI-powered image generation tools for the past year and one has become my go-to over the past couple of weeks — Craiyon (formerly Dall-E Mini).
The best video from this month’s AuthorTube conference
Reading Time: 5 minutesOne of the videos from this year’s AuthorTube Writing Conference was so impactful that it deserved to be spotlighted in its own article. The main idea? Stop doing all the things.
Ringworld the television series, and Larry Niven’s tips on working with co-authors
Reading Time: 4 minutesLarry Niven shares the exciting news that his classic 1970 novel Ringworld is in development with Amazon and MGM.
Google offers free AI-powered audiobook narration
Reading Time: 3 minutesToday, Google announced a free service to convert your EPUB file into an audiobook, using its AI voices.