Here is The Guardian’s latest five star review:
By Bill C. Castengera on August 29, 2015
Format: Kindle Edition Verified Purchase
Thanks Bill
Damn right! But not according to the movie and television industries.
With one exception – 2001 A Space Odyssey – every other science fiction film or television series that has come out of America simply beggars credulity.
The fact that the film in question didn’t become just another highly fanciful and therefore totally nonsensicle entertainment, is all down to Stanley Kubrick’s deep respect for Arthur C. Clark. After all, Arthur wrote the book on which the film is based, as well as co-writing the script with Stanley.
Like Arthur, I am a traditionalist. By that I mean that as a science fiction writer, every story I write has to be based in reality. Blame my father for introducing me to him and two other top science fiction writers of the twentieth century, Isaac Asimov and John Wyndham, at a young age. All three authors took great pains to make sure that their stories were believable, based on their scientific backgrounds.
While I’m no scientist, I did work in the School of Science at the University of Waikato in New Zealand for a quarter of a century, rubbing shoulders with chemists, physicists, biologists, earth scientists and many fine artisans like tool and die makers, glassblowers, photographers, cartographers etc, etc. So in my own small way, I try to adopt the same approach to writing science fiction that Arthur, Isaac and John took. It’s called research, if you were wondering…
Click on the cover to got to The Guardian on Amazon.com
Take my latest scifi novella as an example of what I’m talking about. There are no weird and wonderful creatures to be found anywhere in its pages. Only believable characters. As for how they get to and from the Earth, there are no starships as in Star Trek. Only totally feasable computer controlled solar wind powered cargo transporters. The same can be said for the weapons they use. Each one actually exists, even though they are still in development by the US military. Even the two aliens and the guardian itself are totally believable. If you want to get a sense of what I’m on about, maybe you should get your own copy and read it for yourselves.
I seriously doubt The Guardian will ever make it to the plasma or silver screen. Why? just take a look at what is considered to be watchable science fiction these days. It seems to me that every so-called scifi film, and television series made on either side of the pond, is aimed at a collective audience with the combined mental age of a retarded one year old…
😉
Unfortunately, I can’t see Amazon putting its contributing authors ahead of profit any time soon
http://www.derekhaines.ch/justpublishing/what-amazon-could-do-for-authors/
Our Nicholas being interviewed once again 🙂
I asked Nicholas whether he would agree to be interviewed in rather a ‘personal’ and targeted way. I am less interested in the writer than in the life that lies behind writing. As it happened the philosophy he revealed ( and his final summary) made it appropriately hosted on Careless Talk- the blog of things related to Involution-An Odyssey and its universal implications. So here it is.
Nicholas Rossis
Nicholas, because I do not interview writers on any kind of regular basis, I hope you don’t mind me framing questions that arise from impressions you give me and my fascination with what underpins the individual writer, their past, their passions, their acute dislikes. Feel free to answer ‘Pass’ at any point. You have a charming on-line persona, and make many faithful friends. I would like to introduce the individual alone with yourself.
A Greek who has…
View original post 4,341 more words
Here’s food for thought. The notion of how I would like to be remembered surfaced the other day from among the morass of thoughts that is my mind. I took it a stage further. If I had an epitaph, what would it be?
Always assuming of course that someone has the presence of mind to erect a head stone over my grave, apart from my name, age, dates of birth and death, the one thing I would like to have engraved below all of that, quite simply is this;
He was not politically correct, neither did he suffer fools gladly
Most people who know me personally would agree with those sentiments. How about your epitaph, what would it read?
😉
Sooner or later it had to happen. Here is The Guardian’s first five star review.
***
Michael’s review of The Girl Who Wasn’t There
ISBN: 978 0 349 14046 9
Published by Abacus, an imprint of Little, Brown
There are some books that grip from the first page, some that intrigue and keep you reading. Of course there are the others that deserve the Dorothy Parker quote “This is not a book to be tossed aside lightly, it should be thrown with great force” – but in my experience, such books are thankfully rare.
It is a strange thing that, for the average reader, almost all crime writers are Anglo-Saxon. Few would be able to name too many authors of decent thrillers from, say, Germany or Italy. They are there, but British and American publishers dominate and they tend to look first for fresh English-speaking talent. Personally I think it’s also partly because French, Dutch and other nations value literature more highly, and that means they look for more solid fare. We Ango-Saxons are much more frivolous!
This…
View original post 578 more words
Just when you thought all publishers couldn’t get any lower when it comes to underhand tactics!!!
http://www.derekhaines.ch/justpublishing/amazon-reviews-and-keyword-stacking/
Have We Had Help? 
You must be logged in to post a comment.