Because, well, why not?  Edward M. Lerner, a man of letters, A writer of science fiction, A teller of tales of the future, A weaver of dreams of worlds to come. His words are like a river, Flowing with ideas and imagination, Carrying the reader away on a journey, To places both strange and familiar. His characters are like people we know, With their hopes and dreams, Their fears and doubts, Their loves and losses. His stories are like puzzles, Each one a challenge to the mind, A test of our ability to think, To imagine, to create. Edward M. Lerner is a master storyteller, A magic ..read more

In ancient days (last October, that is), I teased, just a tad, in Of world-shaking events, about my then recently delivered Mars-centric novel. I still can't offer a release date -- the publishing process, alas, takes time. But here's one bit of progress. I have the final (versus, merely a working) title. So: you may want to look forward to Life and Death on Mars. Meanwhile, be thankful you're not my protagonist ... ====================== from Edward M. Lerner's "SF and Nonsense ..read more

I'm (beyond) delighted to announce the release today of Life and Death on Mars. In terms of scope, it's one of my most ambitious novels ever. As though landing people safely on Mars weren't daunting enough ... The Space Race of the Sixties, at the height of the Cold War, had been nail-biting—until the Soviet Union forfeited. In the thirties—amid a second Cold War—China is not about to lose the race to Mars. Nor is the United States. Nor, quite the wildcard, is a secretive cabal drawn from among the world's multi-billionaires. All of them scrambling to launch deep-space missions ..read more

I'm ambivalent about theme anthologies. They can be great -- but limited to a specific topic, all too often an antho's stories, however excellent individually, begin to blur.  Looking for a great SF antho? Check these out Not so the Shapers of Worlds anthologies, edited by Edward Willett, of which I recently finished reading the third-and latest volume in the series. How does Ed consistently dodge the too-much-of-a-good-but-same-thing bullet? With his open-ended theme: stories by spec-fic authors who have been guests on his Worldshapers podcast. And that selection criterion works ..read more

The  long-awaited re-release of the acclaimed three-book InterstellarNet series has (finally) arrived. I like to believe it was worth the wait. What is the InterstellarNet series? To share a few of my favorite reviews: "Edward M. Lerner’s InterstellarNet is one of the most original and well-thought-out visions of an interstellar civilization I’ve ever seen."  — Stanley Schmidt, author of Argonaut "A wonderfully thought-provoking story… Lerner's world-building and extrapolating are top notch."  — SFScope "Faster-than-light travel is such a commonplace convention ..read more

Times flies. (Like an arrow, though that's an irrelevant obscurity for today's post. As is that you can time flies with a stopwatch.) Meaning Buy-a-Book Saturday is once more almost upon us.  Regularly since 2010, shortly before Thanksgiving, I've posted about Buy-a-Book Saturday. That's my personal variation on Small Business Saturday: the day (specifically, the second day after Thanksgiving, and one day after retail's infamous Black Friday) on which holiday shoppers are especially encouraged to patronize small businesses. The big-box stores and Internet giants will do fin ..read more

This month, IEEE (the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, of which I am a longtime member) is observing a milestone we should all be honoring: the 75th -- diamond -- anniversary of the transistor.  Cover art, December 2022 IEEE Spectrum Because what would the world be like without this now ubiquitous device? Because what computer, phone, household appliance, entertainment gadget, vehicle, etc. in your life doesn't require oodles of transistors to function -- while doing way more than their pre-transistor precursors (if any such even existed)? Th ..read more

I concede that a year's-best posting before Thanksgiving might seem, well, early. OTOH: Supply-chain woes. Labor shortages. Postal/UPS/FedEx slowdowns. Not to mention the countless stores that had up Christmas displays well before Halloween. Especially if you (or your reading giftees) prefer material in paper and ink, you may want to undertake your holiday shopping sooner rather than later. In any event, Black Friday and Cyber Monday will soon be upon us. At some stores/e-stores, they somehow already are. If you find none of that convincing? The way 2023 has been, sur ..read more

Speaking solely as a frequent book shopper ... I see way too many promos -- Kindle Daily Deal spots, BookBub ads, back-cover copy -- boasting within the first sentence that a book is "riveting," "captivating," engrossing," or "page-turning." Worse are the boasts where someone combines the puffery (e.g., "captivatingly riveting"). Whereupon, generally, I lose interest.  No. Just, no. Because you know what I get from such assertions? The expectation that whatever's between the covers will be as annoyingly overwritten. In the word-count-limited space available, consider t ..read more

I'm pleased to announce the publication of my latest novel, On the Shoals of Space-Time.   Space opera? Check. Near-future expansion into the Solar System? Ditto. Intriguing aliens? Of course. With surprises along the way? I like to think so ;-)  Sharing a bit more about the book:  However wildly people had imagined First Contact? They never imagined this. They weren't supposed to be there. They hadn't planned to be there. But neither had they planned for the near-catastrophic explosion that had all but destroyed their interstellar passenger vessel. There w ..read more