Geoffrey Dow's Page

Review: Galileo's Dream, by Kim Stanley Robinson

Renaissance genius meets the distant future —
But is the author's heart in his own conceit?

Galileo Galilei by Giusto Sustermans

Posted on January 19th, 2010 at 10:12pm — 3 Comments

"I shared my flesh with thinking cancer"

In the long and storied SF tradition that sees such devices as Ursula K. le Guin's ansible become, in effect, an open-source idea, free to be modified, played with, argued about or even just used as a word to indicate "faster-than-light communication", rather than locked-down and copyrighted as le Guin's personal play-thing, "The Things" is… Continue

Posted on January 4th, 2010 at 12:21am —

The New Space Opera 2, reviewed

Opera or string quartet?

A review by Geoffrey Dow

The "genre" that ought not speak its name

"The true heart of science fiction has always been the space-opera story; the thrilling adventure tale of powerful rocket ships, dashing heroes, and far frontiers — stories of immense scope and scale, color and action, taking us to the ultimate limits of both time and space [...]"
— From the introduction to The New Space Opera 2)

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Posted on August 30th, 2009 at 7:27pm —

J.J. Abrams' Star Trek, the first 30 minutes

More years ago than I care to count, the science fiction writer and editor Judith Merril taught me one of the only vital rules of writing.

"When you're editing your work, think about every word in every sentence of every paragr…

Posted on July 28th, 2009 at 2:38pm — 4 Comments

"Survival of the least inadequate" - Who knew a slide-show could be fun?

Vampires! Big Pharma! The horror! The horror! Anyone who is interested in science fiction, dead-pan satire, the evils of "big pharma" or, well, actually plausible vampires really ought to check out this slide-show. (But be warned, it's 15 or 20 minutes long.) Peter Watts' fiction is arguably a little bleaker than the tongue-in-cheek presenta… Continue

Posted on July 21st, 2009 at 11:03am —