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If a sceptic wants to talk about this subject and not sound ill informed, he should read the latest scientific research instead of pop culture and the people outside of the field who refuse to even study the […]

For a science fiction writer, you certainly do poor research. You base all your comments on the worst of pop culture and charlatans like James Randi who only go after obvious fakes and ignore anyone who might […]

I’m not apologizing for Sylvia Browne. I’m saying you can’t say that psychics don’t exist because some so-called psychics have been wrong.

I’m sure some psychics have told these families the exact opposite, […]

Whoa, talk about a diatribe!

In all fairness, nothing involving humans is 100% because we are human. Even pro athletes can’t even come close to 100% perfection at anything.

To require people who call […]

For me, the difference between the two is that in magic realism the magic says something as in it’s a metaphor; in fantasy, the magic is something in and of itself.

I’m not a big fan of magic realism, not a […]

What is wrong is pirate sites making millions of dollars a year sharing stolen stories.

What is wrong is denying authors the pathetic pittance that is their royalties for their books.

What is wrong is […]

I agree with you, but I think we need to remember that most people during that period actually believed in powerful witches, fairies, ghosts, and other fantasy elements in Shakespeare.

In private, people […]

Publishers have always wanted to make money. They aren’t charities, after all.

These days, the difference is that they are no longer willing to build an author’s audience over a long period. They want money […]

I couldn’t take my eyes off the screen when Avon or Servalan were on the screen. If they can find actors that mesmerizing, they will have a hit.

I am still traumatized by the last scene of the series.

I’ve heard of authors who have turned a bad cover into a publicity bonanza by emphasizing the bad cover in their various promotional situations and asking readers to ignore it, pity them, or help them make fun of […]

High fantasy is not about pragmatic, real-world behavior. High fantasy characters have to behave as high fantasy tells them to do. That means a honking big heroic funeral rather than going after the […]

One problem with this. If you don’t sell enough copies of the first book, the publisher won’t buy your second.

The days when a publisher would allow an author to build an audience are long past.

You really need to do a bit of editing here. “Black mane” totally stumped me for a bit, and you’ve failed to literally fill in the blanks for movie names.

Zombies seem to not only have become faster, they’ve […]

Thanks for this series of articles, Chris. I’ve enjoyed them.

In Norton’s first “Witch World” novel, I though it quite telling that Jaelithe is supposed to lose her power when she has sex with Simon, but, […]

Part of the difficulty with this discussion is that we aren’t making a distinction about the types of stories we are talking about. Here are the standard definitions as established in Eighties by those of us in […]

I’ve been watching the sf romance market since its first novel, the truly horrible MOONDUST & MADNESS, was published in 1986.

I wasn’t very surprised that the market didn’t take off because, back then, […]

I hate these threads, sometimes.

Justin, for some unknown reason, my reply to your questions didn’t land where it should. Look above for my comments with the first words being “Justin said.”

Justin said, ” If I loan a neighbor a book and they read it once and return it is that piracy? Because if I make a digital copy, email it to that neighbor and they read it once and delete it that is definitely […]

Chris said, “A final point that I would like to make relates to the history of media. Do you realize that without piracy the current world of publishing – and all of the economic benefit creators derive from it – […]

Right now, Disney brings out its classic archives to resell every time the media changes. When VCR tapes began to be replaced by DVDs, Disney opened its archives of films like SNOW WHITE and FANTASIA to put them […]