DAVID GERROLD

We’re excited to share this exciting rollout with you. Head over to the subscription box to the left to sign up for David’s email list, and you’ll receive a free copy of The Kennedy Enterprise directly to your inbox. You can also click on the FREE EXCERPT tab to download the first couple of chapters from A Covenant of Justice. For more information on A Covenant of Justice, The Kennedy Enterprise, and many more works by David, take a look at his new books page, where you will find details and descriptions of most of his most treasured books and stories.

Additionally, we’d like to invite you to enter the giveaway below, where we are giving three lucky winners a digital copy of A Covenant of Justice.

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Harlan Ellison, he’s a writer. He saddles the language up and rides it like a bronco that needs to be broken. He whips it like a dominatrix on steroids. He seduces it, plays with it, gets drunk on it, and wails on it like George Harrison showing how a guitar can weep. What he does with language is what Picasso does with paint. Okay?

Me, I strive for simple precision. You know how Hemingway would write a sunrise: “The sun rose.” That’s what I do. Simple, easy, direct, to the point.

Okay, now look — I’d love to be able to write something like this: “As the planet turned majestically toward the east, the first intimations of light became a glow on the horizon, the first fingers of brilliance stretched sideways across the landscape carving shadows out of the night. … Read More 

I wrote this paragraph as part of something else. I want to follow it up with some additional thoughts:

Science fiction got important by accident — because just enough of it contained useful nuggets of prediction or thought-provoking philosophical notions about how the universe might work that other people took notice. Science fiction also became cancerous — with its conjoined twins, fantasy and horror, it has taken over mainstream literature, television, movies, comics, videogames, and every other form of entertainment except possibly masturbation — and I haven’t been into a sex shop recently enough to confirm or deny that latter assertion.

Here are the additional thoughts:

The movie industry has devolved. Part of the problem is that the new generation of film-makers grew up enthusiastic and excited about summer movies and they all want to make their own. So we … Read More 

I loved the first movie, I enjoyed the next two, but after that … no.

Star Wars is a triumph of special effects over logic. Thought has been sacrificed to action and eye-candy.

It’s fantasy with spaceships and light-sabres and a mish-mash of stuff that ultimately defies logic.

By contrast, classic Star Trek was about exploring the universe, about finding our place in it, about discovering what it means to be a human being. Yeah, TOS was quaint, under-budgeted, and squeezed out through the filters of 1966-style television. But despite that, it was the most ambitious series in American television, because it invited the audience to think about ideas.

At its best, classic Trek was a faint intimation of what real science fiction could be — the books, the stories, the sense of wonder — but at least it aspired … Read More