Search Results for: Science-Fiction

Isaac Asimov's Rules for Writing and Revising

Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov. Photo: AP Images

“Over and over again, we are told about the importance of polishing, of revising, of tearing up, and rewriting. I got the bewildered notion that, far from being expected to type it right the first time, as Heinlein had advised me, I was expected to type it all wrong and get it right only by the thirty-second time, if at all.

“I went home immersed in gloom and the very next time I wrote a story, I tried to tear it up. I couldn’t make myself do it. So I went over to see all the terrible things I had done, in order to revise them. To my chagrin, everything sounded great to me. (My own writing always sounds great to me.) Eventually, after wasting hours and hours–to say nothing of suffering spiritual agony—I gave it up. My stories would have to be written the way they always were—and still are.

“What is it I am saying, then? That it is wrong to revise? No, of course not—anymore than it is wrong not to revise.”

-Revisions, by Isaac Asimov, in the collection Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy: 20 Dynamic Essays by the Field’s Top Professionals.

 

“As a boy, I wanted to be a train. I didn’t realize this was unusual—that other kids played with trains, not as them. They liked to build tracks and have trains not fall off them. Watch them go through tunnels. I didn’t understand that. What I liked was pretending my body was two hundred tons of unstoppable steel. Imagining I was pistons and valves and hydraulic compressors.

“‘You mean robots,’ said my best friend, Jeremy. ‘You want to play robots.’ I had never thought of it like that. Robots had square eyes and jerky limbs and usually wanted to destroy the Earth. Instead of doing one thing right, they did everything badly. They were general purpose. I was not a fan of robots. They were bad machines.”

From Max Barry’s Machine Man, about an engineer in pursuit of physical perfection at the expense of life and (literal) limb. Read more on science fiction in the Longreads Archive, including a list of the Best Robot Fiction.

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Reading List: 6 Great Sci-Fi Stories About Robots

Ray Bradbury. Photo by Alan Light, via Wikimedia Commons

Hilary Armstrong is a literature student at U.C. Santa Barbara and a Longreads intern. She recently shared six stories for the science-fiction newbie, and a reading list for Fantasy Newbies.

These stories offer a little breadth, a little curiosity, and a little levity to the idea of artificial life. Read more…

Six Stories for the Fantasy Newbie

Jorge Luis Borges. Photo via Wikimedia Commons

Hilary Armstrong is a literature student at U.C. Santa Barbara and a Longreads intern. She recently shared six stories for the science-fiction newbie, so next up, she’s tackling fantasy. 

George R. R. Martin’s Game of Thrones series is a crossover hit. However, there are still skeptics who view fantasy as children’s fables and tales exclusively for young adults—or you might just find GRRM’s enormous tomes a little intimidating.

Luckily, fantasy short stories offer us the depth of narrative we require and the fantastic elements we crave. Here is a collection of my favorite new and old gems, available online for free. Read more…

Reading List: 6 Stories for the Fantasy Newbie

Longreads Pick

Hilary Armstrong is a literature student at U.C. Santa Barbara and a Longreads intern. She recently shared six stories for the science-fiction newbie, so next up, she’s tackling fantasy.

Source: Longreads
Published: May 30, 2013
Length: 1 minutes (442 words)