Saga, Vol. 9 by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples
With the year winding down, it’s time to compile my “Best of the Year” lists, which is becoming an annual tradition. I’ll start with the best comic books I read in 2018. They weren’t necessarily published in 2018 (though some were). Continue reading
Where do you get your ideas? That seems to be a question that every writer hates. Most don’t have an answer. It almost seems kind of magical how ideas come to them. But I don’t think it’s magic at all. I think I know how every writer and artist gets their ideas: data inputs to their consciousness. Continue reading
I’ve always been more comfortable writing than speaking. But beyond the comfort level, there’s a power to writing, or recording your ideas, that speaking lacks. When you write something, it is recorded on paper or online forever. Any human now or in the future for hundreds, thousands, millions, even billions of years, could read what you had to say. That seems so much more powerful and important than communicating in person, wherein whatever you say is lost in the wind of the universe forever. One person (or small group) hears it, then it’s gone forever. Continue reading
The term “overthinking” seems to have been stigmatized by society as a bad thing. Why is that? To think is to be human. Thinking is literally consciousness, or self-awareness, the most cherished of human traits. Some people think less and are less self-aware than others; therefore, they are less conscious. They are more animalistic and act on gut and instincts rather than thinking of the consequences to their actions. That’s certainly not good. Prisons are full of people like this. Continue reading
Verisimilitude, or the appearance of being real, is the key to a successful story. It’s what allows one to get completely lost in a narrative and forget it’s a work of fiction. Verisimilitude doesn’t necessarily mean the story must represent the real world as we know it. A story set in a science fiction or fantasy world must also have verisimilitude, or in other words, everything must seem real and believable within the world of the story. While movies may appear to be the more “realistic” medium, I think it may be easier to achieve verisimilitude in books. Continue reading
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…
Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith is the final movie in the prequel trilogy, and what many thought would be the last Star Wars film ever. That was until George Lucas sold the franchise rights to Disney, and now we’re getting a Star Wars movie every year, probably forever. Continue reading
Elon Musk’s appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast will go down in history and be rewatched forever by whatever form of humans/AI exist in the future. I love podcasts and have listened to thousands over the past dozen years, but this one may be my favorite yet. It’s better than the best science fiction movies because it’s not science fiction. High-speed maglev tunnels, self-driving electric cars, solar-powered roofs, AI brain interfaces, space exploration, Mars colonization, and VR simulations are the reality of our present and future. Continue reading
The greatest invention in human history is written language. Before writing, to convey any information to anyone, you could only do it through word of mouth to people you saw face to face. For most of human history, we lived in small tribes as hunter-gatherers, so knowledge was only passed on to fellow members of one’s tribe (family and close friends). A son would only know what his father remembered from what his father directly told him, and so on. Continue reading
I recently had a short (flash fiction) story published in Daily Science Fiction. This was my first professional publication (though I’ve self-published before). The story is available to read for free on their website. (Which you should do before continuing to read this.) Continue reading
It was the sixth grade, and we were on the bus ride home from our class trip. I was sitting in the back with my best friend, Gary. The other kids were joking around, making fun of him in a cruel way. He was not taking it well. I felt bad, but as an extremely shy person, I was too afraid to speak up. The teasing got worse and worse, then, as the bus arrived at my apartment complex, Gary pulled out a gun and shot himself in the head. He died instantly.
Then I woke up. I was not in the sixth grade—I was 31 years old. Gary was alive and well. It was all a dream. Continue reading
T.Z. Barry 