When most people think about history, they tend to be far too near-sighted and fail to realize the big picture. To put things in perspective, I’ll try to sum up all we know about history by starting from the beginning. Continue reading
Hi, my name is TZ Barry, and I’m a story addict…
Story Addict is a collection of 27 short stories written between 2010 and 2018, spanning a variety of genres including science fiction, fantasy, horror, crime, thriller, literary, magical realism, dark humor, and satire. There’s time travel, telepathy, parallel universes, aliens, robots, artificial intelligence, hackers, spies, invisibility, dinosaurs, wizards, talking jellyfish, and more. The lengths of the stories vary from 300 words to over 6,000 (60,000 words in total). Eight of the stories have been previously published while nineteen are new to this collection. The stories are not connected and can be read in any order. Continue reading
One Strange Rock is a documentary series that aired on National Geographic in the spring of 2018. Hosted by Will Smith and directed/produced by Darren Aronofsky, the show features interviews with eight astronauts, a rare group of humans who have ever seen Earth from off of Earth. With their unique perspective, they can better understand the planet and our place in the universe.
As well as fascinating information, One Strange Rock also includes spectacular visuals: footage of Earth from above (outer space) and below (the strangest far reaches of the planet). It’s a show that every human on Earth should watch to better understand themselves and the planet we all share. It’s certainly a better viewing option than the daily news cycle. Whereas the news aims to invoke fear and outrage and divide people against each other, One Strange Rock is educational and inspiring and aims to bring us all together.
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Like many writers, I have a list of hundreds of half-baked ideas that I hope to one day turn into full-fledged stories. One such idea was kids on Halloween transforming into actual versions of their costumes. Last September, I decided to write it as a short story, hoping to finish in time for Halloween.
Cut to one year and 66,000 words later, and my short story is now a full-length novel. Continue reading
Last week, trailers were released for both a new Jurassic Park movie and a new Star Wars movie, two of my favorite franchises of all time. It wasn’t always that way, however. A lot of writers and filmmakers cite seeing Star Wars as a kid as being the number-one inspiration for their work as an adult, but I didn’t become a Star Wars fan until later in life. The original trilogy was released before I was born, and I had a weird aversion to old movies, so I avoided watching Star Wars. There was something about those 1970s hairdos that turned me off. I remember renting Return of the Jedi on VHS from Blockbuster because it was the newest of the three Star Wars films, but for whatever reason, it didn’t really capture my imagination at the time. Continue reading
T.Z. Barry 