Having coined a few terms in my day, I revel in new coinages that capture something really gnarly and interesting. 1/
If you'd like an unrolled version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
Take "bezzle" - JK Galbraith's term for "the magic interval when a confidence trickster knows he has the money he has appropriated but the victim does not yet understand that he has lost it." 3/
"Victories Greater Than Death" is @charliejane's debut YA novel, and it's *superb* - an exciting, engrossing book that captures everything great about young adult tropes while deftly subverting the problems those tropes present.
Tina Mains is not actually a human girl. As her mother has told her, she is the reincarnated clone of a great space adventurer, whose space-navy comrades disguised her as a human girl and hid her on Earth from their evil adversaries. 2/
Now, Tina is in high-school and she senses the coming of day when her beacon will activate, signalling her maturity and summoning her alien comrades to take her to adventure. 3/
My latest column for @locusmag is "The Unimaginable," about the relationship of science fiction plays to the future. Sf is a literature of inspiration and warning, not prediction.
I mean, thank goodness. If the future was predictable, there'd be no point in getting out of bed, because the future would arrive irrespective of our actions. 2/
Sfnal tales that posit a predictable future (like Asimov's "Foundation" or Heinlein's "Jonathan Hoag") are pure fatalism.
Instead of predicting a future, sf imagines *lots* of futures. 3/
TECHNICALLY I'm on holiday, visiting family overseas, and offline until mid-Nov. HOWEVER, I read an amazing novel on the flight and HAD to post a review. Enjoy! 2/
The paperback for Attack Surface - a standalone Little Brother book for adults - is out!