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Crafting Sword & Planet: Swords of Talera and Other Tales by Charles Gramlich

Crafting Sword & Planet: Swords of Talera and Other Tales by Charles Gramlich

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Strange Worlds, edited by Jeff Doten, containing the Sword & Planet tale “God’s Dream” by Charles Gramlich (CreateSpace, September 26, 2011). Cover by Jeff Doten

In 1998, my first novel Swords of Talera ran as a four-part serial in Startling Science Stories. It won the “Reader’s Choice” award for each issue it appeared in. The pleasure of having the book first published that way was sweet — the same way that Edgar Rice Burroughs, Otis Adelbert Kline, and Robert E. Howard had much of their stuff published.

After I’d finished Swords of Talera in 1983, I’d started a sequel called Wings over Talera but only wrote the first two chapters. My grad school work was intensifying and it seemed silly to write a second book in a series when the first book hadn’t even been submitted to any publishers. After Swords sold, though, I immediately set to work on the sequel. It was published as a four-part serial in Alien Worlds: Beyond Space and Time, a sister mag to Startling Science Stories.

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AI Could Not Write These Stories

AI Could Not Write These Stories

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Uncanny Magazine, issues 63 & 64, March/April and
May/June 2025. Covers by Galen Dara and Grace P. Fong

With every issue, Uncanny Magazine brings you stories, poems, essays, interviews, and podcasts, all made by actual people! Now more than ever, it is important to support creators who are working to make the art you love. Check out our Uncanny Magazine Year 12: Fly Forever, Space Unicorns! Kickstarter for subscriptions and cool backer rewards, and help us spread the word!

Science fiction has long been enamored with artificial intelligence. As far back as Samuel Butler’s 1872 novel Erewhon, writers have speculated on how machines might develop consciousness and what the world might look like if they did. In modern fiction, we see a vast range of possibilities — stories where robots fall in love, stories where AI can determine anyone’s true cause of death, stories of experimental prototypes reading Western literature as dystopia looms, stories where simulations let us talk to our loved ones after they’ve passed. In R.S.A Garcia’s “Tantie Merle and the Farmhand 4200” artificial intelligence comes in the form of a loyal farmhand companion, made of nanites, repeatedly eaten by a goat.

In the time since Erewhon was written, we’ve made a lot of technological advances. There are medical diagnostic algorithms, programs that generate images in various styles, and increasingly sophisticated chatbots. As Martha Wells pointed out in her recent interview in Scientific American, humans love to anthropomorphize, and fictional depictions of advanced artificial intelligences often reinforce that tendency. But in reality we are nowhere near the level of sentient, intelligent machines.

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Wrestling With Fan-Fiction

Wrestling With Fan-Fiction

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Image by Лариса Мозговая from Pixabay

Good afterevenmorn, Readers!

I’m afraid my Doom hyperfixation is still in full effect. And as with all things that has my attention for longer than a few days my brain has latched onto it and created a story out of it. This one is set in the Doom universe, and deals specifically with Doom Guy/The Doom Slayer. Which means it’s not actually an original. It is, I made the realisation late last week, a fan-fiction (cue horror stinger). I have complicated feelings about this. Let’s dive in.

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The Suspension Bridges of Disbelief

The Suspension Bridges of Disbelief

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A friend and I have been watching The Wheel of Time adaptation on Amazon. Both of us expressed surprise not at the open casting, which we agree is wonderful, but at how that production choice plays out in small hamlets like Rand al’Thor’s “home town” of Two Rivers. After observing that every possible racial group is represented in this isolated, insular mountain community, my friend had an epiphany.

“I had to remind myself,” said my friend, “that if I suspend disbelief to accept that there’s magic in this world, then I might also have to suspend my disbelief in genetics.”

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The Writer and the Boycott

The Writer and the Boycott

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Image by Niek Verlaan from Pixabay

Good afterevenmorn!

Well, I’m talking boycotts again, as there is a lot of it going around. And they are absolutely kicking up all kinds of dust. This is great – making your voice heard with the only thing these companies seem to understand; their bottom lines. It’s not so great if you’re an innocent writer just trying to make a living who happens to be caught in the crossfire.

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A Boy and His Dog: How Archaeology is My Biggest Inspiration

A Boy and His Dog: How Archaeology is My Biggest Inspiration

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Image by Siggy Nowak from Pixabay. This looks like a Stargate. Where’s the dial?

Good afterevenmorn, Readers!

Once upon a time, a much younger me fell into an obsession… Well, several related obsessions, if I’m being honest. Prehistoric Anthropology and Archaeology dug its claws into my brain and would not let go. In what might have been a profound waste of money, I followed that obsession into university, acquiring a Bachelor’s Honours Degree in the subject, with a focus on Celtic Studies. I wrote a thesis that was four times as long as it needed to be (with permission). I wrote on the Continuity of Religious Iconography From the Upper Palaeolithic to the Pre-Roman Iron Age of the Atlantic Façade. Which is to say, basically, some religious beliefs and practices of the Iron Age Celts might just have had their origin in the pre-Celtic peoples of the Stone Age. That’s a lot to cover in just twenty pages, so I handed in eighty-three.

When I say I was/am obsessed, I absolutely meant it.

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Books.by – A Viable Amazon Alternative?

Books.by – A Viable Amazon Alternative?

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Image by Gaertringen from Pixabay

Good afterevenmorn!

Let’s talk self-publishing. Particularly, print on demand options.

In this particular climate, I know a number of book buyers and independent and self publishers looking to make an impact by being more mindful of where they spend their money and with whom they do business. It is, however, incredibly difficult to do any kind of individual action, given the absolute chokehold Amazon has in the book space. Those of us who are self-published know it well. Amazon is where most book buyers go when shopping online. And it’s where a large number of independent publishers go to have their books printed and shipped. Print on demand is a great technology, especially for those of us who do not have the funds to do an entire print run, and no space to store the books in any case.

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Taking the Ridiculous Seriously

Taking the Ridiculous Seriously

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Look! It’s fun! Image by Patrycja Kwiatkowska from Pixabay

Good afterevenmorn!

I hope everyone who has to suffer through the daylight savings shift Sunday are coping with losing that hour of sleep. To those to whom that does not apply, know that I am fiercely jealous of you. But let’s not dwell on our minor hardships. Today, I want to talk about writing, and very specifically how to make situations that are absolutely ridiculous on the outside feel real and very serious.

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In Defence of Purple Prose

In Defence of Purple Prose

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Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Good afterevenmorn, Readers!

Language is fun. The way words can mean more than one thing, depending on where the stress is placed, or its location in a sentence, and where that sentence lies within the tale. It is a playground. A song devising its own music. A melody murmured that can delight not just the eyes, but the ears. How many have paused a read simply to revel in the words just read? To read and reread a sentence? To bask in the brilliance of a cleverly turned phrase?

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The Convincing Villain

The Convincing Villain

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Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Good afterevenmorn, Readers!

Side note, autocorrect keeps trying to fix my nonsensical greeting and it’s quite annoying. Back to the post!

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking. It’s dangerous. I do not recommend it. But I’ve been doing a lot of thinking on the nature of fictional villains and morally grey heroes, and how to write them convincingly. While it’s sometimes fun to read a simple story where good and evil are very evident, and we’re all firmly on the side of the heroes here. The fight (and eventual victory) against Evil™ can sometimes be exactly the hopeful escape we need. Please note, I’m not looking down my nose at those kinds of stories. I enjoy them myself.

My favorite reads, however, are stories where good and evil is not so simple. It’s not all cut and dried. This isn’t just about creating complex characters to counter your protagonists, but also about creating a safe space to explore all the nuance that we find in real life. It’s a good, safe place to grapple with ideas of heroism, morality and villainy. What makes a hero? Or a villain, for that matter? If the end result is good, are morally questionable actions justifiable? What are we willing to sacrifice for the greater good? Is it acceptable if the answer to the previous question is, “Everything”?

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