Lauren Pedersen

Featured Contributor: Annalee Newitz

December 19, 2013 in Featured Contributors, Hieroglyph

Annalee Newitz Image Annalee Newitz writes about science, pop culture and the future. She’s the editor in chief of io9, a publication that covers science and science fiction, and the author of Scatter, Adapt and Remember: How Humans Will Survive a Mass Extinction (2013).

Annalee has also written for Wired, The Smithsonian Magazine, The Washington Post, 2600, New Scientist, Technology Review, Popular Science, Discover and the San Francisco Bay Guardian. She is co-editor (along with Project Hieroglyph contributor Charlie Jane Anders) of the essay collection She’s Such A Geek: Women Write About Science, Technology, and Other Nerdy Stuff (2006), and author of Pretend We’re Dead: Capitalist Monsters in American Pop Culture (2006).

Formerly, she was a policy analyst at the Electronic Frontier Foundation and a lecturer in American Studies at UC Berkeley. She was the recipient of a Knight Science Journalism Fellowship at MIT, and has a PhD in English and American Studies from UC Berkeley. To learn more about Annalee, visit her website or follow her on Twitter.

Author

Lauren Pedersen

Lauren Pedersen was born and raised in Tempe, Arizona to a writer and a helicopter pilot. She is currently pursuing her two passions of art and design at Arizona State University, where she continues to work towards a bachelor's degree in Design Studies with a focus in Design History, and a minor in Art History.

Tags: Annalee Newitz, Hieroglyph, How Humans Will Survive a Mass Extinction, io9 Comments Off on Featured Contributor: Annalee Newitz

Featured Contributor: Elizabeth Bear

October 21, 2013 in Authors, Featured Contributors, Hieroglyph

Elizabeth Bear has accomplished quite a lot during her science fiction career. The awards alone are almost endless: a John W. Campbell Award in 2005 for Best New Writer, an Audie Award in 2012 for Best Original Work, a Sturgeon Award, a Locus Award, three Hugo Awards…the list goes on and on.

After working across the spectrum of disciplines – from stable hand to typesetter and layout editor – Elizabeth now spends most of her time writing speculative fiction, although she is a frequent traveler between genre boundaries. She is infamous for her ability to jump around a variety of time periods, realms and styles with fearless agility and exceptional consistency. Breaking down this particular quality, she explained in an interview with Tor.com, “I’m one of those writers who has a hard time repeating herself, so all of my work is quite different.”

Elizabeth is also noted for her diverse approach to creating characters. Although frequently asked to elaborate on her goals for introducing such a diverse range of gender, race, identity and sexual preference into her work, Bear’s response is simple: “What I write reflects the world I know. My friends and family are not exclusively white and straight, so it would seem peculiar to me for the world I wrote in to be.”

Elizabeth lives in Massachusetts. She is a regular instructor at the Viable Paradise writers’ workshop in Martha’s Vineyard, and has also taught at Clarion, Clarion West, the WisCon Writer’s Respite and Odyssey.

Photo courtesy of Kyle Cassidy, source www.elizabethbear.com. Thank you Kyle Cassidy!

Author

Lauren Pedersen

Tags: Audie Award, Author, Elizabeth Bear, Fantasy, Hugo Award, John W. Campbell Award, Locus Award, Science Fiction, Sturgeon Award Comments Off on Featured Contributor: Elizabeth Bear

Featured Contributor: Rudy Rucker

July 25, 2013 in Featured Contributors, Hieroglyph

Rudy Rucker is a pretty excellent example of a well-rounded individual. Not only has he become well known for his work in mathematics, computer science and philosophy, but he’s an award-winning science fiction author to boot. As if that wasn’t quite enough for one person to accomplish, he is also one of the founders of the cyberpunk literary movement.

Rudy has penned more than thirty books of fiction and non-fiction, as well as numerous short stories. His Ware Tetralogy revolutionized the way we think about artificial intelligence, and also used Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection in a way we’d never really seen before. To put the figurative cherry on top: the first two books of the series were awarded the Philip K. Dick Award for distinguished US science fiction published in paperback.

Throughout his extensive career as an author, Rudy has also been a major proponent of Transrealism, or his own “alternative to cyberpunk.” With this style of science fiction writing, Rudy addresses the constraining boundaries of realism by using fantastical elements to symbolize psychological change, while simultaneously incorporating his own perspectives and immediate perceptions, in the style of naturalistic realism.

That must be enough to keep someone ridiculously busy, right? Hey, it probably is, but Rudy is also an accomplished photographer and edits the biannually released science fiction webzine Flurb which frequently features his own short stories, paintings and photography.

Photo courtesy of larrybobsf, used under a CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 license. Thanks larrybobsf!

Author

Lauren Pedersen

Tags: Cyberpunk, Flurb, Philip K. Dick Award, Rudy Rucker, Transrealism, Ware Tetralogy Comments Off on Featured Contributor: Rudy Rucker

Featured Contributor: Karl Schroeder

June 25, 2013 in Featured Contributors, Hieroglyph

Karl Schroeder is an award-winning Canadian science fiction author and a consultant in the areas of foresight studies and technology.

Karl is recognized for inventing the term thalience, a concept that speculates about the possibility of engineered systems that could generate their own categories for understanding the world. These systems could help humans determine what reality actually is, instead of requiring us to define it and acting on our instructions. A thalient system might collaborate with humans to answer questions such as “What is the world really made of?” and “How much of our understanding is subjective, and is truly objective knowledge even possible?” To have your mind blown by thalience in Karl’s own words, check out this article on Karl’s website.

Among Karl’s best-known novels is Ventus, an epic Hard SF adventure. In 2005 Karl published Lady of Mazes, which delves deeper into the Ventus universe and explores the potential of artificial intelligence to revolutionize human culture. His most recent novel, Ashes of Candesce, concludes the Virga saga, set in a far-future steampunk universe.

In addition to these works, Karl has published a number of other novels and short stories, and is co-author, with Cory Doctorow, of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Publishing Science Fiction.

Photo courtesy of Pinar Ozger, used under a CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 license. Thanks Pinar!

Author

Lauren Pedersen

Tags: Ashes of Candesce, Karl Schroeder, Lady of Mazes, thalience, The Complete Idiot's guide to Publishing Science Fiction, Ventus, Virga Saga Comments Off on Featured Contributor: Karl Schroeder

Insider Information: Groups

June 25, 2013 in Frequently Asked Questions, Hieroglyph

What is the deal with groups?

Maybe you are losing sleep wondering about the difference between Hieroglyph groups and forums, and why you would want a group in the first place. Or maybe your next door neighbor is just really into Halo and plays all night with the surround sound blasting. We can’t do anything about neighbors, but we can go over groups in a little more detail.

Groups are a gathering space for ideas that have evolved beyond the forum thread level of interaction. Members of a group can write posts, have focused discussions and generate content about a specific idea or topic—and can choose to make their groups hidden or private if they wish. If you and one or more other Hieroglyph participants feel like it’s time to assemble a team to make big things happen, groups are a great way to do that.

Groups come in three flavors:
Hidden for ninja-level discreet discussions with invited members
Private for invitation-only participation in a publicly viewable forum
Public for a free-for-all hootenanny that anyone can join

Once a group is established, members are able to message all other members collectively, making collaboration that much easier. Every group includes a wall featuring status updates, a dedicated, threaded forum for group discussions and the ability to create documents together and work on them collaboratively. Documents can be stories, research papers, poems or any other kind of writing that your team is working on.

If you’re ready for a group to call your own, email your friendly neighborhood admin Nina at hieroglyph@asu.edu to set one up today!

Author

Lauren Pedersen

Tags: Frequently Asked Questions, Groups Comments Off on Insider Information: Groups

Cory Doctorow and the Clarion Write-a-Thon

June 12, 2013 in Hieroglyph

Hieroglyph author Cory Doctorow has recently announced his participation in the 2013 Clarion Write-a-Thon. This annual fundraiser collects donations for the Clarion Writers’ Workshop, a celebrated non-profit institution that has long served as a boot camp for aspiring writers of fantasy and science fiction.

Over the course of forty days, Doctorow will be working on a short story called “The Man Who Sold the Moon.” He describes his latest literary endeavor as being “about Burning Man alums who land a 3D printer on the moon that sinters regolith together over the course of a generation to build a habitat for their grandchildren to inhabit.”

Check out Cory’s profile on the Write-a-Thon, become a sponsor and keep an eye on the evolution of this lunar tale!

‘Dusty Man’ Photo Credit to Laughlin Elkind via Flickr

Author

Lauren Pedersen

Tags: 3D printer, Burning Man, Clarion Write-a-Thon, Clarion Writers' Workshop, Cory Doctorow, lunar, moon Comments Off on Cory Doctorow and the Clarion Write-a-Thon

Featured Contributor: Brenda Cooper

May 9, 2013 in Featured Contributors, Hieroglyph

Brenda Cooper is a science fiction author, futurist, tech executive and the current Chief Information Officer for the city of Kirkland, Washington.

She is the author of the Endeavor award winner for distinguished Science Fiction of 2008: The Silver Ship and the Sea, and its sequels, Reading the Wind and Wings of Creation. Brenda has co-written the novel, Building Harlequin’s Moon, with Larry Niven, as well as various short stories. She has also written two additional solo novels: Mayan December, and most recently The Creative Fire.

Throughout her career as a science fiction author Brenda has had numerous stories published in a variety of magazines including: Nature, Analog, Asimov’s, Strange Horizons and Clarkesworld. A substantial amount of her work has been selected for Year’s Best anthologies.

During her early years Brenda was inspired by authors such as Robert A. Heinlein, Larry Niven, Marion Zimmer Bradley, and Rudyard Kiplin. Such writing continues to provoke her own imagination, which responds in a dialogue of award winning science fiction.

Photo credit to Mary Cooper

Author

Lauren Pedersen

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