Ask Dr. Cyberpunk • with your host, Bruce Bethke

And now, as threatened promised:CYBERPUNK: THE MUSICALI’ve been doing a lot of digging in the deep archives lately, as I work on—well, this. The book I’ve been talking about writing for years. The one that ties together the original short story, how it mutated to become the aborted Baen-damaged novel, and what it’s meant to me personally to have spent the past 35-plus years...

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Hark! Utopians! I Wanna Rock! • by Chris Naron

It’s hard for me to admit that I was at one time a Star Trek fan, but in my defense, I wasn’t quite aware of the levels of fandom that existed above me. Everyone has their thing, and that’s cool. But even Star Trek fans have to admit that it gets way out of hand.Where’s the line, you ask? The line for me isn’t dressing up like a Klingon or getting married at the Star Trek...

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Music in Science Fiction, or Science Fiction in Music? (Part 2)

Sixties rock ‘n’ roll and New Wave science fiction grew up together, step-siblings living on the wrong side of the tracks in the shadows of the larger culture of the Space Age. Never mind for now the question of why there’s so much lame and insipid music in science fiction. Why isn’t there more and much better science fiction in rock music?Especially in England, the two subcultures...

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Music in Science Fiction, or Science Fiction in Music?

Ever since Pete Wood first proposed this topic, I’ve had two tracks running in my mind. On the analytical side I’ve been pondering the general question of “Why is there so much stupid music in science fiction?” and on a more specific level, questions like, “Why does the first officer on a starship in the 25th Century play trombone in a Dixieland jazz band?” I mean, a trombone?...

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Join the Cult of Stupefying Stories!

 As I continue to work on putting together new issues, dealing with that festering pile of unanswered correspondence in the back room, rebuilding our social media presence, and assessing and improving our web sites, I have—well, I haven’t exactly made a discovery, but I’ve had a bit of a disquieting minor epiphany.All those contact links in the left column: if you’re...

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On Writing “Brimstone and Brine” • by Beth Powers

 [Editor’s Note: Since Stupefying Stories 23 was released quite a few people have written to tell me how much they enjoyed Beth Powers’ story, “Brimstone and Brine,” and to ask questions about how she wrote it and whether she had any more stories like it. Well, yes, she does, and in response to these questions Beth was kind enough to write a bit more about her Carving...

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The Best Science Fiction Song of All Time • by Pete Wood

 The science fiction rock song that probably everybody knows is the God-awful In the Year 2525, a 1969 one hit wonder by Zager and Evans. Inexplicably, the song still gets plenty of airplay. Its lyrics are nonsensical with the kind of science fiction world-building that one might expect from an elementary school student. The Rolling Stones took a stab at science fiction...

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The State of the Loon • 23 March 2021

First up, congratulations to Scott Huggins for winning the 2021 Jim Baen Memorial Award Grand Prize for his story, “Salvage Judgment.” While Scott is a Stupefying Stories contributor and I’d like to be able to claim some small credit for helping him win this award, I can’t, as I still have my marked-up copy of his manuscript sitting in my to-do stack with a note on it saying,...

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Putting My Writing Where My Mouth Is • by Guy Stewart

My premise is that writers feel that their stories aren’t being taken seriously, so they write what they feel is “more realistic” fiction. Hopelessness is real. Suicide is real. Isolation is real. Depression is real. Global pandemic is real. The Collapse of the Environment is real. Problems So Big They Cannot Be Solved are real. Besides, it’s easy to present the problem, show...

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Punch Them in the Feels • by Eric Dontigney

So, earlier this week, Bruce put up the Dark and Gritty Reboot post. He’s not alone in giving this trend to ever-darker content the side-eye and wondering what it’s all about. It’s something I’ve thought about and written about before, not least because my own fiction trends dark. It’s tricky ground. As a writer, one of the things you can’t avoid is that you must do bad things...

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Feeding the Muse: Living Well on a Writer's Budget

Editor’s Note: This was first published on 3/21/2018. With tomorrow being St. Patrick’s Day—or as we call it around here, The Day Before Corned Beef Briskets Go On Clearance Sale—this seemed like a good time to resurface this column. Karen would love to reboot her “Feeding the Muse” series but needs a little encouragement. Would you like to see more posts like this? Let us...

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How to Make a Really Good Scary Movie • by Pete Wood

It’s bad enough that they remade Archie comics into the dark and brooding Riverdale, where suddenly even Jughead isn’t any fun. They had to make horror movies too dark, too. Yeah, I know what you’re thinking. Horror movies are supposed to be dark. Yeah, maybe. Unless they become so dark they stop being scary. Hear me out. If I ran Hollywood, every aspiring horror filmmaker...

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Stupefying Stories: The Dark and Gritty Reboot

Just kidding. Not happening. Oh, you might from time to time notice somewhat more adult language and situations in upcoming issues. There was a business reason why I was struggling to keep the magazine G rated—and it was a struggle—but that reason turned out to be invalid, so going forward I’m going to be relaxing those rules a bit.But this whole “dark and gritty” thing: what...

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The State of the Loon • 14 March 2021

With STUPEFYING STORIES 23 released and selling—not exactly rocketing up the charts with a bullet, but selling all the same—Sorry, that “with a bullet” bit is an old BILLBOARD “Hot 100” reference. Does anyone in this century even get it anymore?Never mind. With SS#23 released and selling, and then updated and re-released (“Now with fewer typos!”), we’re moving ahead with new...

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Science Fiction Never Saw This Pandemic Coming • by Pete Wood

I’m still waiting for the flying cars. Let’s face it. Science fiction is entertaining, but not always prescient. Transporters and ray guns and time travel might come eventually, but I’m not holding my breath.Some science fiction can’t come soon enough. We all want to journey into space, or have robots clean our homes, but nobody’s looking forward to the Apocalyptic stuff....

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Ask Dr. Cyberpunk • with your host, Bruce Bethke

 Today’s question comes from Lars, who leads into his question with a quote from what someone else had written about me: “When coining the term for his 1983 story “Cyberpunk,” Bruce Bethke reportedly matched up words for technology and words for troublemakers until he found a pair that seemed right, rather than singling out punks as a crucial countercultural group...

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