The Never-ending FAQ • 29 January 2025

Welcome to the latest installment of The Never-ending FAQ, the constantly evolving adjunct to our Submission Guidelines and general-purpose unfocused Q&A session.  If you have a question you’d like to ask about Stupefying Stories or Rampant Loon Press, feel free to post it as a comment here or to email it to our submissions address. I can’t guarantee we’ll post...

Read More

Ask Dr. Cyberpunk: with your host, Bruce Bethke • LAST CALL! NO KIDDING!

REMINDER: this is the LAST CALL for FAQ questions. I wrote the story 45 years ago. I’m tired of talking about it.If you have a question you’ve always wanted to ask me about my story, “Cyberpunk,” or the writing thereof, send it to brucebethke.cybrpnk@gmail.com. Given that we want to have Cyberpunk and Cyberpunk Revisited ready to release in March 2025, I have set a hard...

Read More

WRITING ADVICE: Analyzing What Went Into EMERALD OF EARTH *** THIS IS LONG. I KNOW. I ASK YOU TO READ IT...***

THIS IS A LONG PIECE...SO MOVE ON IF IT'S TOO MUCH!In September of 2007, I started a blog with a bit of writing advice. A little over a year later, I discovered how little I knew about writing after hearing children’s writer, Lin Oliver speak at a convention hosted by the Minnesota Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. Since then, I have shared (with their permission)...

Read More

TOP 10: Special Edition! The Pete Wood Challenge

Following up on last week’s TOP 10 Stories of 2024 posts (The Best of 2024, The Rest of the Best (Part 1), and The Rest of the Best (Part 2), Pete Wood asked me to run another report breaking out the most-read Pete Wood Challenge stories of 2024. I’ll have more to say about this tomorrow, but for today, here you go. According to the readership metrics, these are the top Pete...

Read More

Ask Dr. Cyberpunk: with your host, Bruce Bethke • only four weeks left!

REMINDER: this is the last call for FAQ questions. If you have a question you’ve always wanted to ask me about my story, “Cyberpunk,” or the writing thereof, send it to brucebethke.cybrpnk@gmail.com. Given that we want to have Cyberpunk and Cyberpunk Revisited ready to release in March 2025, I have set a hard deadline of Saturday, February 1st, 2025. After that date, any...

Read More

TOP 10: The Rest of the Best of 2024 (Part 2)

 ...continued from Part 1...As we delve deeper into the site metrics the answers become increasingly cryptic, and we begin to suspect we may as well be consulting a Magic 8 Ball as Google site analytics. Our list of the Top 15 most-read stories published in 2024 is pretty solid, both in terms of gross readership and ranking, but once we get past 15, we begin to see really...

Read More

TOP 10: The Rest of the Best of 2024 (Part 1)

...continued from TOP 10: The Best of 2024...You’d think it would be easy to put together a ranked list of the most-read stories we published in 2024. It wasn’t. The administrative back-end to this site provides us with a wealth of data and traffic metrics, but sometimes the results it reports are contradictory. We’re pretty confident of yesterday’s Top 10 list: the readership...

Read More

TOP 10: The Best of 2024

Now that 2024 is at last over and done with in all Earthly time zones, (whew!) we have what we believe to be the final data. Based on readership numbers, here are the TOP 10 MOST-READ STORIES we published in this past year. #1. “The Pros and Cons of Time Travel,” by James Blakey #2. “gastronomic,” by Richard J. Dowling #3. “Outside the Window,” by Gordon...

Read More