Writing 101 • Day 3 of 24: Who Are You?

We humans love stories. We love to hear them. We love to tell them. We love to pass a good story on to others. Stories are how we learn. Stories are how we teach our children. Stories are the collective memory of our tribe, handed down from generation to generation. They’re how we preserve and share our clan’s lore, of our gods and our heroes, our ancestors and our enemies,...

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“Big Bang Enlightenment” • by Sam W. Pisciotta

Jenny scowls, her foot tapping out the passing moments as if marking my silence. The brochure lies on the table between us. Big Bang, Incorporated. Experience enlightenment. “This awakening,” she says, “this little mind vacation was supposed to end after a week.” She leans forward, pleading. “Goddammit, Mo. Say something. Argue with me.” I need no words. The universe...

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Ask Dr. Cyberpunk • with your host, Bruce Bethke

By now enough people have seen this photo that some have begun to ask: “What the Hell is all that stuff?”This, my friends, is where “Cyberpunk” really began. If we had streaming video, this would be a slow pan around the room, but since we don’t, you’ll just have to imagine it. Going clockwise, starting from the lower left: Yes, this all makes perfect sense to me, and no,...

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Notes Toward Building a Writers’ Community

I must admit, I’ve always found writers to be puzzling.I am one. I’ve had some success at being one, as you may have noticed. I grew up in a literature-rich environment. My mom was a published poet of no particular note, and quite a few of her old school friends were professionally published writers, mostly of mysteries. (Mom always seemed disappointed that I preferred science...

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Writing 101 • Day 2 of 24: What is a story?

It’s kind of funny, really. My parents were both public school teachers. I grew up in a house that was simply overflowing with books and magazines. I learned to read at a very early age—before I began school—and have spent my entire life since then reading, writing, and ultimately, editing and publishing, stories.But what exactly is a story? That’s a question I never...

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The Never-ending FAQ • 23 April 2025

Welcome to this week’s 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...

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Writing 101 • Day 1 of 24: Welcome to the class

I was doing a reading at an SF/F con this past weekend—Sorry for not alerting you that I was going to be there. It was very much a last-minute, spur-of-the-moment decision to go. I haven’t been to a con since DemiCon 30 in 2019, and to be honest, I wasn’t sure I wanted to get back into the SF/F con scene. Cons can be very strange places full of even stranger people…Nonetheless,...

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“Walls Have Ears” • by Raluca Balasa

[START] This interview is being recorded, at half past noon on the eighth of June, 2025. We are in Interview Room C at the Windsor police station in Windsor, Ontario, Canada. No other officers or legal representatives are present. Can the interviewee state his name and date of birth? Is interviewee even a word? Please answer the question, Mr. Older. [Laughs] Yes. Yes? The...

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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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