*Father Knox didn’t create these rules himself, ex cathedra; they came up in group discussions with other early detective-fiction professionals, but he codified and published them. *I find three aspects of interest here. *First, these are not technical rules or “tips” about writing effective entertainment fiction. Instead, they’re a social…

A publisher asked me for the text of this “Leggy Starlitz” story. I didn’t have the text to offer, but I found a handy copy on a Russian pirate website. There are rather a lot of Russians in this story, so this one is for all the Russians today who…

The English-language version of my contribution to the recent Italian fantascienza anthology, “Fanta-Scienza 2.” This story was directly inspired by the work of the Italian scientist, Dr. Antonio Bicchi, a professor of robotics at the University of Pisa and director of the “Laboratory of Soft Robotics.” MARE NOSTRUM by Bruce…

It’s an eccentric work of scientific fabulation that’s my all-too-topical farewell to Belgrade. One of my homes for many years. I could likely sell this yarn and print it somewhere, but why, if no one in the Balkans would see it anyway? An ambivalent gift for Orthodox Christmas. Balkan Cosmology …

*In the American Civil Cold War, what comes around, goes around. Are You For 86? by Bruce Sterling Leggy Starlitz emerged from behind cool smoked glass to the raucous screeching of seagulls. Hot summer sun glinted fiercely off the Pacific. …

Well, that was Austin — in 2001, twenty long years ago. This, too, shall pass. CODE by Bruce Sterling Even in death, Louis’s bulk had wedged him firmly into his work chair. Van felt swift, unthinking rage. How could Louis do this to him? Van had been working on a…

Villangomez and his home town I’m in Ibiza presently, and me and the artificially intelligent machine-translators are busy with the works of Señor Maria Villangomez i Llobet, known as “Marianu” to his friends. Villangomez is by far the best known Ibizan poet, though he’s little cherished on the mainland, even…

Social Codes at Feral File by Bruce Sterling “Feral File” is a small and closely focussed NFT art market where the ten curated exhibits double as a gallery show. Everything sold out. It sold so rapidly that the site crashed. These are good times for the non-fungible token. …

*Frank Belknap Long was a junior member of the Lovecraft Circle, and I enjoy the raw flummery of all this science-fictional atemporality riffing. It’s like a bubbling stew of Lovecraftian suspension-of-disbelief devices. “Einstein and John Dee are strange bedfellows.” *It’s especially good when a victim of cosmic horror is “scrawling…