Category Archives: Space

The good folks at SFSignal had a very interesting review of John Carter, the (apparently quite faithful) adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ John Carter of Mars serials. One could make the argument that Carter was the first space opera — Burroughs didn’t really care how the aliens and airships worked, just that they worked and looked cool, creating an exotic backdrop for what might have otherwise been a run-of-the-mill adventure story.

The reviewer pointed out that, in many ways, he’d seen John Carter before. It was called Star Wars, Flash Gordon, and a variety of other sci-fi adventures and space operas that made it to the big screen ahead of Carter. Burroughs may have been a forerunner, but others took that ball and ran further and farther with it. Indeed, it’s Star Wars, not John Carter, that’s set the standard for space opera.

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Get used to this image. If you write, you

Last week, I packed off the fifth version of Spacebuckler to my awesome and always-upbeat agent, Sara Megibow. In celebration, I thought I’d blog about what revisions mean to a would-be novelist like myself. (Actually, in terms of celebration, I had a Brooklyn Lager. But you get the idea.)

It took me roughly five months or so to pound out the first draft of my book. And naturally, being all kinds of green and uninformed, I got out the red pen, gave it a line edit and declared it finished. And yes, I still managed to get an agent, despite this severe but blessedly temporary case of shortsightedness. Anywya, Sara responded to my partial manuscript in August of last year, declaring the idea compelling, but the plotting far less so. She agreed to read a revision. And thus began versions two thorough five. She offered to rep me after version four. Continue reading →