@adriabailton
I'm Elektra Hammond. Find me at untilmidnight.com
See me talk about SF/F, writing, comics, TV, and Supernatural at Con-Tinual (the Con that Never Ends) on Facebook and Youtube.
Come see the Sidewise Awards given out at Worldcon! 6pm FRI - Alt Hist of Space Travel with me, Mary Kowal, Rosemary Smith, Olav Rockne, Dr. Laura Woodney
@Priyajsridhar
I'm Elektra Hammond. Find me at untilmidnight.com
See me talk about SF/F, writing, comics, TV, and Supernatural at Con-Tinual (the Con that Never Ends) on Facebook and Youtube.
Watch this space for an exciting announcement.
@neve
I'm Elektra Hammond. Find me at untilmidnight.com
See me talk about SF/F, writing, comics, TV, and Supernatural at Con-Tinual (the Con that Never Ends) on Facebook and Youtube.
I'll be at Confluence in Pittsburgh, PA this weekend !!
@neve
What’s been the biggest challenge with my current project?
Discovering how little I know about some aspect of the time period (1959), trying to research it, and looking up 6 hours later, better informed about whatever it was, with my head pounding (hopefully *that* won't be happening any more).
It makes me more informed about little details, but doesn't get a lot of words on paper.
#Writephant #writing #amwriting #amresearching #alternatehistory
@Priyajsridhar
I'm Elektra Hammond. Find me at untilmidnight.com
See me talk about SF/F, writing, comics, TV, and Supernatural at Con-Tinual (the Con that Never Ends) on Facebook and Youtube.
My next convention is Confluence in Pittsburgh, PA.
I’ve pondered a question about fiction off and on for some time now:
Could one create a viable, believable alternate universe that is recognizable as, say, the 1960s, but without the racist and sexist aspects present in the *real* 1960s? Or are those aspects inherent to those times, without which the culture, clothing, entertainment, architecture, and so on would be so radically different as to be unrecognizable?
I suppose it comes down to one’s threshold for suspension of disbelief, combined with creative alternative reasons for why certain things were the way they were.
@adriabailton
I'm Elektra Hammond. Find me at untilmidnight.com
See me talk about SF/F, writing, comics, TV, and Supernatural at Con-Tinual (the Con that Never Ends) on Facebook and Youtube.
Permutations, a mosaic novel based on Jack Chalker's Well World is finally out! Order it from book sellers near you.
It started slowly.
Seattle-based companies made the move to Vancouver, with generous re-location packages.
The Valley, bit by bit, moved northward, first capitalising on the cheaper real estate in Portland and Seattle, then joining the ex-SFats in Canada.
---
SoCal had crumbled a decade prior - the nexus of water-guzzling, power-sucking AIs that mimicked Hollywood actors only worked as long as there was water and power - and Hollywood actors to mimic.
The LA fires of '32 had destroyed so much infrastructure the city was broke - and dry.
And once they'd been cloned and recast as AI avatars of themselves, actors retired - on albeit reduced residuals. No-one flew to LAX with a dream and a cardigan. Those left were either ICE agents or Undocumented they hunted.
---
The Big Beautiful Bill had exactly the intended effect - an unbridgeable chasm between rich and poor. You either had capital or you died - usually from something preventable like gum disease or pneumonia.
Those with capital moved north.
Those who only had labour - human, devalued yet expensive, connective yet computed labour - stayed. Inflation grew. The $USD sank.
The future, as the Great Dismal wrote, was already here - it just wasn't evenly distributed.
Five eyes became three when Australia and Aotearoa ripped up ANZUS in '30. Canada followed and Starmer, enjoying an unprecedented fourth term in a time of turmoil, made it one in '31.
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NoCal took a little longer - the vulture capitalists hanging on to the carrion of would-be unicorns, hoping to get a RoI.
After adding AI to everything, they had to enshittify to get a return. Inferencing a 5Q parameter model doesn't scale, even with a Redis cache the size of Sonoma county.
AI had, paradoxically, re-ignited the Open Source movement, who, determinists at heart, rejected the stochastic musings of the Bullshit Machines.
A team from Eleuther paired up with Wikipedia and dropped a reciprocal-licensed distilled RAG model that inferenced quicker than DeepSeek. They might have had help from CC Signals, who reached out to people interested in opening their information - but not for profit.
Then they used BitTorrent to do results caching. Inference cost dropped to marginal. A couple of big names saw, ahem, a slight decrease in market cap.
---
Anyway, enough of the history lesson!
We're delighted to welcome you to Victoria Island, the new headquarters of FAANG, Inc.
We've pivoted a little in the last few years, and now most of our work involves geo-engineering so we can stay under 3 degrees.
We like it here, and we hope you do, too.
@Priyajsridhar
I'm Elektra Hammond. Find me at untilmidnight.com
See me talk about SF/F, writing, comics, TV, and Supernatural at Con-Tinual (the Con that Never Ends) on Facebook and Youtube.
Permutations, a mosaic novel based on Jack Chalker's Well World is finally out! Order it from book sellers near you.
The photos of the #Budapest #Pride this year, and the comments about what this may mean in general for #Hungary, protests and the #Orbán regime have made me think again about Adam-00 #webcomics
https://comicfury.com/profile.php?username=Adam-00
which are a mix of #scifi and #alternateHistory with subtle and not-so-subtle #socialCommentary and #politicalCommentary
1/n
@adriabailton
I'm Elektra Hammond. Find me at untilmidnight.com
See me talk about SF/F, writing, comics, TV, and Supernatural at Con-Tinual (the Con that Never Ends) on Facebook and Youtube.
Permutations, a mosaic novel based on Jack Chalker's Well World is finally out! Order it from book sellers near you.
John Sandford's thrillers are indeed addictive. (And one reason to read the earlier books: the origin story of Letty Davenport.)
But mostly: If you loved "Piranesi," do you know Susanna Clarke's incredible 1st novel, "Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell" (2004)? If not, oh what a treat you have in store.
It's kind of, uh, Austen meets Dickens with magic, footnotes, & postmodernism.
The 7-part 2015 BBC adaption is not too shabby either.
#PennedPossibilities 692 — Share a song that either describes your current feelings about your story or your MC in general
SECONDARY keeps widening the scope. More and more layers and complications get heaped upon the MC that he has to respond to, and navigate... all at once. It's virtually unsurvivable.
The trailer for THE MARTIAN used this music. This is the mood the series is intended to evoke.
@Priyajsridhar
I'm Elektra Hammond. Find me at untilmidnight.com
See me talk about SF/F, writing, comics, TV, and Supernatural at Con-Tinual (the Con that Never Ends) on Facebook and Youtube.
Permutations, a mosaic novel based on Jack Chalker's Well World is finally out! Order it from book sellers near you.
I'm Elektra Hammond. Find me at untilmidnight.com
See me talk about SF/F, writing, comics, TV, and Supernatural at Con-Tinual (the Con that Never Ends) on Facebook and Youtube.
Permutations, an anthology based on Jack Chalker's Well World is finally out! Order it from book sellers near you.
From blue-platinum-purple ombres to wavy copper patinas and everything in between, my sci-fi characters are about to get a big hair upgrade.
Read more at my #blog: https://www.adamasnemesis.com/2025/05/24/2065-a-hair-odyssey/
This post's featured image is "Galactic blue eye", by yours truly.
@Priyajsridhar
I'm Elektra Hammond. Find me at untilmidnight.com
See me talk about SF/F, writing, comics, TV, and Supernatural at Con-Tinual (the Con that Never Ends) on Facebook and Youtube.
My next convention will be #Balticon this weekend, where Permutations, an anthology based on Jack Chalker's Well World will launch.
@neve
I'm Elektra Hammond. Find me at untilmidnight.com
See me talk about SF/F, writing, comics, TV, and Supernatural at Con-Tinual (the Con that Never Ends) on Facebook and Youtube.
My next convention will be #Balticon on Memorial Day weekend, where Permutations, an anthology based on Jack Chalker's Well World will launch.
