Check Out These Blog Posts From Steve McEllistrem

I realize it’s ironic to write an article about why no one reads anymore, but I’m doing it anyway. And I’m not saying no one reads anymore. Obviously, people do. In fact, some people read as much as they ever have, consuming multiple books per week, gorging themselves on the tasty offerings of Shakespeare, Jane Austen, JK Rowling and more. But readers are slowly dying off, easing into extinction as newer and flashier means of grabbing our attention evolve. Why? ...

Many people won’t read science fiction. They have the idea that it’s all warp drives and space battles and bizarre aliens and they just don’t want to read that. It’s too far out for their taste. But not all science fiction is that way. Look at Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, which is more properly defined as speculative fiction because it doesn’t really embrace futuristic technology like most science fiction does. That’s a wonderful novel about where we might be ...

We want to know things with certainty. We want to be able to classify actions and things and people into categories we can place in mental files, sorted into neat folders that we can retrieve when necessary. We dislike doubt. Our entire existence is given up to learning. We go to school as children, eager to understand the world around us. Our teachers and parents (at least those who are involved in their children’s lives) preach the importance of knowledge ...

I’ve long loved the science fiction classics, like Dune, Foundation, Rendezvous with Rama and Fahrenheit 451. But I didn’t start out writing science fiction. I began with fantasies, westerns, mysteries, thrillers and literary fiction, none of which I published. I’ve also written legal books, newsletters and articles for many years. Those pay the bills but don’t provide the sort of comfort a good piece of fiction does. My first sci-fi novel, The Devereaux Dilemma, didn’t start as science fiction, but ...