Check Out These Blog Posts From Steve McEllistrem

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 ...

Joyce Kilmer famously wrote: “I think that I shall never see a poem lovely as a tree.” And despite many criticisms of both poem and poet, it remains to this day one of the best-known pieces of poetry. People who know nothing else about poetry can often recite at least that line if not the entire poem. One of the reasons for its longevity is the fact that so many people for so many years made fun of it. But ...

In the preamble it is written that “We the People” establish the Constitution to establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare and secure the Blessings of Liberty to “ourselves and our Posterity.” Pretty words. And yet we fail to heed them. One of the most important concerns of the Founding Fathers was the elimination of corruption in government. Does anyone believe our politicians are not corrupt? Sure, a few of them live up ...

Do we all deserve to be listened to equally? Or do some of us deserve more heft? In a perfect world, where everyone gave equal thought to every issue, where worries about universal health care took up the same amount of mental space in each person’s mind, where concerns about despoiling the planet consumed as much gray matter in all the planet’s citizens to the exact same level, the answer would clearly be yes. However, the world we inhabit is ...