Writing Science Fiction that Sells

a book review

authorBen Bova
date reviewed2000.08.06
genreWriting
isbn0898796008

This is a readable, straight-forward exposition that teaches useful ideas very well. I'm not a wild fan of Bova's fiction, but I certainly read this from front to back. I highly recommend it for one reason above all - I'm able to keep his ideas in mind as I'm writing, and I've found them enormously helpful. My fiction is now better.

I can also recommend a counterpart to this one; it's Becoming a Writer by Dorothea Brande. Bova's book is on the technical matters. Brande's is on the intangibles.

rand()m quote

For a long time I was very bitter that the people who controlled the means of anybody ever hearing my songs were never gonna play them. They only favored music that I specifically and particularly hated, and I wanted them dead. Suddenly, there was another avenue. I started hearing my stuff coming out of bars and then it started to happen little by little — a movie song here or a TV ad there.

—Iggy Pop