Announcing Futures Past and Present

I'd like to announce a new blog I've started, Futures Past and Present, which will focus on science fiction. 

Relax, I'm not abandoning Adventures Fantastic.  Far from it.  I want to keep AF going and make it stronger.  It's looking like this month is going to be the best one yet, and thank you, everyone who has stopped by to browse, see what I said about your story, followed (formally and informally), or posted a comment.  This is still going to be my primary blog.

So why am I starting another one?  That's a  good question that has several answers.
First, I've always loved science fiction.  Even before I really started reading fantasy, I was into science fiction.  Now I've posted reviews of science fiction here, but I don't want to do too much of that.  I want to keep my the focus of AF on three or four main areas:  fantasy (especially heroic and sword and sorcery fantasy), historical adventure, occasional editorials on publishing and writing, and once in a while some historical fact pieces (look for one in the next couple of days).  Of course there will be deviations from time to time, but for the most past, that's the approach I've tried to take for the last few months.  It seems to have worked.  I'm getting more readers, and I don't want to alienate them.  I lost a few of the early followers back when I was just getting started.  I can't help but wonder if it was because I wasn't as focused as I am now.

Also, I try to review mostly new fantasy, with certain notable exceptions such as Robert E. Howard.  There will be some other giants from the fantasy field I'll write about in future posts, but for the most part the fantasy focus will be on what's happening in fantasy in general, and sword and sorcery in particular, now, at the present time.

For the science fiction, I want to take a broader approach.  By that I mean not just look at new stuff (although I will), but at some of the classics as well things I have on my shelf that I simply haven't had a chance to read yet that I might like to write about or recommend.  I explain this a little more in the "Opening Salvo".  The thing is, if I take the time to read a lengthy science fiction novel, I will either be hard pressed to find a justification for writing about it here, or I will try to read other things at the same time.  The latter is a strategy that is rarely successful for me.  An additional blog will allow me to write about science fiction without stretching the limits of this blog too much.

The other thing I want to do is to have the freedom to experiment and play around with things like formatting and design.  I tried to set up a Facebook page for AF a few weeks ago.  Somewhere in the process, Facebook turned the page from a page for the blog into an individual page for me.  I'm not sure what happened, because I intentionally didn't set it up as a personal page.  Now I've refused for years to get on Facebook, MySpace, or any of the other social networks.  Lost friends from high school are lost for a reason and should remain that way, and if I wanted them to have the means to find me, they wouldn't be lost in the first place.  I couldn't figure out how to turn the page back into a page for the blog, so I deleted it.  I'll try again with Futures Past and Present.  I'll also try Twitter and some other stuff.

I'll only post there about once a week or ten days, not nearly as often as I post here.  Like I said, this will still be my primary blog.  There will be some  items I'll cross post, like the extensive look at Henry Kuttner's short fiction I'm working on in my spare time.  The cosmetic things at Futures Past and Present will change fairly frequently, though.  Once I get something figured out, or decide I like a certain approach or look to something, or find something that works really well, I'll import it over here.  

The first post is up, a review of Jonathan Strahan's anthology Engineering Infinity.  Check it out.  And check back here for more sword and sorcery and historical adventure.

Now if I can find a venue to write about detective fiction, I'd have all my bases covered...