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Whiskey and Warfare
Whiskey and Warfare: The Team Huntress Flights “Old Woman’s War” is how I characterized Whiskey and Warfare by E.M. Hamill when someone asked me what I was reading for SPSFC4. While I found John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War sort of meh, this book feels like a more mature, more heartfelt exploration of similar ground. Given…
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EAT
EAT: ΣΔΤ Book One: Sigma “Night of the living furries” is how a character describes their situation a little more than midway through Jesse Brown’s EAT. I laughed when I read that line and I also nodded. That’s a good description of the basic premise, though replace cute or weirdly sexualized furries with the sleek,…
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The Realists of a Larger Reality
Is there a science fiction author more akin to literature than Ursula K. Le Guin? I can’t think of any. There are others that may rise to her level. Octavia E. Butler, certainly. One day, I think N.K. Jemisin will have that luster. I struggle to think of a male writer with the same claim…
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Cordwainer Smith – The Sci-Fi Master You’ve Probably Never Heard of
When I was a teenager, my brother introduced me to a set of books by a writer with a goofy name, Cordwainer Smith. The first was a short story collection called The Instrumentality of Mankind, and the other was a novel called Norstrilia. My mind was blown. These stories, published in the 50s and 60s,…
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The Case for Astrology
But, that has nothing to do with Astrology, I hear the rational people shouting. And I have to disagree. Astrology is just a calendar. What stars are visible between December 22nd and January 19th determine my sign. In modern times we call them months — but it’s the same thing. Rational people will tell you…
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Machine Learning
I started drawing when I was 3. Writing started later, but my earliest surviving stories were from age 6. Photography started in sophomore year in high school when my father and I built a darkroom in our basement, and my mother bought me a cheap Russian SLR. Code didn’t enter the scene until I was…
Some Kind of Wonderful
Born to a self-taught fine artist and an electronic engineer, E.W. “Doc” Parris has always had one foot in the technical and aesthetic worlds. He pursued a Bachelor of Arts in Acting at the Sergent Conservatory of Theatre Arts before starting a family. A self-taught computer programmer, he’s worked as a graphic designer, art director, creative director, photographer, animator, video editor, web developer, and iOS developer. He’s currently a solutions architect for the leader in online k-12 education.
Doc has a passion for crafting hard, sobering science fiction leavened by wit and the warmth of human relationships. He also has a fondness for imagining non-humanoid intelligent alien life, their biologies, cultures, and peculiar (yet relatable) goals, motivations, and conflicts. He is a proud member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association.
Doc lives in the rural southern reaches of Northern Virginia. When not writing or coding, he’s working to master drawing, photography, slow-smoked barbecue, and rehabbing his 40-year-old 3-bedroom colonial country home.
E.W. Doc Parris
Author