B. Pladek

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Articles

Real Authors Wreak Havoc for Chatbots in This Dystopian Short Story

Jan 9, 2025 | ebroky.com | B. Pladek

io9 is proud to present fiction from Lightspeed Magazine. Once a month, we feature a story from Lightspeed’s current issue. This month’s selection is “Teach Them a Story to Teach Them Kindness” by B. Pladek. Enjoy!Teach Them a Story to Teach Them Kindnessby B. PladekUSER: this is a message for Milwaukee Elementary’s curator Jude Towers, I hope this is the right address. anyway thanks for the story you had RIGHTR generate for my 10th graders’ Empathy Week.
Tell Them a Story to Teach Them Kindness

Jan 9, 2025 | lightspeedmagazine.com | Wendy Wagner |B. Pladek

USER: this is a message for Milwaukee Elementary’s curator Jude Towers, I hope this is the right address. anyway thanks for the story you had RIGHTR generate for my 10th graders’ Empathy Week. it was really great! can you tell me more about it? CURATOR: I am happy to have fulfilled the assignment. USER: this isn’t a trap, I promise! you curators are so scared of getting sued for using real writers. I KNOW you’d never do that. but I’ve liked all the stuff you’ve curated so far.
The Hard Switch by Owen D. Pomery

May 24, 2024 | strangehorizons.com | Mark Granger |B. Pladek |T.D. Walker |Paul Chuks

Sometimes the sign of a good book is not gelling with it straight away. It’s happened to me many times, but for whatever reason I’ve pushed through that initial uncomfortable phase and realised that, no, what I’m reading is great. The Hard Switch is one of those books. I can now say Owen D. Pomery’s latest graphic novel is a fantastic emotional SF warm hug of a story, even when the horrible stuff happens. Because, spoiler alert, it bloody well does happen.
Same Bed Different Dreams by Ed Park

May 22, 2024 | strangehorizons.com | Matt Holder |B. Pladek |T.D. Walker |Paul Chuks

The engine that drives Ed Park’s Same Bed Different Dreams is the philosophy of a question: what is history? Is it a series of factual events organized into a sequence after-said-fact (and what is fact? And who decides on them?) or “a litany of trackable moments, the realm of machines” (p. 3)? Is it a method of interpretation? An impulse for truth, or Truth, “‘a message from a genius, ruined by the rain’” (p. 4)? A reckoning toward justice, a curative for erasure?
SONNET FOR THE UNBELIEVER

May 21, 2024 | strangehorizons.com | Paul Chuks |T.D. Walker |B. Pladek |Andy Sawyer

any god—when you pray—will tell you—the last thingthey want to do is turn their back—then they turn. you’re from a country where bombs haverevoked bodies into void, for years; your grandma diedthis way. her limbs in the south, head,north, hands, east—as if showing godhow to dismember a poem. It’s your turn now. the bombs have come in the same temper—you in your granny’s frame, near the spot sheescalated into dust. you call upon god,a bomb dies in your face.
After World by Debbie Urbanski

May 21, 2024 | strangehorizons.com | Andy Sawyer |B. Pladek |T.D. Walker |Paul Chuks

The genre of After World is still often referred to (see The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction) as “The Last Man,” from its genesis in the early nineteenth century in various novels and poems using that title, including, of course, the famous work by Mary Shelley.
The Spindle of Necessity

May 21, 2024 | strangehorizons.com | B. Pladek |T.D. Walker |Paul Chuks |Andy Sawyer

Andrew was convinced the writer had been trans. By this point his friends were tired of hearing about it, but he had no one else to tell besides the internet, and he was too smart for that. That would be asking for it. Samantha Finnes was a minor historical novelist, unknown outside queer circles. In the mid-50s she’d written three books set during the World Wars.
The Lunar Colony AI Begins to Build a Monument to the Programmer’s Father

May 21, 2024 | strangehorizons.com | T.D. Walker |B. Pladek |Paul Chuks |Andy Sawyer

1. You’ve seeded me with a rock your fathercaught in light angled by your mother’sanger: it’s minute, isn’t it, but there, gravitylensing some past moment, creatingillusions that things happened or that they happenedall at once—the effect is small, and you’ve asked me not todwell on unimportant details. Not a rock. Or not just. A menhir, a standing stone, raisedto align with sunrise on some ancient summer solstice. Or not just that: his image of it.
UW Press: Dry Land

Jan 20, 2024 | uwpress.wisc.edu | B. Pladek

Dry Land “Compelling in its underlying conversation about environmental preservation, this book is rich with well-researched plant knowledge that conveys the delicate balance of ecosystems. A winning combination of history, magic, and science that reiterates the importance of environmental preservation.”“A gorgeously imagined, deeply personal story of love and war, of the places we make and the places that make us.
9 Historical Novels by 20th-Century Queer Writers

Sep 25, 2023 | electricliterature.com | B. Pladek

Reading Lists Queer people have been writing historical fiction since before queerness existed Queer people have been writing historical fiction since before queerness existed—by which I mean, since before it was hammered into an antithesis to heterosexuality during the long nineteenth century. By the turn of the twentieth, queers looking to write about the past had to grapple with new, rigid identity categories that didn’t necessarily reflect how they saw themselves or their histories....