History That Never Was

Home of Dawn Vogel: Writer, Historian, Geek

Review of Robotic Ambitions

| November 15, 2023

I reviewed one of the stories from Robotic Ambitions, edited by Lesley Conner and Jason Sizemore (Apex Book Company, 2023), prior to the Kickstarter for the project. Now I’m back with a review of the whole anthology, filled with stories of mechanical sentience. In addition to Elliot Wink’s “A Still Life,” this anthology collected many […]

WriteHive Panel: Believable Technology in Fiction

| November 13, 2023

One of the panels I watched from the WriteHive online conference was Believable Technology in Fiction. It was a great panel about how to make technology work in your fiction, most often but not always science fiction. The panelists started by talking about technology on the whole, defining it as something that solves a problem […]

Interview with Ada Hoffmann

| November 6, 2023

Today, I’m chatting with Ada Hoffmann, author of the forthcoming collection Resurrections from Apex Book Company! DV: Tell us a little about yourself and your writing. AH: Hi! My name is Ada Hoffmann. My pronouns are they/them. I live in Canada, teach cognitive science at a university, and write stories. I also have a huge interest […]

“Asylum” in Droplets from the Universe

| October 31, 2023

My short story “Asylum” started with the idea of an alien invasion in the past and the people who might resist their alien overlords. The characters wound up being a hodge-podge bunch of humans, none of whom probably ever saw themselves as the sort who might someday save humanity, but when those characters are presented […]

Sci-Fi Inspiring Science?

| October 23, 2023

People are accustomed to scientific developments inspiring science fiction, but what about the other way around? At the Center for Science and the Imagination at Arizona State University, they do exactly that! They look at science fiction works for technologies described within that might become plausible inventions. This article about the program talks about some […]

Review of The Daughter of Doctor Moreau by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

| October 18, 2023

The Daughter of Doctor Moreau by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Del Rey, 2022) is a reimagining of The Island of Doctor Moreau, set in Mexico during a period of civil strife in the nineteenth century, and focusing on Doctor Moreau’s daughter and an overseer of his hybrid creations. Carlotta Moreau has grown up with a strange sickness, but […]

“Aethervirales” in Droplets from the Universe

| September 26, 2023

Of the stories in Droplets from the Universe, “Aethervirales” appears on first glance to be the least suited to collection of joyful and humorous sci-fi. After all, it begins with a murdered person. But I included it in this collection because the protagonist of the story solves the case and has a happy ending. As the […]

Have You Checked Out Dead-Starred Futures?

| September 21, 2023

Have you had a chance to check out Dead-Starred Futures yet? It’s filled with very short stories and poems, all along the theme of dystopian sci-fi. The stories are generally dark, though there’s occasional humor interspersed with the darkness. Dead-Starred Futures is available in ebook only, wherever you like to buy ebooks!

My August 2023 Publications

| September 7, 2023

I had a couple of new things out in August this year! The first is that my flash fiction story, “The Truth of Their Tunes,” was reprinted in The Little Cozy Book from Wyngraf, who originally published this story on their website. Now it’s collected with other cozy fantasy stories! The second is my dystopian sci-fi […]

“Undecided” from Droplets from the Universe

| August 29, 2023

The story “Undecided” was my attempt to write a sci-fi story that used a so-called “soft” science, cultural anthropology, to solve a problem. The story has a lot of other sci-fi tropes–aliens and hard science among them–but the actual crux point is somewhat unexpected. I also adore the characters I wrote for this story–two extremely […]