Song of the Deep and its Sources

Insomniac Games' Song of the Deep is a charming 2-D action-puzzle game in a rich underwater fantasy world. The company's first "Metroidvania"-style game, the story revolves around young Merryn, a 12-year old girl who lives by the sea. When her fisherman father goes missing one terrible night, she must descend below in her own makeshift submarine to find him. There, she discovers that the mystical world of sea creatures, sunken wrecks, and ancient civilizations he told her about in bedtime stories actually is real. 

Song of the Deep's reveal trailer.

Those Fatal Filaments by Mabel Ernestine Abbott

Subtitled "A wonderful invention and the story of why it was never perfected", Those Fatal Filaments by Mabel Ernestine Abbott explores one of those turning points in history when the inventor faces down the prospect of great discovery with even greater costs. There are things that Man Was Not Meant to Know, including the thoughts of other men... and especially the thoughts of women. 

The following is the complete text of Those Fatal Filaments as it appeared in volume 41 (1902-03) of The Argosy magazine. Click on each page for a larger version.

Announcing "Science Fiction of the British Empire: A Victorian-Edwardian Anthology"

The next volume in my series of Victorian-Edwardian Scientific Romance anthologies has been released!

The British Empire was largely accidental. During the 17th and 18th centuries, a small island nation accrued a patchwork scattering of commercial monopolies, isolated ports, utopian experiments, and surrendered colonies. By the time of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee in 1897, the British Empire was the largest the world had ever seen. The shape of the Empire was amorphous, its machinery unwieldy, its values contradictory, and its legacy ambivalent. Science fiction developed along with it, to celebrate and critique the imperial project. This volume features rarely reprinted stories from across the United Kingdom, India, Bangladesh, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, including the “Poet of the Empire” Rudyard Kipling, Indian nationalist Shoshee Chunder Dutt, New Zealand Prime Minister Sir Julius Vogel, Catholic theologian G.K. Chesterton, Muslim feminist Begum Rokeya Sakhawat Hussain, Canadian satirist Stephen Leacock, military alarmist George Tomkyns Chesney, and “Jeeves and Wooster” creator P.G. Wodehouse.

To order Science Fiction of the British Empire: A Victorian-Edwardian Anthology, visit Amazon or click on the image above. If you can also share this post or the link on your social networks, leave a review on Amazon, and rate Science Fiction of the British Empire, that would go a long way to helping spread the word!

Thank you very much for you support of this blog for all these years and for your purchase of my new anthology.

The Crown of the Continent: Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park

"Far away in northwestern Montana, hidden from view by clustering mountain peaks, lies an unmapped corner—the Crown of the Continent."

These words, penned in 1901 by famed naturalist George Bird Grinnell, introduced the world to the natural majesty of the area known today as the Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park. It is comprised of two national parks in two countries - Waterton Lakes National Park in Canada and Glacier National Park in the United States - linked by their ecosystem, geology, cultural history and scenic beauty.

St. Mary's Lake, Glacier National Park.

Upper Waterton Lake, Waterton Lakes National Park.