It came from Andrew M LeBlanc

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Andrew M LeBlanc’s story “Reproduction in a Closed Loop” was published in Metaphorosis on Friday, 5 October 2018. Time-loop stories are typically finite. In Groundhog Day and Edge of Tomorrow, the protagonist gets to exit the time-loop once they’ve achieved their goal (whether that goal is military victory or love). But what if the protagonist’s goal was impossible? What if they could never leave the time-loop? I was driven to ask this question by “The …

Reproduction in a Closed Loop – Andrew M LeBlanc

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The first iteration of General’s life ends with the extinction of the human race. The third, fourth, and fifth iterations fare better, but even knowledge of its past iterations is not enough for General (Gen for short) to change the course of the war. The invaders arrive in endless viral flocks; while Gen can improve its strategies over unlimited iterations, it is not enough to stop the alien tide. By the end of iteration five …

A question for Andrew M Le Blanc

Q: Do you read more fantasy or SF (hard or soft)?

A: My favorite stories are often those that blend genres. For example, the Broken Earth trilogy by N.K. Jemison starts out reading like pure fantasy, but the more you learn about the setting, the more it seems like science fiction. Or, how would you classify Jo Walton’s Thessaly series? It has gods and magic (fantasy), robots and time-travel (SF), and is set in our past with real people like Socrates (historical fiction).

I love it when fantasy works explore how magic changes society in the same way that SF can explore how technology changes society. Lois McMaster Bujold’s The Sharing Knife and Chalion books are great for this. Conversely, it blows my mind when SF works have a bit of magic in them, like whatever is going on in the Terra Ignota series by Ada Palmer.

Andrew M LeBlanc’s story “Reproduction in a Closed Loop” was
published on Friday, 5 October 2018.
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