Author: FanLit

Time for our fourth annual SPECULATIVE FICTION HAIKU CONTEST!  Anyone can do this!

As a reminder, here are the rules:

For haiku, the typical subject matter is nature, but if you decide to be traditional, you must give it a fantasy, science fiction, or horror twist. We expect to be told that the peaceful wind you describe is blowing across a landscape of an unfamiliar, distant planet. And if your poem is about a flower, we hope that elegant little touch of beauty is about to be trampled by an Orc. We welcome the sublime as well as the humorous,

It’s time again to share some of our favorite (new or old) quotes from speculative fiction. They can be deep, poignant, witty, hilarious, or otherwise memorable.

You can choose quotes from books you’ve read, or from interviews or blog posts from the authors who write those books.

Give us the quote and the source (book title, link to interview or blog, etc).

Here are quotes that readers mentioned last time we did this. Two are from Guy Gavriel Kay! Click the book cover to read our review.

The deeds of men,

It’s been a couple of years since we played Guess What We’re Reading. Let’s try it again!

Grab a well-known speculative fiction book off the shelf (something you think we should be familiar with), choose a passage and give us 50 words from that passage. Other readers will try to guess your book while you try to guess theirs.

Here are the rules:

• Submit as many passages as you like — just put them in separate comments.
• When you guess someone’s book, reply directly to that comment so we keep the threads neatly organized.

It’s been more than six years since we created SFF knock-knock jokes, so let’s try it again!

Create and share your own (must be original) SFF-inspired knock-knock joke.

The one that makes us laugh the hardest (or groan the most) wins a book from our stacks.

Here is a groan-worthy joke from our previous contest:

Knock knock.
Who’s there?
Ron.
Ron who?
Ron away! The spiders are coming!

It’s time for our annual Fantasy Limerick contest!

Your task is to create a limerick that has something to do with speculative fiction. It could be about a character, a series, an author, or whatever fits the theme. Here are the rules for creating a good limerick (quoting from this source). A limerick:

• is five lines long
• is based on the rhythm “da-da-DAH” (anapest meter)
• has two different rhymes
• Lines 1, 2, and 5 have three of those da-da-DAH “feet,” and rhyme with each other.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO US!

This week marks our TENTH birthday!

Yep, we’ve been hanging out together (well, some of us) since June 2007!

To celebrate, we’re giving away gifts!

TEN commenters from the US will receive some FanLit BOOKMARKS (quite practical!) and a cozy FANLIT T-SHIRT (as long as we still have your size). Or, if you prefer, you may choose a book from our stacks.

You can leave any sort of commnent — a birthday wish,