So, I’ve taken a break from Science Fiction Weekly for awhile. This weekend was spent working on both Fantasy Short Stories Book Four and Alien Dimensions #19, as well as a short story that has been running around in my head for awhile. I’ll make a separate post for it soon.

Yes, finally back to writing. It feels great! But a bit difficult to keep ploughing on with it when there’re bushfires, flooding, a coronavirus, and other personal issues happening.

For those freaking out about the coronavirus, just to put things in perspective, Malaria kills half a million people every year. If we’re talking diseases generally, 10 million people die from heart attacks every year. Almost 100,000 people die from the flu just in the USA every year. With 327 million people, that’s about 0.0003%. Extrapolating that, at least 2 million people die of the flu every year on the planet. Probably a lot more than that in less healthy areas. That’s on top of all the other diseases. So, unless we start getting figures of the coronavirus killing more than 2 million people a year, it isn’t worthy of the panic and stress and racism that it seems to be creating. (Update July 2020. At 600,000 deaths worldwide, 6 months later. So, it’s overtaken malaria, and the USA’s COVID-19 death toll has exceeded its usual flu death toll. Thanks to health care professionals world wide, it could have been a lot worse. Having said that, this has now been confirmed to be a bit stronger than your average flu, targeting anyone with poor health, smoking or vaping, or living in a highly polluted area. Still, you’re more likely to die in a car crash. The average is 1.35 million deaths a year.)

We just need to be alert, not alarmed.

For those of us who’ve heard this all before, this is just another SARS / Bird Flu / Swine Flu / media advertising revenue generator. Exercise, eat healthily (Mediterranean diet?), stay positive, and if you get it and you don’t have any other underlying health conditions, (and you’re in a first world country with access to a good health system if you do), it’ll just be another flu for you.

Of course, if you get any kind of symptoms that could be related to the coronavirus you should get medical advice from a trained professional! Don’t trust the ramblings of a depressed science fiction writer!

I’m getting out of my slump thanks to Doctor Who, Avenue 5 and Star Trek: Picard. How wonderful that 2020 is going to be the golden year for science fiction streaming. Loved the spy eps, Tesla ep, and the black Doctor ep of Doctor Who, the satire of Avenue 5, and the heartbreaking nostalgia of Star Trek: Picard. Definitely looking forward to all the shows coming out this year. (July update. Wow. So much for that idea. Many shows and movies have been delayed.)

Not sure if everyone is going to get Avenue 5’s humour though. One of my favourite scenes:

Mia: “What are you so happy about?”
Matt: “I’m a nihilist”
Mia: “No you’re not.”
Matt: “Whatever!”
Mia: “Oh my God.”

Improves with repeated viewing.

In any case, there’s been some great writing in these series and I can see some Hugo nominations happening in early 2021, if everyone remembers!

In other news, I’ve come to the painful conclusion that I’ll have to delay writing the Robots of Atlantis for a while. I might have time to do a bit more of it in May with the plan to finish it by October. We’ll see.

Update July 2020 – Due to the COVID-19 situation having got a lot worse than most were expecting in January, and my city being under lockdown for months, I haven’t had any chance to focus on the book, what with worrying about where my income is going to come from, and being in a one bedroom apartment with my family 24/7. Lucky we’re introverts, but not being able to go to a cafe and have a couple of hours every day in silence to write has meant there’s been no progress on the Robots of Atlantis since February.

I’m really sorry to let everyone down about this. I’ll just have to delay it until 2021.

I hope you’re all safe and well, and hope the rest of the year will be better for you.