EDGE Science Fiction & Fantasy Publishing
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It is the birthday of Danish author and poet Hans Christian Andersen, born in 1805 in the town of Odense. He went to work at a young age, supporting himself first as a weaver’s apprentice, then a tailor’s. At 14 he moved to Copenhagen, hoping to become an actor, and began writing when a theater colleague called him a poet. He published his first story, The Ghost at Palnatoke’s Grave, in 1822. He eventually went to college, but he was a mediocre student.

It’s the birthday of the world’s most famous womanizer, Giacomo Casanova, born in Venice in 1725. His mother, Zanetta Farussi, was an actress, and his father, Gaetano Giuseppe Casanova, was an actor and dancer. Venice at that time was a kind of Las Vegas of Italy, with its gambling dens and courtesans and whose religious and political leaders valued tourism and turned a blind eye to vice.

Today is the birthday of science fiction and fantasy author Anne McCaffrey, born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1926. She’s best known for her Dragonriders of Pern series about Earth colonists on the planet of Pern living in a medieval-ish society with genetically engineered dragons, but it’s far from her only accomplishment. McCaffrey began writing sci-fi in the late 1950s when the genre’s readership was primarily male. When Star Trek became popular in the late 1960s, it dr...ew women in, and they responded to McCaffrey’s heroines. Female authors, especially sci-fi authors, struggled to be taken seriously; when reporters asked her more than once how she found time to write and still get her housework done, McCaffrey would answer, You’ve got that wrong how do I find time for housework with all my writing? She was the first woman to be awarded the prestigious Hugo Award for Science Fiction, in 1968. McCaffrey died in 2011 at the age of 85.

In the news: George R.R. Martin just inked a five-year, eight-figure deal with HBO to help create new content. (Who else wants to be a fantasy author now?)

Happy Birthday to painter, sculptor & designer H. R. Giger (5 February 1940 12 May 2014)

Woman Who Takes Ring To ‘Antiques Roadshow’ Is Speechless To Lean Its Origin

Adventured game of the future, now... Ever played a game called AI Dungeon? It’s available on desktop and mobile, and it’s an AI game that generates the story as you go. you can check out the desktop version here:... https://buff.ly/3rqZ2Ow You give it a prompt, it uses GPT-3 artificial intelligence to generate a (sometimes) cohesive story. It’s a pretty cool concept.

This was Science Fiction no so long ago.... As of last week, there’s a 3D printed house listed on Zillow, which has been constructed from 3D-printed pieces. It’s a cool concept but can you guess the price?... It’s just $300k, and it looks like a typical suburban New York home (which is where it’s listed). https://buff.ly/3pLxS4s