News incoming!
I’ve been a regular columnist for OnlySky since 2022. Originally conceived as a news and opinion site for all things secular, it hit a funding snag and shut down in 2024, but later relaunched with a new focus on possible futures.
Now Dale McGowan, OnlySky’s longtime editor-in-chief, is moving on. He’s accepted a full-time position with a national nonprofit that’s working to protect the U.S. electoral system. It sounds like a rough job, now more than ever, but I’m glad someone is doing it.
With Dale’s departure, I’ve accepted a promotion. Starting this month, I’m the new editor-in-chief of OnlySky.
If you’ve been reading my blog here on FTB, nothing is going to change. I intend to keep splitting my time between the two sites as I’ve been doing. My weekly column on OnlySky is oriented specifically toward futurism and future prediction, while on Freethought Blogs, I’ll keep writing about atheism and secularism, book reviews (including my ongoing series on The Probability Broach), current events, and whatever else catches my interest.
Now that I’ve hung out my shingle, I have to post a want ad: OnlySky is seeking writers!
We’re accepting pitches on almost any topic. Politics and religion are allowed, but so are science, technology and culture – just as long as it has a connection to the future or to a possible future. We want to hear predictions, speculations, and leaps of imagination about ways the world could be different. Nonfiction is fine, but I’d be happy to publish well-written fiction as well.
The best part: OnlySky pays for original content! It’s not a lot, admittedly, but it’s more than nothing.
If you’re interested, contact me by e-mail or in the comments below and tell me what you want to write about, and we’ll discuss details.
sounds like a good arrangement for all involved, cool stuff. as much as i’ve been writing a lot of fiction lately, it’s more fantasy than sf, and I don’t see that changing at the moment.
Heh. When I was younger I was interested in futurism, and I might have been interested in sharing my (poorly formed) opinions of our possible futures. These days I’ve become more interested in how humanity reached the position we are in, and I’m reading older books. The book I just finished was written in 1936, titled Oscar Wilde Discovers America. Never heard of it? Not surprising, it was a basically a history of 1882 America. So I’m reading a book published almost 90 years ago which is a history of a time fifty years before that. But the book was engaging and enjoyable to read. From what I can tell there was only one printing, so it really didn’t make quite as big a splash as I suspect the authors hoped.
And yet, the echoes of the past help illuminate today’s issues. One section discussed how the temperance movement really grabbed hold of the public consciousness when it was linked to evangelical religion. Eventually resulting in the 18th Amendment to our Federal Constitution and Prohibition. Is there a parallel today?
If you are willing/interested in articles which explore historical parallels I would be fond of writing some. With the understanding that I am a dilettante, and if I write a short essay about how Henry George went from being an obscure economist with some wacky ideas to influencing Frank Baum in writing about the land of Oz, it would be with the understanding that some academic who has studied Baum’s work in detail could demolish the tenuous connections I may have formed.
If that is not what you are interested in, no worries. I doubt anyone else is either. I amuse myself and that is sufficient for me. If, on the other hand, you have any interest, feel free to reach out to me via email. I would start by offering you a book review of Karl Capek’s War with the Newts which is a 1935 satirical SF novel where mankind first discovers another intelligent species on the planet, enslaves them, teaches them, and is (possibly) usurped by them. The novel ends somewhat ambiguously as the editor asks the author to provide a “happy” ending and the author says, “Sure. If that’s what is needed.”
I don’t think I could offer more than one a month, with the understanding that you may refuse any of them. And I still have to complete my analysis/breakdown of Bébé Mélange’s Blasfemia and Josephine writing from a few months ago. I haven’t forgotten.
Again, what I’m interesting in writing about doesn’t sound like what you are interested in publishing on OnlySky. If I’m mistaken, you know how to reach me. Cheers!
I’ll email you!
holy frijoles! u do have my permission to forget if it improves your quality of life by like 1%
You sound as if you think I’m looking at the task as a chore. It’s not. It just keeps bumped from the top of the queue for seasonal work (I spent three hours spreading gravel on the driveway last weekend, the weekend before I had to repair the toilet in the half-bath) and/or efforts my wife and I are taking to be more social. We stopped seeing a lot of friends during COVID. Most of them are not very social to begin with (neither are we really), but for our own mental health (as well as theirs) we are trying to break ourselves and them away from their computer keyboards by hosting board gaming evenings.
I really am looking forward to breaking apart your plot/structure and offering my thoughts.
that’s very nice of you to say. thanks, flex!
I’d be interested in writing regularly on spiritual concerns whether from a religious or secular angle
Send me an e-mail at adam@onlys.ky with your pitch – we’ll discuss it.