2022 in Review

image credit: see this page

 1999, 2000 and 2022... a third year with three repeated digits. Yes, one of my mental quirks is an obsession with numbers. On this blog page I'm going to review the year 2022 "popular" blog posts here at the wikifiction blog. As usual, I'm going to be guided by the numbers, particularly the number of page views for my blog posts.

January 2022. I began the year with a set of three blog posts about the science fiction stories of Harry Clement Stubbs (he was born in 1922). For some reason, the third of those, "Nereid Time", was the most visited post of the three. I suppose Nereids are a fairly popular topic.

 Historical Archive. However, the most visited blog post for January was Origin of Nyrtia, a page which holds the second chapter of my 70,000 word science fiction story The Historical Archive. That story makes heavy use of a Reality Simulation System which allows Eddy to visit R. Nyrtia inside a simulation of the First Reality.

before the invention of nipples
cover by Kelly Freas

 February 2022. The most visited blog post in February was "Time Door", in which I commented on the 2021 film The Door Into Summer. So that I could compare that movie to the original Heinlein story, I also read "The Door into Summer" as originally published in the October, November and December 1956 issues of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.

after the invention of nipples
image source

 Teleportation. A close second for popularity in February was "Progress", a blog post in which I commented on some old science fiction stories about teleportation. I took some of those old stories as inspiration when writing my own 30,000 word science fiction story, The Prisoner of L2.

image source

 The Prisoner of L2 was a fun story for me to write because it allowed me to explore one of the interesting features of the Asimov Reality, the technological stasis that was enforced upon Humanity while the human species spread through the galaxy. Eventually, the Alastor Cluster was used as a giant laboratory for the purpose of creating telepathic humans. This involved mixing human gene combinations with gene patterns found in the other species of humanoids that the Phari had collected all together in Alastor Cluster.

 Telepathy. As told in The Prisoner of L2, selected humans in Alastor Cluster were secretly provided with some teleportation technology that facilitated the analysis of gene patterns required for human telepathy. Related Reading: The Frenchyhysur Process (a 25,000 word follow-on story for The Prisoner of L2).

Kwanya. Image made with
   TrissCity01 by Eclesi4stiK
available under CC BY-NC-SA 3.0.

 March 2022. In March I created a special page to document images from this blog that I can attribute to an artist under licenses such as the CC BY-NC-SA 3.0. (see Image Attribution Project). That page has become a very frequently visited page for this blog, but I don't count it as a typical blog page.

The most visited normal blog page for March is "Totally Random" which has the first chapter of my 21,000 word science fiction story Edison's Endosymbiont Experiments. In that story, I imagined that in the Ekcolir Reality, the analogue of Ray Cummings, a Interventionist agent named Reynette, tried to provide Thomas Edison with access to advanced nanotechnology.

image source

 Telekinesis. I did not complete the final chapter of Edison's Endosymbiont Experiments until July (see the blog post "Kineticoids"). There, it is explained how it is possible for some telepaths to take control of nanites and begin to have telekinetic abilities. This is taken to be a lesson for Rylla, demonstrating what she should expect from her grandson, Brak.

 April 2022. The most visited wikifiction blog post for April was  "Seldon Crisis", the second of a series of posts about Apple TV's Foundation television show.

The clones of Sogdian

 Clones. Also in April, I started a new science fiction story called The Cythyrya Investigation. In that story, one of Manny the bumpha's agents on Earth reveals herself to Eddy. Jutta is a clone of the woman who appeared in a story by Jack Vance: Jyryl Tynzy and her clones Zan Zu or Drusilla and otherwise. Jutta is like Nora, an Interventionist agent who got trapped on Earth with no way to get away from this primitive world. After discovering the existence of the Reality Simulation System, Jutta wants to go into a past Reality.

hanging plot threads

 Work in Progress. While writing the first 3 chapters of The Cythyrya Investigation, additional plot threads kept coming to mind and I realized that there was a much larger story there than I had originally imagined. At some point, I'll have to get back to assembling the rest of that story.

image source

Also in April I began the first of several reading projects that have come to dominate much of my blogging this year. I started with Groff Conklin's 1962 anthology that he called Great Science Fiction by Scientists.

 May 2022. The most visited wikifiction blog post for May was "For Womankind". I tried to watch Apple TV's 2019 episodes of For All Mankind. I could not make it through the first 10 episodes of the show. 👎

in the Ekcolir Reality

 June 2022. The most visited blog post for June was "Masters of the Machines" where I commented on Mary Wright's 1929 story "The Brain of the Planet" which begins with the dramatic scientific discovery (made in the year 1935) that humans have telepathic abilities.

image source

 July 2022. The most popular wikifiction blog post in July was "New Aliens" which has my commentary on the first season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. 

 August 2022. "Vance 1952" was the most popular blog post in August. This post was my annual look at old science fiction stories by Jack Vance and included commentary on Vance's 1952 story "Seven Exits from Bocz" which concerns opening up portals to other universes where there are different physical laws.

image source

 Sci Fi Baseball. In August I also began a series of blog posts about science fiction stories featuring the game of baseball. After investigating a large number of stories about baseball, I decided to write a new science fiction story that features a planet devoted to the sport of golf (G World).

in the Ekcolir Reality

 September 2022. The most visited wikifiction blog post for September was "Dr. Fitzjames", the 4th in a series of posts concerning science fiction stories about doctors. Dr. Fitzjames was a character in Isaac Asimov's 1950 story "Legal Rites".

Also in September I began a story called The Nanites of Love. However, this story might eventually be merged with The Cythyrya Investigation. (see my comments above for April).

 October 2022. Among my four blog posts during October, the most visited is "Thought Waves". That blog post includes my comments on the early version of Isaac Asimov's The End of Eternity. That version of the story was published in The Alternate Asimovs.

November 2022

 November 2022. The most visited blog post in November was "Scientific Liberties" which began as an attempt to explore a set of old science fiction stories by Daniel Keyes. That investigative expedition included a re-read of his 1959 story "Flowers for Algernon" which I first read in the 1970s.

Along the way, I also read "Medusa" from the February 1942 issue of Astounding Science-Fiction and "To Marry Medusa" (1958), both by Theodore Sturgeon. 

At the end of that November blog post, I commented on three stories by Mari Wolf: "The House on the Vacant Lot" (time travel), "Robots of the World! Arise!" and "Homo Inferior" (the far future of human telepathy).

the fountain of youth (image source)

 December 2022. The most visited wikifiction blog page for December was Phobos Base, the second half of a two-part story called "Someday Mars". I'm often puzzled when it is not the first part of a story that gets the most traffic. Maybe it has something to do with the amount of traffic generated by my tweets on Twitter that mention my blog posts. Also in December, my 2022 SIHA (Search for Interesting Hollywood Aliens) award was another retro-SIHA.

#1 - The most visited wikifiction blog post of 2022 is "New Aliens" which I'll take as an indication of the continuing popularity of all things related to Star Trek.

Related Reading: the 2021 year in review. 2023.

Next: James E. Gunn (1923 - 2023)

New in 2023: Echo of Cynym.
Visit the Gallery of Movies, Book and Magazine Covers