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The Official Story

James Pyles is a published Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror author as well as the Technical Writer for a large, diversified business in the Northwest. He currently has over 40 short stories published in various anthologies and two novellas. He won the 2021 Helicon Short Story Award for his science fiction tale “The Three Billion Year Love” which appears in the Tuscany Bay Books Planetary Anthology Mars.

Some History

I created this blogspot as a way to explore the possibility of becoming a SF/F writer (with a side of horror). Ever since I was in high school many decades ago, I’ve wanted to write fiction, but every time I made the attempt, I felt my characters were two-dimensional and my plot lines were too derivative.

So I quit.

Then the writing bug would bite me again some years later and I’d give it another go.

Then I quit again.

And so on.

But then a friend of mine recommended an anthology to me called God, Robot edited by Anthony Marchetta. It’s sort of a twist on the Isaac Asimov “I, Robot” theme where humanoid AIs are driven by the now very famous Three Laws of Robotics, except replace the three laws with the Bible and a focus on Catholicism.

I didn’t find it realistic for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is that robots are created by people, not God, so they’d be one step removed from concepts of original sin, repentance, redemption, and life in the world to come. So I contacted Anthony and asked his permission to write my own story on a blog. He graciously said it was okay and was rather encouraging.

So I launched “Powered by Robots” on May 13, 2016 with The Robot Who Loved God.

My trajectory has gone through many changes since then.

Now, I write SF/F short stories, send them to open submission calls for anthologies and magazines and collect rejection emails.  Since the beginning of 2019, I’ve had stories accepted for publication. I’ve also been involved in writing for two “shared universe” concepts creating tales, with other authors that are in the same “environment.”

A 2000 interview with Orson Scott Card convinced me that expressions of faith and spirituality should be and always have been part of the human (and other) experience. I also try to work in things as mundane as eating (since people do that) and have my characters belong to families, and not just the dysfunctional kind. So much of modern SF/F/Horror seems to disdain the good and noble qualities people possess. I find I’m drawn (though not exclusively) to superversive writing.

How to Find Me and Other Stories

You can reach me through leaving a comment on any of the blog entries here or filling out the form on the Contact page. This will send me an email to which I’m likely to respond (your email address will not be visible publicly).

I’ve put a search box at the bottom of each page so if you want to see if I’ve written about a particular topic or subject, please use it.

If you wish to follow this blog, a convenient button can be found at the bottom of the page along with my copyright statement.

Oh, I created an Amazon Author’s Page since I’m already extensively published, just not in the realm of fiction.

If you’ve purchased and read any of my stories, please write honest reviews on Amazon and Goodreads. Writers love reviews.

Cheers.