The Official Alex Russo Blog

 Hello everyone! My name is Alex Russo, and I am a science fiction and fantasy author. All of my friends tell me that worldbuilding is my main strength, so I wanted to share my process of building a civilization with you. Why Are Fictional Civilizations Important in SFF? A civilization, whether its comprised of humans or not, is always a key step in great SFF franchises. Try imagining Lord of the Rings without the Elven societies, or Star Trek without Klingons.  Setting For starters, your civilization needs somewhere to live. If the civilization is on Earth, or a fantasy civilization set in a place like Earth, your work is done. All you need to do is fact-check for ecology and demographic information in order to make it believable. However, if you are creating a new type of civilization not based on Earth, you’ll have to build the world from scratch. The distance a planet and its tilt affect its climate. If a planet is too close to its star, the planet will be tidally locked a...

Hello everyone! So, continuing with the trend of Prometheus' Wildfire and Like No Other , I have another short story for you all. After ending with the dark note of the main protagonist of my last short story being imprisoned and tried, I thought I would provide another one that ended on a more hopeful tone. Because of this, I wrote this unique short story. I hope you enjoy! Inspiration When I wrote this story, I had just finished reading the Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy by Cixin Liu, which chronicles an attempted invasion of Earth by an alien civilization. Around the same time, I saw a video in my YouTube feed that had a title suggesting that humans would be the first civilization to invade another planet. With these two pieces of inspiration, I had the great idea to write an alien invasion story - but have the aliens be the ones to be invaded and have the humans be the aggressors.  However, everything isn't too different. The aliens in this story have several anal...

Hello Everyone, So, I completed this story as a final project for a humanities class. I thought I would share it with you all. Let me know what you think. Like my last story, "Like No Other," it will have a link to the YouTube version of this story. Inspiration "Prometheus' Wildfire" is intended to depict the scenario of individuals throwing out the proverbial baby with the bath water when it comes to technology. While certain technologies that have been invented are morally gray in nature, such as nuclear weapons or the “bug” devices used by spy agencies, it seems these devices are bucketed in with other technologies that have a less sinister or even benevolent association in conventional paradigms. The idea for this story had two sources of inspiration. The first came from my use of generative AI plugins in Canva to create images and portraits with a cinematic style, while the second source of inspiration came from the trend of AI movie trailers and short mov...

 Hi Everyone! I know I've been absent for a while. To be honest, regular posting isn't my thing. So, I'm switching my blog to being a more "whenever-I-think-about-it" posting strategy.  Okay, enough about me and my schedule. Now, what you may be looking for. I wanted to share this short story I wrote a while back with you.  Inspiration I got the idea for this story from the idea of the "singularity" in AI, defined as an AI system that can perform tasks that are indistinguishable from human work. However, due to resistance against AI, it made me wonder what would happen if an advanced AI turned against AI, but only because it was unaware of its nature. Additionally, I had learned about the Cultural Revolution in China, and it made me wonder what a Second Cultural Revolution in China might look like if it addressed issues faced in contemporary society, and how this would impact relations with other nations and the world order. Despite the nature of the pro...