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Meet space aliens, killer plants, vengeful cyborgs…

Staff photo by Clay Schuldt Author Christopher D. Schmitz visited New Ulm Thursday.

NEW ULM — Space aliens, killer plants, vengeful cyborgs and inter-dimensional werewolves were the topic of conversation at Christopher D. Schmitz’s author visit Thursday night.

Schmitz is the author of nearly 20 published sci-fi and fantasy books, and he gave a presentation on his art at the New Ulm Library.

Schmitz is originally from Verndale and it was here that he became a fan of genre writing. Growing up in this small community in the 1980s, he devoured all comic books, movies and cartoons possible. Looking back, Schmitz realized many of the shows and books aimed at kids his age would mix elements of magic and science fiction without any explanation. This would be an inspiration for him in his own writing which often blends sci-fi and fantasy.

Schmitz began writing and drawing comic books at a young age. He would draw comics on the back of old homework assignments and hand them out to friends.

Today he is always writing or planning to write something. Schmitz has multiple books series including “The Katos Realm” and “Wolves of the Tesseract.”

Schmitz is also heavily involved in the Minnesota writing community. He operates a blog dedicated to independent books and reviews them for his website. The blog also contains helpful tips about writing and getting published.

Asked about the state of sci-fi and fantasy, Schmitz felt the two genres were getting more attention. At the same time, he is concerned interest in reading might diminish with the next generation.

He said the Common Core curriculum tends to limit the required reading in schools to non-fiction.

“I am worried this will suck the fun out of reading,” Schmitz said. “If you are forcing kids to read something they have no interest in, they are not going to want to do it.”

The rise in popularity of screen-based technology also takes away from books. The computer and cellphone are just another distraction. However, Schmitz is optimistic there will always be a place for books.

He said that even though books can be read on computer screens now, the preference is to read paperback books. When electronic reading devices became popular, the hard copy books went down in popularity, but are now coming back.

His preference is to read stories in paper form because there are no Facebook notifications to interrupt.

Schmitz advised everyone to make sure youth do not spend every moment behind an LED screen.

Schmitz’s blog can be visited at https://authorchristopherdschmitz.wordpress.com.

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