Limp, the body of Gorrister hung from the pink palette; unsupported—hanging high above us in the computer chamber; and it did not shiver in the chill, oily breeze .
I found this article about why we'll probably never be able to escape earth in a fleet of chrome-y, salvific starships to be beautifully written and surprisingly moving! Won't you join me in the reading of it?
A few weeks ago, Geoff Marcy was being discussed as a potential Nobel Prize honoree. Then BuzzFeed leaked the story that Marcy had been found guilty of sexual harassment. Last Thursday, my colleagues and I received an email from the Chancellor of UC Berkeley informing us that Marcy had resigned.
There’s no running from worldbuilding anymore. A tidbit of information about The Hunger Games films or "Game of Thrones" leaks, provoking fans and news outlets alike into a frenzy. Entire wikis are meticulously curated for each series, every line and scene analyzed for maximum informative potential. The ability to craft an expansive fictional sandbox for readers to immerse themselves in has become as important as plot lines or characters in determining the enduring popularity…
What happens when you revisit the woefully misremembered science fiction of your youth? Joe Howley (Latin teacher) and Johannah King-Slutzky (internet wraith) ask adults to re-read their genre favorites from childhood. For the fourth installment in our series, we talked to bona fide adult Rahawa Haile, an Eritrean-American short story writer with a day job in the title insurance industry. We spoke with Rahawa via Gchat about how Alfred Bester's The Stars My Destination…
What happens when you revisit the woefully misremembered science fiction of your youth? Joe Howley (Latin teacher) and Johannah King-Slutzky (internet wraith) asked adults to re-read their genre favorites from childhood. For the second in our Time Quartet series, we talked to bona fide adult Julia Wetherell, a radio producer for Playing on Air and one of the developers of the upcoming Autostraddle podcast. We spoke with Julia via Gchat about how…
Previously: How to tell if you are in a high fantasy novel. Something has gone terribly wrong with the earth's orbit, but modern gender roles are still pretty much intact. Even ray guns cannot destroy man's oldest and strongest enemy - hubris. A beautiful woman who represented all that was good and pure in human civilization is horribly killed, and it is at least 45% your fault. A princess of the warrior caste with gleaming…
What happens when you revisit the woefully misremembered science fiction of your youth? Joe Howley (Latin teacher) and Johannah King-Slutzky (internet wraith) asked adults to re-read their genre favorites from childhood. For the second in our series, we talked to bona fide adult Dave Klion, a foreign policy analyst and editor at World Politics Review, about Frank Herbert's 1965 epic, Dune. We spoke with Dave via Gchat about how Dune affected…
What happens when you revisit the woefully misremembered science fiction of your youth? Joe Howley (Latin teacher) and Johannah King-Slutzky (internet wraith/underachiever) asked adults to re-read their genre favorites from childhood. For the first in our Time Quartet series, we talked to bona fide adult Kate Franklin, an archaeologist who for the past seven years has worked for the Medieval Archaeology of the South Caucasus at the Oriental Institute (whew!) studying Medieval Armenia.…
Screams echoed through the woods around the towering play fort at Camp Tanasi, where dozens of Girl Scouts in denim shorts and ‘90s-bright T-shirts chased each other over logs and under branches, some shrieking as they ducked and dodged, some cackling with triumph as they tackled other girls to the ground.
I watched the mayhem from my haven inside the fort’s base, receiving periodic dispatches from my deputy, a red-haired, round-faced
“The same girl who had first let her in had apparently just opened the door and was still standing in the doorway. Jane now conceived for her that almost passionate admiration which women, more often than is supposed, feel for other women whose beauty is not of their own type. It would be nice, Jane thought, to be like that -- so straight, so forthright, so valiant, so fit to be mounted on
I would never, ever ask you to read a 5000 word short story about a robot family if I didn't absolutely love it. This is GREAT. - Ed.
The robot family upstairs has a mother, a father, 1.5 children and a dog. The l.0 of the children is a robot girl, the .5 is a baby boy. He cries at regular intervals throughout the day, like an alarm going off. Emily could set
A famous author once said, “Any sufficiently opaque science fiction narrative is indistinguishable from a Christ allegory.” (Or something along those lines.) We should expect any movie set in low earth orbit to at least consider why we don’t see any dudes with harps perched on clouds. Science fiction draws theological metaphor to it like ravenous bug aliens to abandoned space stations, but reviewers and critics tend to avoid discussing the spiritual roots of a…
It might be a bit apples and oranges to compare the current comic-book-blockbuster landscape to the last century of science fiction magazines. Nonetheless, as I worked my way through New Eves, an anthology of lady-penned science fiction from decades past, this is the comparison that came to mind.
I was supposed to be so excited to see Iron Man 3 — and not just because I owned Iron Man on DVD before I moved…
