Never Give Up, Never Surrender: 20 Years of Galaxy Quest
In 2019, watching a fascinating sci-fi film or series is as easy as firing up your smart TV or cell…
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Tales of Two Drowned Cities: New York 2140 and Blackfish City
In his science fantasy novel Blackfish City , Sam J. Miller posits that “all cities are science experiments.” As experiments…
Altered Carbon Holds Up as a Compelling Cyberpunk Mystery
I first read Richard K. Morgan’s Takeshi Kovacs trilogy years ago, and really enjoyed it. When word arrived that Netflix…
2001: A Space Odyssey at 50
Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey landed in theaters 50 years ago today. I am old enough that I saw…
You Are Reading a Blog Post About Point of View in N. K. Jemisin’s The Broken Earth Trilogy
The 2017 Nebula Award nominees were announced last week, and the Best Novel nod for N.K. Jemisin’s The Stone Sky means…
5 Ways to Give an Artificial Intelligence Real Personality
Artificial intelligence (AI), by definition, is somehow made, rather than innate. But how do you make an intelligence? It is…
Holiday Travel Tips from Science Fiction Novels
The holidays are often a time for travel. Sometimes long trips. And sometimes, long trips, they don’t go well. These…
Interstellar Visitors, Just Passing Through: Fact, Fiction, and Arthur C. Clarke’s Rama Series
This past fall, astronomers from the Pan-STARRS program in Hawaii announced they had spotted a small asteroid, or perhaps a…
The Better Halves of Three Pioneering Science Fiction Writing Couples
At this year’s Hugo Awards, an unprecedented number of shiny rocket trophies went to women writers. And yet, despite the…
The Future Library Is a Vote of Confidence Humanity Will Make It to 2114
You thought waiting for the remaining volumes of A Song of Ice and Fire was bad. How about waiting nearly…
Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and Gray Mouser Deserve Their Own Sword & Sorcery Buddy Movie
By most reckonings, the three biggest names in the sword and sorcery sub-genre are Robert E. Howard, Fritz Leiber, and…
Harlan Ellison: He’s Not Dead Yet, and He’s Not Done Either
In a 1994 Babylon 5 episode “TKO,” a character in the year 2258 is seen reading, and laughing, at a…
55 Essential Space Operas from the Last 70 Years
What makes a science fiction story a space opera? Well, it needs to take place in space obviously, though not…
Space Opera: Making Us Immortal with One Neat Trick
We used to call it a cliché, now we might prefer the term “enduring meme,” but either way, everyone knows…
Samuel Delany, Science Fiction and Cultural Pioneer, Turns 75
Samuel R. Delany turned 75 on April 1. “Chip” to his friends (what I wouldn’t give to be part of…
Throwback Thursday: Theodore Sturgeon’s More than Human Points a Way for Us to “Live Long and Prosper”
I recently read and enjoyed Ramez Naam’s Nexus, a book with a central premise that has preoccupied science fiction since H.G. Wells…
Pat Frank Faced the Threat of Atomic Armageddon and Answered with Hope
Nowadays in science fiction, we can choose how the world will end from a laundry list of grim possibilities—nanotechnology run…
Throwback Thursday: The Stars My Destination Serves Up Revenge as Cold as the Vacuum of Space
Alfred Bester was a pioneer of the science fiction field, and he’s got the legacy to show for it: he was the…