Section
Speculative Fiction
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Reality, as Seen by Godzilla
Perhaps the function of Godzilla is to trouble happily ever after.
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“In Any Version of Reality”: Talking SF with Charles Yu
“It’s why science fiction matters so much to me: I’m trying to dislocate our sense of the normal.”
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To Air Is Human
An aerodynamicist and an anthropologist discuss the world of “Dune,” finding it as aesthetically beautiful as it is functionally implausible.
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How to Build a World
Storytelling like that of Ursula K. Le Guin or Hayao Miyazaki reveals how real-world politics is similarly an act of collective “world building.”
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A Quiet Disaster: Mexico City, Mexico
Apocalyptic writers would be surprised by the suddenness with which Mexico City, during the pandemic, took on the guise of a ghost town.
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“Lovecraft Country”: A Spell Gone Awry
Lovecraft Country runs on a formula: genre clichés—however racist—only need to be painted over, so as to be enjoyed without guilt.
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Experiments in Feral Futuring
Two futurists ran an experiment: What happens when a room of strangers plan for the future together?
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The DJ Is a Time Machine
Let’s rupture and reject the “timeline,” a flawed and colonial form of teaching history.
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Let’s Polarize Together
Humans can adapt to almost anything. So if social media forces us into permanently hostile camps, we will learn to stop seeing any other way.
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The Realism of Our Times: Kim Stanley Robinson on How Science Fiction Works
“We’re in a science fiction novel now that we are all co-writing together.”[none-for-homepage]
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Can Comics Save Your Life?
In lockdown, one shop asked for people to submit comics of “a utopian world after we survive this moment.” Hundreds around the world answered.
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The Worst of All Possible Worlds?
The most interesting science fiction is not about the future at all but about the present.
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“The Places Where Things Blur”: Namwali Serpell on “The Old Drift”
“One of the reasons it took so long to write is that—as I would joke with my friends—I found myself writing the great Zambian novel.” [none-for-homepage]
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Motherhood and Other Monsters
In The Babadook and The Need, the introduction of a monster amplifies preexisting anxieties, rather than generating fresh ones.
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MAGA: Margaret Atwood’s Gilead Again
Margaret Atwood has argued that there is “within each utopia, a concealed dystopia; within each dystopia, a hidden utopia, if only in the form of the world as it …
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Ray Bradbury on War, Recycling, and Artificial Intelligence
One of the roles of science fiction is to provide readers with a glimpse of how …
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Asimov’s Empire, Asimov’s Wall
Isaac Asimov loved large numbers. He was born a century ago this month, and when he died, in 1992, he was both the most famous science fiction writer in the …
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“To Reach the Pure Realm of the Imaginary”: A Conversation with Cixin Liu
The renowned Chinese science fiction writer Cixin Liu is best known as the author of the best-selling, Obama-beloved, Hugo-winning, and truly mind-bending trilogy … [none-for-homepage]
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How Ken Liu Translates, and Why He Writes
Ken Liu is a celebrated author of American speculative fiction and a pathbreaking translator of Chinese science fiction into English. He has won the …
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Machines Like Me, But They Love You
In almost any book about artificial life, there comes a moment when the humans, like Victor Frankenstein, are obliged to confront the full reality of what they’ve …
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Samuel Delany on Capitalism, Racism, and Science Fiction
Samuel Delany was 20 when his first novel, The Jewels of Aptor, appeared …
