Category Archives: Nikola Tesla

The Only Harmless Great Thing cover

Elephants and Radium Girls

In The Only Harmless Great Thing, Brooke Bolander has taken on two strange and disturbing events from the early 20th century: the willfully negligent poisoning of ...
Violet Fire, an opera about Nikola Tesla

Tesla, recorded

Violet Fire, the opera about Nikola Tesla that I worked on as librettist with composer Jon Gibson, is finally getting a studio recording! It’s a ...
Cities at night seen from space

Living Tesla’s Dream

Today is the 160th anniversary of Nikola Tesla’s birth. Tesla was a seer of electricity, whose vision of a world transformed with an electric grid ...
Tesla's Wardenclyffe Tower under construction

Tesla in Bankruptcy

On March 18, 1916—one hundred years ago today—the New York World ran an article with the headline: “Tesla No Money Wizard; Swamped by Debts, He ...
Elegy for Tesla, installation by Jeanne Jaffe at Rowan University Art Gallery, detail

An elegy for Tesla

Jeanne Jaffe’s ambitious Elegy for Tesla is a high-tech, dreamlike and heartfelt meditation on Nikola Tesla, the legendary scientist and inventor. Jaffe’s multimedia installation fills ...
Tesla cover image

Nikola Tesla’s hidden contribution

Nikola Tesla is a hero to geeks everywhere, who will be celebrating his birthday this week. World-famous in his lifetime, the prodigiously gifted inventor fell ...
Mark Twain & Crowdfunding

Mark Twain & Crowdfunding

I've just written a guest post for The Head & The Hand Press, considering how Mark Twain's innovations in publishing could be seen as a ...
Gravity and the Noosphere

Gravity and the Noosphere

I loved seeing Gravity. In my opinion, the Planet Earth should be nominated for a supporting-player Oscar. I drank in the massive, stunning views of ...
How Tesla kidnapped my imagination

How Tesla kidnapped my imagination

There’s something about the inventor Nikola Tesla that has strongly attracted artists—much more than his arch-rival Edison, let's say. Tesla’s amazing life and grand visions ...