Celebrating Tesla
An opera turns into a book Years ago I became entranced by the visionary inventor, Nikola Tesla, and I began …
Reclaiming the Monster
Women can be monsters too. From snake-haired Medusa to the horrifying mama-alien of the Alien movies, female monsters have often …
Our Shared Futures
Can climate fiction help us see our way through the maze of possible futures we face? Can it help us …
Message From the Future Kim Stanley Robinson amps up his message on climate change
Kim Stanley Robinson’s climate-fiction blockbuster, The Ministry for the Future, has galvanized readers both within and outside the science fiction …
The Uncanny Valley of Zoom backgrounds
We’ve all been talking about the Zoom experience. How it’s slightly off from the in-person experience, in ways that can …
Blobs, Orbs, and Starfish: Really Alien Aliens
Book blogger Shruti Ramanujam recently published a list of “oddly specific storylines” she loves in books, that made me laugh …
Elephants and Radium Girls Electricity and Complicity in Brooke Bolander’s The Only Harmless Great Thing
In The Only Harmless Great Thing, Brooke Bolander has taken on two strange and disturbing events from the early 20th …
Doctor Atomic’s blast zone
The latest production ofDoctor Atomic, the opera about the birth of the Nuclear Age by composer John Adams and director/librettist …
The Broken Earth Trilogy —and why it should win a third straight Hugo for N. K. Jemisin
Reading each volume of The Broken Earth trilogy by N. K. Jemisin left me electrified. The first two books, The …
Coming out as a Fan
It’s time for me to come out as a member of sci-fi fandom. I love science fiction and fantasy. I’ve …
Tesla, recorded
Violet Fire, the opera about Nikola Tesla that I worked on as librettist with composer Jon Gibson, is finally getting …
American Bardo
As I read George Saunders’ daring first novel Lincoln in the Bardo recently, I was struck by its strangely close …
Thinking about Gaia
In this month of Earth Day and marching for science and climate, I’m thinking about Gaia. A hashtag popped up …
Grieving for a whole planet From Princess Leia to Doris Lessing
When I saw the first Star Wars movie, A New Hope, I couldn’t get past that moment when Princess Leia …
An Alternate History reading list for this moment Or, Did Philip K. Dick foresee our current predicament?
Are we living in an alternate branch of history? I’ve been asking myself that question since waking up the morning …
Other Times, Other Worlds—Fran Wilde & Lawrence M. Schoen
I’m excited to be part of All But True’s next author event, “Other Times, Other Worlds,” with two award-winning science …
Ursula K. Le Guin: Telling makes the world
Maria Popova has written on her wonderful website Brain Pickings about Ursula K. Le Guin’s essay on the nature of …
Living Tesla’s Dream
American Midwest at night — a piece of Tesla’s worldwide electric grid, taken from the ISS, 9/29/2011 Today is the …
The radical leaps of A Wrinkle in Time
I was in sixth grade when I was swept up in the world of A Wrinkle in Time, part of …
Tesla in Bankruptcy
Tesla’s Wardenclyffe Tower On March 18, 1916—one hundred years ago today—the New York World ran an article with the headline: …
Kate Atkinson and quantum physics
Kate Atkinson has now won the Costa Book Award twice in the past three years—for her companion novels, A God …
