“Miss Snowfall” by Sofia Samatar
In Fallow, a group of people, like the Amish, or perhaps more precisely the Mennonites, build a new Noah’s arc, leave the Earth (which has been poisoned), and drift through…
Drabbleclassics 29 – Primary Pollinator (191)
This week for Drabbleclassics Bart Epstein brings your Primary Pollinator, by Nicole Kimberling. When Dr. Lopez came for me, I was plunging the geo lab toilet. She carried a red…
The sci-fi of another language
The meaning of science fiction stories are often tough to pin down. Do they depict the future or the present? Are they personal or political? Imaginative or reality-based? Also, is…
Flowertongue
Ames knew men who, rather than break their own trail in a hunt, followed another hunter and took that man’s discoveries as his own.
The Future of Work: The Farm, by Charlie Jane Anders
Once, The Daily Argus had fact-checkers, copy editors, legal advisers. Those people are gone now, and in their place there’s the Farm.
The Future of Work: Compulsory, by Martha Wells
My risk-assessment module predicts a 53 percent chance of a human-on-human massacre before the end of the contract.
Excerpt: Autonomous by Annalee Newitz
Earth, 2144. Jack is an anti-patent scientist turned drug pirate, traversing the world in a submarine as a pharmaceutical Robin Hood, fabricating cheap scrips for poor people who can’t otherwise…
Martha Wells, “Rogue Protocol: The Murderbot Diaries”
Wells has incorporated aspects of herself in Murderbot, a fact that resonates with readers. “I have some problems with anxiety and OCD and I’ve put those into the character… and…
Abduction As Romance
Abduction as Romance is a media trope where a man kidnaps or imprisons a woman and she eventually falls in love with him. Abduction as Romance is one of a…
Ray Bradbury: Fahrenheit 451 Misinterpreted
Bradbury says Fahrenheit 451, is, in fact, a story about how television destroys interest in reading literature.