We Do What We Can: A Conversation with Ryka Aoki
Ryka Aoki discusses her second novel, LIGHT FROM UNCOMMON STARS.
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Posts Tagged: sci-fi
An Elaborately Constructed Artifice: Maxwell’s Demon by Steven Hall
Slipstream may as well be what we call our bewilderment.
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The Rumpus Poetry Book Club Chat with Elizabeth Lindsey Rogers
Elizabeth Lindsey Rogers discusses her new collection, THE TILT TORN AWAY FROM THE SEASONS.
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The Good, the Bad, and the Unf*ckwittable: Talking with Ron A. Austin
Ron A. Austin discusses his debut novel, AVERY COLT IS A THIEF, A SNAKE, A LIAR.
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The Rumpus Poetry Book Club Chat with Sarah Blake
Sarah Blake discusses her new collection, Let’s Not Live on Earth, questions in poems, monsters, and the challenge of writing a dystopia.
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The Real Fake News
In 2017, newscaster cameos may be the only fact-fiction crossovers for which people have no difficulty keeping the two concepts apart.
...moreThis Week in Short Fiction
Well, it’s been one week under the Trump administration, and already we are living in a land of “alternative facts.” After Kellyanne Conway used the term to defend Press Secretary Sean Spicer’s falsehoods regarding the inauguration crowd size on Sunday, the American people were, understandably, reminded of George Orwell’s 1984, and sales of the book […]
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The Rumpus interview with Jeremy P. Bushnell
Jeremy P. Bushnell discusses his new novel, The Insides, themes of consent, and designing a post-apocalyptic board game.
...moreThis Week in Short Fiction
Some people write about dystopian futures, or reimagined folktales, or ghosts, or science fiction. Sequoia Nagamatsu, author of the upcoming story collection Where We Go When All We Were Is Gone, does it all. The debut collection, out this month from Black Lawrence Press, weaves Japanese folklore and pop culture into fantastical plots and futuristic […]
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The Double Agency of Will Smith in Sci-Fi
Smith’s characters act as witnesses for the rehabilitated offender, the white-supremacist nation-state.
...moreA Future of Forbidden Books
At Electric Literature, Lydia Pine examines dystopian and sci-fi works of fiction that offer a glimpse of what bookshelves and libraries might look like in the future: In Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 and Ayn Rand’s Anthem, books-on-bookshelves is actually a forbidden scenario. Even in the campy sci-fi universe of Star Trek, the twenty-fourth century boasts digital books stored on tablets; […]
...moreThis Week in Short Fiction
This week, we have two stories of time machines and space stations, but mostly of people who clean up messes. Amber Sparks’s second collection of short stories, The Unfinished World, published on Monday by Liveright, is a vivid and imaginative blend of sci-fi and fantasy, magical realism and surrealism. Her stories resist being contained in […]
...moreHer Universe
Sci-fi has a women problem. The New York Times spoke to fangirl-turned-publisher Ashley Eckstein about making room in the conversation: “Liking Star Wars is not a trend; it’s part of who you are,” she said, adding that she was disturbed to see women harassed for liking sci-fi and fantasy. “It was troubling to me; it was […]
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The Rumpus Interview with Dean Koontz
Dean Koontz talks about his newest novel, Ashley Bell, overcoming self-doubt, and “what this incredibly beautiful language of ours allows you to do.”
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The Rumpus Interview with William Gibson
Legendary technomodernist William Gibson, author of Neuromancer, talks about his latest book, The Peripheral, predicting the future, and how writing about Silicon Valley today feels like his early work.
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The Rumpus Interview with Lincoln Michel
Lincoln Michel talks about his debut short story collection, Upright Beasts, his interest in monsters, and what sources of culture outside of literature inspire him.
...moreApocalypse Now
Take that, Mom and Dad. Turns out studying literature can be practical. The Atlantic looks at the evolution of climate fiction, a new genre that’s getting readers interested in environmental issues and inspiring students to study STEM subjects: In this respect, cli-fi is a truly modern literary phenomenon: born as a meme and raised into […]
...moreThe Truthening of Science Fiction
Cecilia D’Anastasio explores the origins of science fiction via Lucian of Samosata’s True History. Lucian’s True History, a second-century satire of contemporary travel writing that took classical mythology and its monsters at face value. D’Anastasio questions the themes that define science fiction, such as how deeply science and technology must be integrated to classify a […]
...moreDan Weiss’s Morning Coffee
(Dan Weiss is out on tour with his band The Yellow Dress. He’ll be back on August 3rd.) Despite Tipper Gore’s fears, 80s metalheads grew up to be well-adjusted adults. This vintage movie preview shows that 1982 might have been the best year for sci-fi flicks. A fisherman in Maine made a catch that was […]
...moreI, Twitterbot
At the New York Review of Books, James Gleick says that the future promised in novels like I, Robot is already here—in the form of Twitterbots.
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The Rumpus Interview with Benjamin Parzybok
Author Benjamin Parzybok talks about his new novel, Sherwood Nation, climate fiction, the difference between post-collapse and post-apocalyptic, and how novels can predict the future if they try hard enough (and get lucky).
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The Saturday Rumpus Review of Under The Skin
Part misandry-based revenge fantasy, part science fiction mash-up, Under the Skin weasels its way into your reptilian brain from its first baffling frames.
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The Rumpus Interview with Jeff VanderMeer
Jeff VanderMeer discusses the environment, his childhood, and the conception and conclusion of his Southern Reach Trilogy.
...moreChipping at Wonder Woman
Samuel “Chip” Delany’s penned the landmark 800 page science fiction tri-sexual space novel, any number of short stories set through all corners of the galaxy, and a craft book Junot Diaz calls “a measure of what all criticism and literature should aspire to be, but what you might not know is that he also wrote […]
...moreStraight out of Kafka
All for a novel? Eighth grade school teacher Patrick McLaw was placed on leave by the Dorchester County Board of Education and is currently being investigated by the County’s Sheriff, James Phillips, who explained—somewhat cryptically—that McLaw is at a “location known to law enforcement . . . [without] the ability to travel anywhere.” So far, […]
...moreDelving Head-First into Wonder
Often times readers dismiss graphic novels as too unrealistic to posses literary merit. That would be a mistake, argues Stefan A. Slater at The Airship, because reality isn’t inherently part of good story telling. Plenty of other fictional forms flaunt the rules of the naturalistic universe while retaining literary value, and graphic novels often contain […]
...moreDigital Age Fuels Sci-Fi Short Stories
The digital era has brought on a new golden age of science fiction. Electronic books, self-driving cars, and video phones may not seem too fictional these days, but technology like the Internet has empowered all sorts of new distribution methods connecting sci-fi writing with the fans who support it. New science fiction magazines launch with crowd […]
...more“Black to the Future”
Black to the future was/is a radical, dangerous, and daring dream—an impossibility. Science fiction and fantasy (sf&f) is a rehearsal of the impossible, an ideal realm for redefinition and reinvention. For Africans and their descendants in the diaspora, decolonizing our mind/body/spirits was/is an on-going sf&f project. In a stellar essay for the LA Review of Books, […]
...moreHow Accurate Is Chang-Rae Lee’s New Novel?
Perhaps American sci-fi is made to tell immigrant stories. And maybe there’s a reason why, during a 24-hour travel back to Taipei, I felt welcomed home by the collective voice of B-more. Kevin Tang’s review of Chang-rae Lee’s On Such a Full Sea for BuzzFeed Books brings to bear his experience growing up in late-’80s Taiwan, […]
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