speculative fiction
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This Week in Short Fiction
This week, the bimonthly magazine of international literature World Literature Today released its March 2017 issue, with the timely theme “Dystopian Visions.” The issue features thirteen writers’ dark speculations on the future, crossing the globe from Cuba to Japan. In…
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This Week in Essays
At The California Sunday Magazine, Brooke Jarvis has a devastating piece about missing persons and family members lost over the border. For VIDA, Jean Ho shares her discouraging experience at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. And here at The Rumpus, Chellis Ying writes…
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The Rumpus Interview with Malka Older
Malka Older discusses her debut novel Infomocracy, the nature of elections, and the future of democracy.
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Anti-Blackness in Sci-Fi Publishing
Less than two percent of science fiction stories published in 2015 were by black writers. And a recent study found that black speculative fiction writers face “universal” racism—more damning evidence demonstrating the institutionalized racism in book publishing, and the importance of…
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The Rumpus Interview with Ben H. Winters
Ben H. Winters discusses his new novel Underground Airlines about an America where the Civil War never took place, writing speculative fiction, and modern racism.
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Progress in Speculative Fiction
David M. Perry writes for Pacific Standard on the newest wave of progressive speculative fiction. Perry writes in conversation with Daniel José Older, author of Shadowshaper and the Bone Street Rumba series.
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Time Heals
When we say it’s “too soon,” what we really mean is that we’re not yet ready to confront these ideas and feelings in ourselves. In his review of In the Shadow of the Towers, a new anthology of stories about…
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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.
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This Week in Short Fiction
May is Short Story Month! In honor of StoryADay’s second annual celebration, Flavorwire writers offered their recommendations of five stories worth a read, from Calvino to O’Connor. On Monday, Gawker held a live-chat interview with Rivka Galchen about her new…
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Women Writing Weird Words
Somewhere between its Kmart and hysterical phases, literary realism got shaken up, when a group of young women writers began crafting a spectral brand of fantastical, strange fiction….Permeating the stories is a sense of omnipresent strangeness made visible. The Los Angeles…
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MaddAddam Is Coming
If you, like us, are drooling in anticipation for the conclusion to literary empress (and Rumpus interviewee!) Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy, well, mop up your chin and then check out this mini-profile of Atwood and her most recent speculative-fiction series.…
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The Rumpus Interview with Karen Russell
From immortal citrus-suckers to a portentous flock of seagulls, the surreal phenomena in Karen Russell’s stories break your heart but leave your suspension of disbelief completely intact.