I learned about Transformers from my sister in sixth grade. Her English class had watched part of the first live-action movie, and she identified, correctly, that I would love it. I remember sitting across from her at the kitchen table and demanding for the umpteenth time she describe each robot again: what they looked like, […]
“Speculative Resistance”—a term coined by Malka Older—posits that one great power speculative fiction wields is that exploring other worlds and ways societies could work encourages people to question extant systems, to imagine alternatives, to hope, to act, and to reject the old hope-ending “because that’s the way it is.” The author Ursula K. Le Guin […]
In the annals of science fiction television, plenty of shows stand out as classics. Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek and its spinoffs presented an optimistic vision for the future in the 1960s, Ronald D. Moore’s revival of Battlestar Galactica was a gritty, realistic take on the stresses of genocide and war, while ABC’s Lost helped set […]
In the same way that lions do not need to be told about the deliciousness of gazelles, nor sandcastle builders about the sea, for bookish people it goes without saying that libraries, our world’s repositories of knowledge and story, are places of tremendous power, as much as fairy mounds and parliaments. One can enter a […]
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I’m wearing a t-shirt that says Lioness & Wildmage & Protector & Trickster & Terrier and I’m holding on to my beat-up copy of Squire when I settle on my exercise bike for my five-minute workout. The t-shirt is an accident. It’s the first thing I pulled out of the closet this morning. The book […]
When I was young, I tried to sleep with all my stuffed animals at once. Those who spilled over were on rotation; I knew they weren’t alive, but I was horrified by the idea that they might nonetheless be capable of feeling left out. Stuffed toys at least looked like animals; it made sense that […]
Recently, while working on a murder mystery novel involving green dye, I fell down a rabbit-hole of historical research about arsenic green, and the deadly ballgowns of the 19th century. I’ve always loved bright green clothing, so I was fascinated to read about the Victorian passion for that particular colour, how delighted they were with […]
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There is a scene quite early in The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson that I vividly remember reading. It was 2015 and I was finishing my graduate degree at North Carolina State University. In the scene, the titular Baru has just been accepted to the new colonial school on her island: They know so […]