I want to talk about genre fiction’s power to battle censorship and misinformation. I am, in my capacity as a historian, in the middle of a multi-year project on the history of censorship1, and in my capacity as a genre fiction reader and writer I keep coming back to two observations about genre fiction and […]
Last Friday, quarantine day 1,379 (okay, maybe a little less), we watched The Matrix with our daughter. She’d never seen it, and it had been a while since we had as well. While she suddenly understood all the Gen X quotes (“red pill or blue pill,” “I know Kung-Fu!” and “free your mind.”), I was […]
The world is a different place today than it was a month ago, as world governments scramble to gain the upper hand against the still-growing coronavirus pandemic. We are in a state of collective limbo, watching helplessly as the number of worldwide cases climb towards two million, and dramas around testing, personal protective equipment, and […]
Uncanny Magazine would like to thank the following people for supporting us on Patreon. This magazine would not be possible without their support. Space Unicorn Ranger Corps COMMANDERS Kevin Lyda, Lila Libby, Jeff Guthridge, Elizabeth Galliher, Mairin Holmes, Girish M Duvvuri, Alex E. T. Snyder, Rachel Caine, justin livernois, William T. McGeachin, Alex Eiser, […]
Professor X is one of the most famous disabled characters. Since his debut in 1963, he’s been known as the formidable mentor who turned his mansion into a safe space and school for marginalized people. Unlike superhero billionaires Tony Stark and Bruce Wayne, Xavier used his fortune to shelter and organize other heroes who inevitably […]
Buffy the Vampire Slayer wrote the first pages of my adult personality. When I was in high school, my older sister passed down the DVDs as though they were life’s handbooks. I was hooked. The show’s quick and zany sense of humor got me, Buffy’s angst mirrored my own, and the three teenage characters were […]
There are a few things I’ve come to expect from Star Trek: adventures on far-away worlds; sleek high-tech gadgets; a belief in the power of diplomacy, empathy, and teamwork over fear, hatred, and a lot of really big guns; a diverse cast of characters who are more family than mere crewmates. And the fact that […]
When I was 22, I wrote my first personal essay on disability and media.1 The Hunger Games film had just come out, and I crafted an essay on Katniss’s hearing loss in the book, a loss brought on in the Arena and subsequently fixed by the Gamemakers at the conclusion of the book. I delved […]
Uncanny Magazine would like to thank the following people for supporting us on Patreon. This magazine would not be possible without their support. Space Unicorn Ranger Corps COMMANDERS Alex Eiser, Alexander M Henderson, Alina Kanaski, Autumn, Bliss Ehrlich, Crystal Huff, Dain Unicorn, Daniel (a raven), Edmund Schweppe, Elizabeth Galliher, Girish M Duvvuri, Jayme, Justin […]
For me, fiction always starts with a what-if. The work may start with an image or feeling, but at that point it could still be poetry. It doesn’t really become fiction until that what-if element leads me to a succession of events, a story. It’s a literal counter-factual: the what-if reality were different, if dragons […]