Why don’t people understand the urgency of colonizing other planets?
The human race could be wiped off the Earth’s surface at any moment — so why don’t people understand the urgency of colonizing space? In this excerpt from his book Reopening the Space Frontier, Professor John Hickman explains our foot-dragging. Whatever justification or combination of justifications is ultimately adopted for establishing an extraterrestrial human presence,…
Michael Moorcock, Epic Science Fiction Master and Hard Rocker
British sci-fi/fantasy writer Michael Moorcock, who turned 71 on Saturday, is well known for his Eternal Champion mythos stories. He’s also the rocker whose scifi lyrics drove some of the most iconic rock songs of the 1970s. Elric illustration by Chris Achilleos. Moorcock’s Eternal Champion short stories and novels chronicle the adventures of various heroes…
Adam Levin’s apocalypse novel “The Instructions” is a Jewish version of Watchmen
After reading Joshua Cohen’s massive apocalyptic novel Witz, I decided that any future Jewish epics were going to have to start from zero. Well, Adam Levin’s equally massive apocalyptic novel The Instructions is an attempt to do exactly that. https://gizmodo.com/in-witz-a-plague-makes-the-last-jew-on-earth-a-mega-5658714 Gurion Maccabee, age ten, is determined to be the antithesis of the classic Jewish boy…
Superhero Fiction: The Next Big Thing?
What’s next in book publishing, after angels, steampunk, zombies and vampires? Adam Christopher at Escape Pod suggests you should break out your cape: Superhero fiction could be making a big splash in the book world. There is an old writing adage worth paying attention to: don’t write for the market. What’s hot now may not…
To be true, science fiction must be beautiful
One of the interesting things about science fiction is the way it straddles the division in between art and science. Fiction is an art. Science is, of course, science. So what do you get if you make art about science? (I strongly object to the idea that science fiction has to be about science. In…
Back To Our Future: How the 1980s Explain The World We Live In Now
In this exclusive excerpt from his forthcoming book, culture critic David Sirota explains how everything in our world – from the culture wars to political strife – can be traced back to the 1980s. Click the pages to read Sirota’s introduction to the book. You can pre-order Sirota’s book, which comes out from Random House…