Octavia E. Butler: Kindness eases change / Love quiets fear
In order to rise from its own ashes, a Phoenix first must burn.
Dennis Wilson Wise: The woman who revolutionized the fantasy genre is finally getting her due
Arthur C. Clarke called her the “most brilliant editor I ever encountered,” and Philip K. Dick said she was the “greatest editor since Maxwell Perkins.”
Elizabeth Gargano: How Parables Teach Us Who We Are
Octavia Butler’s novel begins in what then seemed a distant future, our current year of 2024. Lauren Olamina, the novel’s protagonist, leads a ragged band of followers through an America that is coming apart at the seams.
Michael Simms: The Ruins
the air full
of transparent wings,
the fox crossing
the innocent road
full of weeds
Sean Connolly: Invasion
The low winter sun streaks through the streets and the dry hedges and barren trees shed a maroon dust. The birds go batty in Appalachia, celebrating an early spring, and … Continue reading
Tom Engelhardt: Welcome to the Martians!
Our World Is Increasingly Like a Science-Fiction Novel.
Arlene Weiner: You’re Not Doing Enough!
A response to The Ministry for the Future, a novel by Kim Stanley Robinson. Orbit. 563 pp. I hope this is an important book. It’s speculative fiction, the term an expansion of … Continue reading
Gerry LaFemina: A Room for Space Agers
At a certain age I re-aimed that telescope, first, to look into the window of the young widow across the street, she who made me feel atomic.
Video: Universal Machine
Set to a score by Philip Glass and shot in the Arabian desert with a haunting backdrop of the Burj Khalifa, Universal Machine is set in a post-apocalyptic world where a gifted young girl must find a way to understand and overcome a violent encounter with a life-like android.
Video: The Moon’s Milk
Narrated by Tom Waits, the film chronicles the last expedition of Captain Millipede and his crew to harvest the milk seeping from the moon’s craters. (13 minutes)
Andrew J. Bacevich: The Great Reckoning
From our present vantage point, it seems clear that, by 2019, the United States had passed a point of no return. In retrospect, this was the moment when indications of things gone fundamentally awry should have become unmistakable
Video: Final Offer
https://vimeo.com/280253677 . Directed by Mark Slutsky. Commissioned by Gunpowder & Sky for their sci-fi channel DUST. Featuring Anna Hopkins and Aaron Abrams. A down-on-his-luck lawyer wakes up in a doorless … Continue reading
Angele Ellis — Next Stop: Xenogenesis
In memory of Octavia E. Butler (June 22, 1947 – February 24, 2006) In the bus bay, stark half-darkness of a ship corridor, propellant smell of diesel. Clayark obliterates Greyhound—blur of fur on … Continue reading
Stephen Dobyns: The Gardener
And he had imagined sitting in the evening
with his friend the Devil watching the small
human creatures frolic in the grass. They would
be like children, good natured and always singing.
When had he realized his mistake?
