Science Fiction & Fantasy

“I am a computer,” says the voice. It isn’t human. Robotic and coldly electronic, it sounds like something conjured by the eeriest science fiction nightmare. Underneath it hovers a mechanical hum that might be the ambient noise of a spaceship, or an android brain, or even cyberspace. “I have been programmed to dance,” the voice [...]

Monsters are constructed from the passions of their age. In Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel Frankenstein, Dr. Victor Frankenstein creates life out of corpses using arcane science that defies the natural world. The creature comes to life but is an abomination to its creator, who abandons it to a world that will despise him. When Victor [...]

If primal fear forms one pole of the fantasy genre, paradise forms the other. But from the tales that built the genre to the writers who resurrected it after each of its deaths, the narrative that plays itself over and over across time and geography is one of paradise lost. To understand the history of [...]

You are wheeled into a hospital after a stroke. The doctors stabilize you and monitor you for a couple days. The latest treatments are at their disposal, so they use bacteria therapy to stimulate the growth of a diverse microbial ecosystem: feed you 3,3-dimethyl-1-butanol (DMB) to regulate trimethylamine N-oxide (TMAO) levels, nourish certain microbiota to [...]

From antiquity, Venus has been watched from afar. Often praised for beauty, its close position to Earth and its reflective atmosphere made it stand out amongst the stars. Like Mars, Venus has played into our stories, becoming a destination for many science fiction authors. Unlike Mars, however, the planet has never quite matched that of [...]

From Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of the War of the Worlds to Blind Guardian’s Nightfall in Middle-Earth, a handful of music albums have adapted entire works of science fiction/fantasy. This month, the long-running British space-rock band Hawkwind will do the same with the release of The Machine Stops—an album that musically interprets E. M. Forster’s [...]

In 1975, a group of talented young men started work on an epic film version of Dune. It would have featured extravagant visual design, never before seen effects, an all-star cast (including Orson Welles, Salvador Dali and Mick Jagger)—and would have sparked a new age of spiritual awakening for the entire world!
At least, that’s Alejandro [...]

Since the discovery of the DNA double helix by Watson and Crick in 1953, our knowledge of the genetic code has grown exponentially. Advances in technology have driven much of that discovery, including the rise of next-generation DNA sequencing instruments that I wrote about in issue #108. One of the best parts about working as [...]

Artificial intelligence, or AI, is a growing technological field closely tied in with robotics. It is also a common plot device used in many modern movies and books, but the concept of AI—the real AI that is currently growing into infancy in laboratories all around the world—is a bigger mystery. To understand artificial intelligence, it’s [...]

“Get it on. Bang a gong. Get it on.”
These simple lyrics are Marc Bolan’s calling card—at least in the United States, where the 1971 song “Get It On (Bang a Gong)” became the lone hit by Marc Bolan’s band T. Rex. A staple of classic-rock radio, “Get It On” is not the type of song [...]