Science Fiction & Fantasy

Words are a kind of music. Writers who listen know this better than most. The crescendo of action gets punctuated by silence making both all the more palpable. The proper combination of words swirl through a reader’s mind forming characters and stories as varied as the depths of the imagination. A poet knows the musical [...]

Classics are classics for a reason. Whether they’re the first of their kind or they redefine a genre, they’ve earned their place in the common consciousness as paragons of literature. They’ve been dissected, analyzed, and pored over for years by curious minds itching to find something undiscovered within their texts. But it’s rare to find [...]

It’s inevitable that we’ll take to the stars to spread humanity beyond the confines of our blue and green orb. With new discoveries every month, planets not unlike our own are becoming more common. Unable to look closer, we can only speculate as to what we’ll encounter when we finally send a ship deep into [...]

Worlds encompassed in books often extend past the pages. Rivers and mountain ranges spill over the margins slipping through gaps in fingers as they make their way through a reader’s mind. Worlds built over the course of a book series breathe and expand with the lives and machinations of characters and civilizations. Even when series [...]

The only constant in life is change. For better or worse, everything is in flux. The more technologically advanced humans become, the more power we have to change the planet on a global scale. We’re already using science and technology to change ourselves.
Austral by Paul McAuley shows us a world [...]

Shrugging off the shackles of the familiar and stepping into a brand-new world, the fantasy genre pulls you deep into elsewhere. Anything is possible—a metal creature can have a message, a dead man can talk, and ice-wyrms can rule the mountains.
Elizabeth Bear’s new novel A Stone in the Skull, kicks off a new series set [...]

Novels can be clever or profound. They can be funny or horrifying. But rarely are they ever profoundly funny and yet stray into the kind of stuff reserved for nightmares. When a story gets just the right mix of lurking monsters, mathematical magic, and an unreliable character exhausted by paperwork, you may find yourself in [...]

Ownership is becoming a bit murkier. As tech advances and delivery systems become more convenient, we slide more and more into the rental economy with large companies retaining power and control. Instead of movie tickets and record shelves, we have monthly fees for Netflix and Spotify. Some companies have even patented genetic strains of farm [...]

After a calamity, when the society we know has fallen, what community springs up from the ashes may be something familiar and will hopefully learn from past mistakes. But it will also have its own unique struggles to face. How do you feed a growing population outpacing available resources? What can be salvaged from technology [...]

The effects of World War II echo through today. The scientific advances conceived on both sides during and in the wake of the last World War shaped the world. The Manhattan Project ushered in the atomic age and NASA sent astronauts to the moon utilizing V2 technology. But, as it is with many things, a [...]