756 posts tagged with scifi.
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Nicola Griffith on her writing, genre, kittens, ableism, and more
"To me, honestly, genre is just a vehicle I use to cross the story terrain. So depending on what story I want to tell, I use the appropriate genre." Author Nicola Griffith, author of scifi, historical fiction, detective fiction, nonfiction, and more, discusses her books and writing journey in an interview from late 2020. She learned more about how her own fiction works while writing a PhD thesis a few years ago. Griffith's blog has tons of interesting musings, on topics including the phenomenon of marginalized readers feeling "momentarily flummoxed by fiction that doesn't push us down" and identity and science fiction. "Reading SF, the over-riding value of which is the new, keeps our reticular activating systems primed: we expect everything and anything."
The Universal Translator (Star Trek Explained)
An true and accurate analysis of one of Star Trek's most important pieces of technology.
"'Is this everything you will be trading in?' I ask. "
"Retriever" by Stephen Kearse is a short science fiction story about an employee of the United States Federal Gun Retrieval Agency: "I’m an agent of the 28th Amendment, the abolition of the 2nd." Published October 2020.
Grieving, loss, futility, diaspora, and broken connections
Two melancholy short scifi and fantasy stories, new this year, about grieving the loss of parents. "Comments on Your Provisional Patent Application for an Eternal Spirit Core" is by Wole Talabi: "So you’ve been using the money they left us to develop this thing?" "All Worlds Left Behind" is by Iona Datt Sharma: "I, uh, used to come here with my dad? I don't speak the language as well as he did."
Story of Your Strife
Ted Chiang (previously) on why computers won’t make themselves smarter (The New Yorker) and on why most fears about A.I. are best understood as fears about capitalism (NY Times/Archive.is)
Televised Worlds Part 4: The Children of Pynco
Two orphans of unknown species, the sole survivors of a spaceship crash on an vast desert planet, meet two bumbling bounty hunters, and together, they discover abandoned technology, a distant world with more wonders - and hope - than it first appears to have... and each other. Oh, and did I mention it’s a series of Australian stop-motion shorts from 1997? This is PLASMO. (Note: eps 3 & 4 are listed in reverse order. Also included: the earlier pre-reboot special Happy Hatchday to Plasmo.)
Televised Worlds, Part 1: Colonies of Color and Gloom
ReBoot wasn't quite the first all-CGI half-hour animated series. Earlier that year, French studio Fantôme released Insektors, an epic soft sci-fi romp about the conflict between two civilizations of insect-people (Engadget article featuring insights from a co-creator and an animator). The series had two dramatically different English dubs, available on YouTube in their entirety: the more faithful if somewhat unsubtle American dub and the more comedic UK dub. The former playlist also includes some originally unlocalized extras: a Christmas special, a Making Of special and a short about a fictional VR game.
"Will my grandmother have, like, laser guns?"
"So your grandmother is a starship now: a quick guide for the bewildered" by Marissa Lingen [more inside]
Person of the Year 2031
As the earliest viable brain scan, MMAcevedo is one of a very small number of brain scans to have been recorded before widespread understanding of the hazards of uploading and emulation. He is considered by some to be the "first immortal", and by others to be a profound warning of the horrors of immortality.
so who is there left to trust?
Basilisk collection - From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia is a work of unfiction by Blackle Mori. [more inside]
Waking the Leviathan
The story of how James S.A. Corey’s The Expanse went from game concept to blockbuster TV series: From failed MMO pitch to play-by-email roleplaying game to novels to television.
...And an NCC-1701-D
"baking stories are another of my go to story types"
Two Ladybusiness contributors "explore their feels about 'soft' or low-stakes SFF short fiction, and rec a whole bunch of stories for you to enjoy." Links to twenty-two science fiction and fantasy stories that make the recommenders feel soft or hopeful, especially "domestic stories and stories that are good people doing their best".
China 2098: First Time Abroad
Fan Wennan’s digital illustrations have caught fire on Chinese social media, depicting the world of 2098 where China is a high-tech superpower, with a humbled US that’s embraced communism; Wall Street is draped with hammer-and-sickle flags celebrating the “30th anniversary of the People’s Union of America”. The illustrations come amid China’s Communist Party claiming the pandemic has shown the superiority of its authoritarian model (NYT/Archive.is)
“Nothing Is Stranger To Man Than His Own Image”
O Human Star is a 505-page, eight-chapter web comic melodrama by Blue Delliquanti about a roboticist who is mysteriously reincarnated (as a robot) many years after his death and must find out why. It’s a story about gender and the self. It’s a bad guide to how the academic funding process works or appropriate employer/employee relationships, but is otherwise an optimistic, speculative vision of how the future might be.
This is the first page.
Samantha Reidel’s review in Polygon (August, 2020)
An interview with Delliquanti about their comic at Multiversity Comics (January, 2019)
Previously from 2014
This is the first page.
Samantha Reidel’s review in Polygon (August, 2020)
An interview with Delliquanti about their comic at Multiversity Comics (January, 2019)
Previously from 2014
Dune as a measure of our discontent
Daniel Immerwahr at the Los Angeles Review of Books writes about the renewed popularity of Dune, the influence of Native American cultures on Frank Herbert’s novels, his libertarianism and how his politics fit in the 21st century. [more inside]
“sentenced the petitioner to a life term, but how long is a life?”
Sci Phi Journal is an online magazine that "wishes to provide a platform for idea-driven fiction, as opposed to the ‘character-driven’ mode that has come to predominate speculative fiction." A few short stories they've published: "Minutes of the Meeting of the Board of Directors of CYBIMPLANT INC held at 10:00 AM on 14 May 2036" by Rick Novy (October 2020), the futuristic legal what-if "Habeas Corpus Callosum" by Jay WerkHeiser (January 2017; content note for rape), a fictional FIFA ruling in "Red Card" by Madeline Barnicle (June 2020), and an academic investigation of the missing Pope "John XX" by Timons Esaias (March 2020).
Coincidence, backstabbing, obligation, tradition, and tech support
Four scifi stories about jobs, loyalty, and navigating difficult politics and priorities. In the happiest of the four, "Happenstance" by Fran Wilde (2017), an engineer of serendipity has to subvert residents' expectations and a skeevy executive's plans. "Sweet Marrow" by Vajra Chandrasekera (2016) (audio) portrays the fraught relationship between a journalist and a government worker in a turbulent time. "Exile’s End" by Carolyn Ives Gilman (August 2020) is "a complex, sometimes uncomfortable examination of artifact repatriation and cultural appropriation." And in "Thank You For Your Patience" by Rebecca Campbell (March 2020), Mark's stuck doing tech support while the world slow-motion falls apart outside.
Exploration, separatism, yearning, and hopeful stories
Two short scifi stories about space programs run by brown and Black people: the optimistic "Heard, Half-Heard, in the Stillness" by Iona Datt Sharma (published August 2020) and the mostly optimistic "At the Village Vanguard (Ruminations on Blacktopia)" by Maurice Broaddus. Datt Sharma's story is also listed in Ladybusiness's recommendation list of eight short & sweet stories published in 2020: "I found all of these stories hopeful."
Fires, homemade pills, and gardens
Stories about how we cope with disasters, in the short and the long term. "Ambient and Isolated Effects of Fine Particulate Matter" by Emery Robin (horror-y), published in April, and the more hopeful "Growing Resistance" by Juliet Kemp (audio and text at that link), first published in August 2019. [more inside]
"The words barely stick in her throat at all."
"The Avengers’ training regime will start soon; today is for her to relearn the world." "Pour Back The Ocean" by imperfectcircle (Katherine Fabian) is a sweet fanfiction story depicting Wanda Maximoff after the events of the Marvel Cinematic Universe film Age of Ultron. As the author puts it, "Wanda has to find a new place in the world. Contains team training exercises, expected grief and unexpected kindness." There are also cute dogs.
"Was it rude to tell your boss she was growing scales?"
Since September 1, 2010, Daily Science Fiction has published a new short scifi/fantasy story each weekday. The easiest way to navigate the archives is probably by story topic, so you get titles, author names, and excerpts (example). Here are six very short stories you might like. [more inside]
“you got two options. Wallow in guilt like a hero, or do something.”
Two short speculative stories featuring computers with consciousness. "Batteries For Your Doombot5000 Are Not Included" by Merc Fenn Wolfmoor (published this year) is a light sf/f story about an ex-supervillain who gets a second chance at talking with a woman she had a crush on. "Applied Cenotaphics in the Long, Long Longitudes" by Vajra Chandrasekera (audio) is "an RFC 9481-compatible full personalytic profile recorded in Binara-Unduvap 2561 (Sep-Dec 2018 in the Christian calendar) at R. Satka's home and studio in the New City in the Autonomous Territory of Vilacem. The interview interprets itself in real time as each interviewer asks their questions...Since Satka's death, this interview is her primary being-in-the-world, and retains executive authority over her estate."
"All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses"
Four sweet pieces of fan fiction in which characters watch election returns come in. The one for which you least need to know the underlying canon: "A Great and Gruesome Height" by Jae Gecko, a queer romance that pays homage to the Dar Williams song "Iowa" along with The West Wing. "It's 1998, Josiah Bartlet is the Democratic nominee battling sitting Republican President Lawrence Armstrong for the Oval Office, and back in Iowa, Republican campaign coordinator Megan Richter is about to fall from a great and gruesome height." (This is a Yuletide story, and you can sign up for this year's Yuletide exchange between now and 9am UTC on 26 October.) [more inside]
"Three thousand bucks a blast. The council only bought one shot."
Two short, exciting scifi stories in which underdogs fight battles. "The Hard Quarry" by Caleb Huitt, published this year, has a solo asteroid miner outwitting pirates: "The only statement the regs make on going extravehicular at speed is not to." "Corporate Robo Renegade Piston" by Nicholas Sugarman (2017) has an underfunded mecha pilot strapping in to fight a kaiju: "it hurt his pride knowing his face was plastered onto a waffle iron. He sighed, comforting himself with the knowledge that at least he wasn't on the kaiju cleanup team."
"'Lift the veil but once, and look me in the face,' said she."
Two stories about making shocking decisions to use color to change our perceptions. "The Regime of Austerity" by Veronica Schanoes (2009, science fiction): "These days there are a lot of gray people walking around in bright blue coats with green shoes. Lately it's become popular to use color on the inner walls of your home." "The Minister's Black Veil" by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1832, allegorical/romantic/dark/didactic fiction): "On a nearer view it seemed to consist of two folds of crepe, which entirely concealed his features, except the mouth and chin, but probably did not intercept his sight, further than to give a darkened aspect to all living and inanimate things." Kind of a Johnny Cash "Man in Black" vibe on that one. [more inside]
a gentler time
Before it was a movie, Mars Attacks was a set of 55 narrative trading cards, depicting the brutal invasion of Earth by aliens and the equally vicious Earthman reprisal. Here's all of them. (cw: graphic violence, sexual assault, racism, a dog gets fucking melted, seriously be warned)
“You know that, right? You can do anything.”
Two scifi stories about the work we offload to robots. "Drones Don’t Kill People" by Annalee Newitz (a bunch of violence): "You learn a lot by seeing what people do when they think they’re in private. Most of it I found confusingly irrelevant to assassination." "Cleaning Lady" by J. Kyle Turner (no violence): "Her listing says All Cleaning Done By Hand so she makes a big show of unpacking her bag, laying out her tools, and rolling up her sleeves."
Fictional stories about space fiction
Two scifi/fantasy stories about space exploration, fiction, lies, and exuberant adventure. "The Robot Who Liked to Tell Tall Tales" by Fei Dao, translated by Ken Liu, sort of a Stanislaw Lem-feeling yarn, and "Four Kinds of Cargo" by Leonard Richardson (disclaimer: my spouse), a bit of Firefly-ish wackiness with a touch of pathos. [more inside]
"It is illogical to allow you to suffer"
Two lovely, sweet, heartwarming short pieces of Star Trek fan fiction that take place in the reboot universe (that is, the recent films, starting with the first JJ Abrams entry). "Lunch and Other Obscenities" by Rheanna presents the culture clash between Nyota Uhura and her Orion roommate, Gaila, in their first year at Starfleet Academy. Includes a Vulcan restaurant with a fitting name, people overcoming misunderstandings, and two shared meals that make me happily tear up. And "Graduate Vulcan for Fun and Profit" by lazulisong shows us James T. Kirk at the Academy, avoiding anyone finding out just how brilliant he is, intertwined with the point of view of his Vulcan mentor. Includes amazing curses, a tour of Portland, Oregon, and someone saying to a child, "I propose to treat you as a rational being capable of rational thought."
"let them know you are strong and peaceful"
Three scifi/fantasy stories on caretaking. "Callme and Mink" (text and audio) by Brenda Cooper (published this month) has cute dogs and an ill child: "Not lying to him meant she didn’t signal emotions she didn’t believe were appropriate. She could signal most feelings back to humans, but they were always a lie." That one feels reasonably happy, despite its implied postapocalyptic setting. Two more are more wrenching, including one by a MeFite. [more inside]
Changing the timeline
Two short scifi stories about changing history, in the small and in the large. "The Day Alan Turing Came Out" by Leonard Richardson (disclaimer: my spouse), wish-fulfillment alternate history. "Turing reaches for the RUN button in the corner and my breath catches. This is the moment when I always found that I had mistyped a line and had to go through the magazine listing again, looking for errors. Turing does not worry." "This Must Be the Place" by Elly Bangs, a partially-requited romance with a "deterministic dolt." "It's probably simplest to say that I first met Loren Wells in a club in San Francisco. We'll set aside for the moment that it wasn't the first time he'd met me."
Romance, pregnancy, time travel, supervillains & the best/worst ob-gyn
Two scifi/fantasy stories, both from 2009, about women superheroes. "Ms. Liberty Gets a Haircut" by Cat Rambo is light: "They have gone through twenty-two candidates, making notes, asking questions. The twenty-third arrives, dressed in black and steel." "Origin" by Ari Goelman is alternately silly and serious: "'I should never date other supers,' I say, not for the first time. I put my hand on my stomach. Crap. I can barely keep a spider plant alive. There's no way I'm ready to be a mother."
“Want to go throw some dry ice in the River Styx?”
Two speculative stories about romance, mourning, and life-changing journeys. "The Four Generations of Chang E" by Zen Cho starts with someone winning the moon lottery: "Chang E sold everything she had: the car, the family heirloom enamel hairpin collection, her external brain. Humans were so much less intelligent than Moonites anyway. The extra brain would have made little difference." In "Three Petitions to the Queen of Hell" by Tim Pratt, "Marla and Zufi, the reigning queens of Hell, were eight years into a meaningless spat, living more as roommates than lovers" -- but then a mortal woman successfully makes it across the Styx to save her girlfriend.
Vanessa has never complained about your own oddities
Eight scifi/fantasy stories about people in tough situations trying to help each other, including three by Susan Palwick (previously). [more inside]
"Fools lack the insight needed to digest and appreciate my book."
Samovar "is a quarterly magazine of and about translated speculative fiction", a regular special issue of the magazine Strange Horizons. For Samovar, Brishti Guha translated a (wacky, in my opinion) 11th-century Sanskrit piece by Kshemendra about language misunderstandings and an angry scholar. "...the reason the meat was so poor was because hunters couldn’t get hold of any well-fed animals. All the animals wanted to listen to Gunadhya’s story even more than they wanted to eat!" (Previously.)
“'Everyone’s got to live somewhere,' she says.”
Three scifi/fantasy stories about people finding friends and discovering places they fit in. "Women Making Bees In Public" by Alexandra Erin is a short fantasy story about two women making friends, overcoming being interrupted by men, and discussing free will, chaos, brains, and what they want. "You Have to Follow the Rules" by Ada Hoffmann (audio) gives a girl a quiet, roomy escape at a scifi convention. And "Programmer at Large" by David R. MacIver is a web serial about a progammer-archaeologist who discovers some oddities in their ship's social graph. [more inside]
“you have a message I am unable to read aloud.”
"CARBORUNDORUM > /DEV/NULL" by Annalee Flower Horne is a ten-minutes-into-the-future science fiction short story that works as a feminist Parker Lewis Can't Lose/Ferris Bueller's Day Off homage/critique, and as a cri de coeur on teen girl agency. Thematically related short scifi stories: Claire Humphrey's "Four Steps to the Perfect Smoky Eye" on teen girls and those who restrict them, and Cory Doctorow's "Party Discipline", another celebration of teen girl hackers. [Content warning: rape]
"Parts Unknown: Bajor" -- with fake ads
"The Hasperat has his eyes watering." fresne's fanfic short story "Parts Unknown: Bajor" takes Anthony Bourdain on a tour of Deep Space Nine and the planet Bajor. Includes commercial breaks: "Some of the inspiration for the sponsor breaks come from some conversations I’ve been having with friends about what a Star Trek show that wasn’t about Starfleet would be like." (Bourdain fanfic previously.) [more inside]
The rest of the church noticed the dog during the Sign of Peace
Three scifi/fantasy stories about surprising connections with animals. "Fetch" by David Moles is a melancholy alt-history about trying to rescue Laika. "St. Ailbe's Hall" by Naomi Kritzer (part 2) portrays a priest overcoming prejudice while figuring out how to deal with a new sentient dog in his congregation. And "The Night Sun" by Zin E. Rocklyn (published this year) is a dark but ultimately triumphant story of a couple's weekend trip to a cabin gone horribly sideways. (Content note for danger or harm to animals in all three stories.)
a story about agri-bots, machine life, and emergent intelligence
"Tierra y libertad" by Madeline Ashby is a short scifi story about "a robot rebellion in the pistachio fields." Published in MIT Technology Review in 2018. “I have protocols for that.” Dash made for the door. She flashed her watch. “I’m the analyst in charge. The mind in that vault is my op.”
a horror story from 2003
"Kathleen Murphy gripped her can of Mace tightly as she rode the Red Line to work, hands sweating inside the latex of her surgical gloves. All around her, her fellow T riders were openly clutching Mace or pepper spray as well, all glancing around the car from behind safety goggles and surgical masks." "For the Plague Thereof Was Exceeding Great" by Jennifer Pelland is a short, dark science fiction story, published in 2003, about an epidemic and the religious cult that aims to spread it.
A fairy tale about loyalty, a quest, surprise, and triumph
"Once upon a time, in a very small kingdom, there was a king with one
daughter. His wife had died, and he had not remarried. This is not the
fairy tale where the king decides to marry his own daughter, don’t
worry. This king was a completely different sort of terrible father: he
believed that his daughter should earn his love, and nothing she did was
ever good enough." Naomi
Kritzer's short fantasy story "A Star Without Shine" is part of the
fundraiser The New
Decameron. [more inside]
AI, aliens, rain control, & how voting/election systems might change
"One Hundred Sentences About the City of the Future: A Jeremiad" by Alex Irvine (2008) and "Reliable People" by Charlie Jane Anders (March 2020) depict future elections, including personal media feeds, aliens, and Humans of Distributed Network Origin. And: in October 2018, Mozilla invited two speculative fiction authors to describe elections in the future. "Hello, I’m Your Election" by Genevieve Valentine (caution: dark) and "Candidate Y" by Malka Older (audio for both) take different approaches to integrating data mining and Q&A into voting processes.
[more inside]
"T’Pring was too dignified to seethe."
"Matchmaker of Mars" by Rachel Manija Brown (writing as Edonohana) is a short, funny, sweet fan fiction story in which "John W. Campbell accidentally matchmakes T'Pring and Uhura." Tags: T'Pring (Star Trek), Nyota Uhura, John W. Campbell Jr., 1930s Science Fiction Writer Alternate Universe, Pastiche, Epistolary, Fiction within fiction, Bigotry & Prejudice, Baking. Should be understandable even if you're not a Star Trek fan.
Zadie Smith on the urge "to be good. To be seen to be good."
"Now More Than Ever" is a short absurdist story by Zadie Smith about shunning, denouncing, and philosophical stances and etiquette rules (The New Yorker, July 16, 2018 - available in text & audio). "I bumped into someone on Bleecker who was beyond the pale. I felt like talking to him so I did. As we talked I kept thinking, But you’re beyond the pale, yet instead of that stopping us from talking we started to talk more and more frantically..." Related: her October 2019 essay "Fascinated to Presume: In Defense of Fiction" (previously). "...we seek to shore up the act of writing with false defenses, like the dubious idea that one could ever be absolutely 'correct' when it comes to representing fictional human behavior."
"shortly before his troubling and inexplicable disappearance"
Three soooooorta vampire-y short stories. Benjamin Rosenbaum's short story "The Book of Jashar" purports to be a recently unearthed text that "proved to be a transcription of Biblical Hebrew originally written as early as the First Temple Period" and concerns "Mezipatheh, who drank the blood of men". Claire Humphrey's "Who in Mortal Chains" and "Le lundi de la matraque (Nightstick Monday)" (audio) feature Augusta Susan Hillyard, who says of herself, "It’s in my nature, violence; it’s on my back closer than a shirt. It’s in my nature to hate it, also, and to turn from it, when I can." [more inside]
Scifi about social services, transit, reparations, & a support dog
Four science fiction stories about how we could better help each other. Two optimistic ones: "‘I’m with Muni — how can I help?’ Annalee Newitz’s short fiction imagines a new kind of social support system in San Francisco", and "Number One Draft Pick" by Claire Humphrey, in which Reshma trains a service dog to help mitigate Tyler's seizure disorder so he can keep playing pro hockey. And two cautionary stories: "A Burden Shared" by Jo Walton, on carework and chronic pain, and "How to Pay Reparations: a Documentary" by Tochi Onyebuchi, about a US city that tries to use an algorithm, plus money from defunding police, to pay reparations. (Response essay by Charlton McIlwain.)
"no, working with the WRONG people is how you get caught"
Four gripping, provocative, sometimes uncomfortable scifi/fantasy stories about violence and sacrifice in defense of communities and ideals. Three by Margaret Killjoy (previously) and one by Elizabeth Crowe. [more inside]
Stories of transness, a proposal, family, aliens, religion, & tamales
Four fantasy or scifi stories (funny, heartwarming, searching) about trans experiences. The funniest of them: “Further Arguments in Support of Yudah Cohen’s Proposal to Bluma Zilberman” by Rebecca Fraimow. "Now perhaps you’re thinking to yourself, 'What kind of a man is this Yudah Cohen after all, to boast of his ability to lie? Certainly he won’t make any kind of rabbi!'" [more inside]