science fiction

Reading Across the Great Genre Spectrum: A Cheat Sheet for Transliterary Consumption
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Reading Across the Great Genre Spectrum: A Cheat Sheet for Transliterary Consumption

When I teach creative writing at the college level, one of the tasks I always assign early on in the semester is to have my students pick out a short work outside (preferably diametrically opposed to) the student’s preferred genre, read it, and offer a brief informal presentation of their experience. These reports always vary…

Five Speculative Tales Still Relevant Today (And What They Can Teach Us)
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Five Speculative Tales Still Relevant Today (And What They Can Teach Us)

1. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood Seven-Word Summary: Women enslaved by tyrannical dicks with dicks. Excerpt: “Maybe none of this is about control. Maybe it really isn’t about who can own whom, who can do what to whom and get away with it, even as far as death. Maybe it isn’t about who can…

Episodia 1.7: Lost Novels and Love Triangles

Episodia 1.7: Lost Novels and Love Triangles

Lately I’ve been thinking about beginnings, endings, and that terribly murky time between a writer completing one project and starting another. After recently finishing a memoir, I’ve been itching to write a novel. I have a strong start to a new one—it’s always thrilling to be at the beginning of something, when all you see are possibilities instead of…