Your Own Private Universe: Neal Stephenson, Max Gladstone, and Cyberpunk’s Midlife Crisis Ursula Whitcher When I was fourteen, I read a full-page review of Neal Stephenson’s novel The Diamond Age in The Oregonian. I remember spreading the newspaper out on my parents’ dining-room table and concluding, “This is a story about a girl my age, … Continue reading Your Own Private Universe: Neal Stephenson, Max Gladstone, and Cyberpunk’s Midlife Crisis
Category: Essays
Reading Towards Anti-Racism: Challenging Preconceptions with New Suns
Reading Towards Anti-Racism: Challenging Preconceptions with New Suns Leigha McReynolds One of the responses to the increased urgency and visibility of the Black Lives Matter movement in June 2020 was a call for white people to expand their perspective and interrogate their privilege by reading the work of Black authors. In the field of speculative … Continue reading Reading Towards Anti-Racism: Challenging Preconceptions with New Suns
An Open Letter to Worldcon
Updated 23 December: Discon 3 has posted a statement and apology from con chair Mary Robinette Kowal. To the Discon 3 Committee, the Hugo Awards Administrators, and the World Science Fiction Society, I’m writing to you because of your decision to use Raytheon as a sponsor for the 2021 Hugo Awards ceremony. I am posting … Continue reading An Open Letter to Worldcon
Things of Beauty: The Politics of Postmillennial Nostalgia for Mid-century Design
Things of Beauty: The Politics of Postmillennial Nostalgia for Mid-century Design Rachele Dini A young woman takes stock of her living room, whose shabby furnishings have not been updated in decades. To the tune of Gillian Hills’s 1963 hit, “Tut Tut Tut,” she gambols around a department store furniture display labelled with the helpful description, … Continue reading Things of Beauty: The Politics of Postmillennial Nostalgia for Mid-century Design
Queer Love Conquers All: Using Queer Characters to Usher in a New Peace in Marvel Comics’s Empyre Event
Queer Love Conquers All: Using Queer Characters to Usher in a New Peace in Marvel Comics’s Empyre Event Ibtisam Ahmed Representation matters. Let’s just get that out of the way. In an industry that was censored for decades through the regulations of the restrictive Comics Code Authority and that continues to cater to demographics that … Continue reading Queer Love Conquers All: Using Queer Characters to Usher in a New Peace in Marvel Comics’s Empyre Event
War of Images, Images of War: Technology and Labor in Caitlin Starling’s The Luminous Dead
War of Images, Images of War: Technology and Labor in Caitlin Starling’s The Luminous Dead Shinjini Dey Caitlin Starling’s The Luminous Dead (TLD) is a novel set entirely within a cave. Published in 2019, the science fiction and horror novel trails a gig worker, Gyre, as she follows the directives of her employer deep into … Continue reading War of Images, Images of War: Technology and Labor in Caitlin Starling’s The Luminous Dead
Golem of Memory: Revolutionary Interruptions, Railway Imaginaries, and China Miéville’s Bas Lag
Golem of Memory: Revolutionary Interruptions, Railway Imaginaries, and China Miéville’s Bas Lag Nandini Ramachandran I. Trains of Thought The railroad has been an icon of orderly progress for two centuries. Tracking commentary on it is like reading a greatest hits album put out by the Patriarchs of Social Theory—Marx, Weber, Foucault, Latour—for all of whom … Continue reading Golem of Memory: Revolutionary Interruptions, Railway Imaginaries, and China Miéville’s Bas Lag
Patterns, Guts: Style and Substance in This Is How You Lose The Time War
Patterns, Guts: Style & Substance in This Is How You Lose The Time War Jake Casella Brookins Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone’s This Is How You Lose The Time War took home major genre awards, and developed an unusually intense fanbase for a standalone novella. It needs no defending. I was fortunate to read it … Continue reading Patterns, Guts: Style and Substance in This Is How You Lose The Time War
Ancillary Review of Books 