“The Alien movies model how patriarchal culture distracts people from capitalism’s parasitism by designating women as the real threat.”
Tag: Science Fiction
“Finding Other Ways to Flow”: The Once and Future Le Guin
“There’s something very solitary in her writing as well. I almost think of it as solitary solidarity.”
What Would Undo the Maxim Gun? Magic: P. Djèlí Clark and andré carrington
"You need your heroes to have flaws.”
Fixing Nostalgia: “Star Trek” Boldly Goes to Less Utopian Futures
“Picard” is perhaps the least utopian of any “Star Trek” media. But’s that because its political pragmatism shows how to build a better reality.
On Our Nightstands: September 2023
A behind-the-scenes look at what Public Books editors and staff have been reading this month.
“If It Bleeds, We Can Kill It”: Ander Monson on “Predator” and the Monster of American Masculinity
“I see actual male friendship, in a way that I don't in almost any other action movie from the 80s.”
On Our Nightstands: February 2023
A behind-the-scenes look at what Public Books editors and staff have been reading this month.
All Futures Are Possible
“It is fanciful to invest too much faith in the isolated act of reading – the stimulated, inspired or entertained brain does not store carbon.”
“In Any Version of Reality”: Talking SF with Charles Yu
“It’s why science fiction matters so much to me: I’m trying to dislocate our sense of the normal.”
One More Embrace: Octavia’s Future/Present
Butler’s work helps us see how time is a spiral, how the present moment is always layered with multiple pasts and underlying alternate futures.
Octavia E. Butler: The Next 75 Years
Rather than politically utopian, Butler’s stories teach us about grief, consolation, hope, and—most of all—how to live in struggle.
“Keep Your Own Counsel”: Talking Octavia E. Butler with Lynell George
“She wanted people to be curious and take action in their lives. Not be sheep. To find the ways we can work together in crisis.”
The World Continues to Need Octavia E. Butler
Pandemics, racist violence, climate change, democratic collapse: it’s finally clear that it’s Butler’s world. We’re just living in it.
The Work of Inhabiting a Role: Charles Yu Speaks to Chris Fan
“I am paralyzed by the infinite degrees of freedom that you start out with, and so constraints can be freeing. To say, I can start here—I'm writing a story about time travel.”
To Air Is Human
An aerodynamicist and an anthropologist discuss the world of “Dune,” finding it as aesthetically beautiful as it is functionally implausible.
Nuclear Noir
At its core, noir is a feeling: realizing one’s own helplessness, when faced with the vast networks of power that control everyday life.
A Messy Utopia Is All We Might Get
Climate change didn’t just wreck the planet; it closed off and reshaped the future. Even utopia—if we reach it—will be a mess.
Meritocracy Is a Dystopia
Netflix Brazil’s 3% presents a desperate future city that nevertheless proclaims its citizens all have an equal shot at success. Sound familiar?
How to Build a World
Storytelling like that of Ursula K. Le Guin or Hayao Miyazaki reveals how real-world politics is similarly an act of collective “world building.”
Plants and Other Science Fictions
Can thinking like a plant save the world?