Dec 14, 2016If the boundary between science and fiction turns on the difference between truth and falsehood, the genre of science fiction might represent our post-truth regime more accurately than either disjointed discipline.
↩︎ The New Inquiry
Black Panthers, Katniss Everdeen, and the changing face of sci-fi
Check out this killer reading list associated with a PEN Live talk featuring authors building "authentically diverse worlds." (Save the lecture for your holiday travel.)
Resistance isn't futile, hopefully
We’ve arrived at a future we don’t understand. Can science fiction help us make sense of it?
Darkly, the Hugo Award "Puppygate" scandals, in which an unforeseen voting bloc rallied against diversity in science fiction, presaged the mainstreaming of populist white identity politics. But as the Atlantic put it, "trying to undo change in an increasingly diverse world is futile," so maybe we can learn from it instead.
Insights from imbalance
Science fiction frequently deals with civilizational inflection points. First encounters, for example, which introduce radical alterity, break from the past, and send society into chaos.
An anthologist of Chinese science fiction says that the genre has become so popular in part because China, in two generations, has dealt with incredible flux. "The kinds of technological and social changes that took societies in the West centuries to move through have sometimes been experienced by a mere two generations in China. The anxiety of careening out of balance, of being torn by parts moving too fast and too slow, is felt everywhere."
Dec 13, 2016The history of utopia reveals that purity of means is less important than sheer quantity of imagining. More utopias, however messed up, is better than no utopias... The transformation [from an agricultural to a market economy] was bewildering, unbearable, and quite literally murderous; utopianism was a constant injunction to think of alternatives, as business elites moved to close them off.
↩︎ Bookforum
From one Delany to another
A black science fiction reading list begins with Martin Delany's story of a Utopian slave revolt in 1859 and ends with Octavia's Brood, a 2015 collection. The Devil in America, a novelette available here, feels especially relevant.
The Editors' Longreads Picks
- An excellent essay on poverty and writing by Starr Davis. Updated May 31, 2022
- Novelist Héctor Tobar tries to understand the 1992 Los Angeles riots through the experiences of a single high school.
- Steven Johnson with a long assessment of the current state of A.I. and language. (The illusion has gotten very good.)
Welcome to The Morning News Tournament of Books, 2017 edition.
- Our championship match is decided in the Tournament of Books, with news of a Rooster surprise debuting this summer. Updated Mar 31, 2017
- In Thursday's action, Reyhan Harmanci sets up a colossal final.
- The Zombie round opens with Buzzfeed's Isaac Fitzgerald reading The Nix and The Underground Railroad.
Все ваши Белый дом принадлежит нам.
- "Will Putin expose the failings of American democracy or will he inadvertently expose the strength of American democracy?" Updated Mar 3, 2017
- Wilbur Ross just wanted to make some money in ethically gray areas (that should've prevented him from taking office).
- Jeff Sessions's spokeswoman can't help but continue to lie.
The oceans are under assault, and not just from the White House and friends.
- Trump's assault on the environment begins with American headwaters. Updated Mar 1, 2017
- Don't just blame the oil companies for destroying the oceans—blame sushi restaurants.
- Nothing escapes the deepest trenches of the ocean floor. Not light, not nutrients, not pollutants.