“Colonizing Space” is a Dirty Phrase: Stop Using It
The term “colonize” is not neutral. It’s an impossibly negative term. It immediately references an extensive socio-political, socio-economic, racialized, and vile process that still churns its wheels today. Colonialism always was and always will be an exploitative model which privileges dominant socio-economic groups (I hesitate to say “Western” here, though it would be fair to […]
The Eaton Conference: Day Three — Idea Overload B
(You can read about Day One and Day Two here and here.) Day Three The third day of the Conference (technically the second and last day of the event, which only ran from Friday to Saturday) proved to be both intellectually exciting and terrifying. We first attended a panel called “Neocolonialism, Global Capitalism, and Monstrous […]
The Eaton Conference: Day Two — Idea Overload A
As promised, here are my notes/thoughts about the Eaton Conference (part one). Day Two should go up tomorrow or the day after. Here goes: Day One The theme of the Eaton Conference this year (Global SF) proved to be an immensely informative one, not simply because I had the opportunity to be exposed to all […]
The Good PhD News and the Lingering Eaton Bits
First, the good news: I just found out that I got into the PhD program at the University of Florida. Obviously I intend to stay and finish that whole schooling thing. I expect to continue studying and writing about science fiction at the scholarly level, though my PhD dissertation seems to be opening up more […]
The Eaton Conference: Day One — American Airlines Sucks
Packing is (usually) easy enough, unless you forget something. I suppose you can guess where this is going: I forgot something. And not just any something. It’s the kind of something that isn’t exactly easy to replace, especially if you are traveling through Miami to Los Angeles. What did I forget? My cell phone. I […]
Libraries, Socio-economics, and the Ten Million People March
Plenty of big name folks have come out in defense of libraries lately. For example, the wonderful Wil Wheaton has talked briefly about his love of libraries here and author Philip Pullman has written an extensive defense and political rebuttal here. They’re certainly no the only ones talking about the problem libraries are facing in the […]