Punking Everything in SF/F (Part One): The Present
Cyberpunk, steampunk, biopunk, and now greenpunk? When will it end? Fans have been punkifying science fiction and fantasy for decades, and it doesn’t seem like it will let up any time soon. With each passing moment, new ideas spring into the collective consciousness of SF/F fans, who, in turn, impart their selective, subgenre-crazed minds on […]
Reader Question: The Alien Exit
Mercy from Young Writers Online had this interesting question to ask: Why does everyone resort to aliens in recent sci-fi/gov/end of the world movies? Because aliens are easy. People do not question aliens as the villains, because, despite all our efforts to acknowledge our difficulty in understanding and dealing with the human/Other dichotomy, we are […]
Fantasy is Colonial, Modern Science Fiction is Postcolonial?
Examining trends in genre fiction is an impossible task. Fantasy and science fiction are constantly moving, the latter more so than the former, and yet I have been noticing something within both genres (a shifting theme for the latter, and a staple for the former) that I want to examine and understand. Readers are welcome […]
Reader Question: English, the Ultimate Tongue
Bowie from Young Writers Online recently asked the following: Why do all aliens speak some form of English? Well, the truth is that aliens exist within a strange temporal distortion in which they are exposed to English before human beings even exist, so when they come knocking, they are not only fluent in the language, […]
Science Fiction and Empire, and Other Thesis Considerations
Most of you already know that I am attending the University of Florida’s graduate program in English. Having arrived in Florida, I’ve become quite aware of the relatively short space of time I have to design and write an acceptable thesis in order to earn my M.A. The biggest concern for me isn’t so much […]
New Weird Science Fiction?
I’ve heard the term “New Weird” before, but I have to admit that I am horribly unfamiliar with it as a subgenre, particularly in relation to science fiction. This topic comes up due to having received a copy of the Year’s Best SF 14 edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer, from Jason Sanford, […]