Science fiction earns its ideas by taking them seriously. These articles cover world building, the physics and logic that hold a story together, and writing futures that feel earned instead of decorated.
American DecayI joined the Science Fiction Book Club about 30 times: take the introductory books, buy the minimum, quit, rejoin. The club printed hardcovers nobody else would, then turned into crap and stopped taking orders in 2025. Here's its story, and…
1960sGene Roddenberry was born on August 19, 1921, in El Paso, Texas. He flew bombers, survived an airliner crash, wrote speeches for the Los Angeles police chief, and then sold NBC a western set in space. The show he built…
Reading LifeRobert Heinlein's 1961 novel about Valentine Michael Smith, a human raised by Martians who comes to Earth and looks at humanity from the outside. It won the Hugo Award, gave the language the word grok, and was the first science…
Reading LifeHeinlein's 1963 novel about Podkayne Fries, a fifteen-year-old girl from Mars traveling to Earth with her troublemaking younger brother. It's best known now for the fight over its ending. Heinlein lost that fight, and his readers eventually won it back.
Reading LifeIsaac Asimov's 1950 collection of nine robot stories, framed as the memories of robopsychologist Susan Calvin. It's where the Three Laws of Robotics took hold, and it's where I started reading Asimov at about eight years old.
Reading LifeKenn Brody's science fiction thriller about Aura, an artificial intelligence contacted by the most advanced civilization in the galaxy, while a criminal group seizes the world's fissile material. Kenn was a founding member of the critique group I started in…
Reading LifeKenn Brody's science fiction novel about Zila Aropova Biddey, sent across the galaxy by a mysterious Sage to find the origin of LUCA, the common ancestor of all life. What she finds instead is an ancient entity that opposes life…
Reading LifeA 2016 science fiction novelette by Kenn Brody. Shannon Redwine wants to be a video reporter, so she has a ham radio mentor surgically install a broadcaster in her, and what she puts on the air makes powerful enemies.
Character DevelopmentMary Sue started as a one-page joke in a 1973 Star Trek fanzine. Here's the story behind the parody, how the name spread, what a Mary Sue really is, and when the label is fair.
Contracts and AgreementsDonato Giancola turned down an Asimov's cover after the magazine's new owner sent a work-for-hire contract with free revisions, no original art and a fee-clawback NDA, all for a decades-old fee. Here's when work for hire is fair, and when…
Fiction WritingGenre fiction outsells literary fiction because it delivers what readers came for. Calling it poorly written usually confuses taste with skill, and many literary classics are genre books in disguise.
ResearchAbout 47,000 objects are tracked in Earth orbit, and models put the untracked debris in the hundreds of millions. Kessler syndrome is the chain reaction that could make some orbits unusable, and a war would set it off. It's the…
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