When Science Fiction Made Me Question Everything I Thought I Knew
You know, after four decades designing spacecraft and reading every piece of hard sci-fi I could get my hands on, I thought I was pretty...
Books & Literature
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Hard Science vs. Good Story: My Forty Years of Figuring Out What Actually Matters
You know, after reading sci-fi for nearly five decades, I’ve gotten into more arguments about scientific accuracy than any reasonable librarian should. Just last month,...
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Been There, Done That: My Four Decades of Reading About the End of Everything
You know, after forty years of watching real spacecraft leave Earth and reading about fictional ones fleeing dying worlds, I’ve come to realize something odd...
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Why Every Sci-Fi Story I Love Eventually Asks “What Makes You Human?”
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately while reshelfing books in the stacks – how every great science fiction story I’ve encountered in fifty...
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The Problem with Tidy Endings in Our Broken Worlds
When I walk into a theatre and see a post-apocalyptic story being told in some new form (whether it’s a blockbuster or a low-budget indie),...
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Why Every Good Sci-Fi Story Needs Its Freaks (And I’m Not Sorry About It)
There are many questions, that come up in virtually every class I teach science fiction to high schoolers about, including the query: “Do we need...
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Why Independent Sci-Fi Films Are Actually Keeping Real Science Fiction Alive
You know, after forty years designing satellite propulsion systems and watching the film industry butcher science fiction with increasing enthusiasm, I’ve got to say something...
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How Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner Taught This Engineer to Appreciate Science Fiction as Art
It was 1983 and my wife rented the movie Blade Runner on VHS – at that time video rental stores were relatively new and renting...
