New releases in fiction, nonfiction and comics that caught our attention. Hum by Helen Phillips Robots have become a regular fixture of the workforce, and humans are losing their jobs to AI. Climate change is wreaking havoc on the planet. It’s getting harder and harder for the average person to make ends meet. Facial recognition technology is being used for surveillance. Sound familiar? In her new novel, Hum, author Helen Phillips paints a picture of what our near-future could look like. Its main character, May, has lost her job after technology made her role obsolete, and, desperate for money to support her family, she agrees to participate in an experiment that alters her face to make her undetectable to facial recognition. With the extra cushion from the payment, she takes her husband and children on a short, technology-free vacation to the Botanical Garden — but things go dangerously awry. Hum is a captivating, unsettling work of dystopian fiction that makes it impossible not to draw parallels with our current reality. Life as No One Knows It: The Physics of Life's Emergence by Sara Imari Walker There’s so much we don’t know about the origins of life on Earth, and how it could appear on other worlds. Arizona State University theoretical physicist and astrobiologist Sara Imari Walker tackles the enduring question, “What is life?” and so much more in her book, Life as No One Knows It: The Physics of Life's Emergence. It explores assembly theory, which, as Walker... Continue reading at 'Engadget'
[ Engadget | 2024-08-10 19:43:55 UTC ]
H. G. Wells helped pioneer science fiction with his 1898 book The War of the Worlds. Many iterations later, it still scares and fascinates us. Continue reading at The Conversation
[ The Conversation | 2020-07-06 19:54:21 UTC ]
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In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle analyses a poem that represents the meeting-point of ancient riddle and modern nonsense ‘I Saw a Peacock’ is an anonymous nonsense poem that is included in Quentin Blake’s The Puffin Book of Nonsense Verse (Puffin Poetry), a... Continue reading at Interesting Literature
[ Interesting Literature | 2020-07-03 14:00:44 UTC ]
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Christopher Buckley’s “Make Russia Great Again,” Jessica Anthony’s “Enter the Aardvark” and the anthology “The Faking of the President” all have fun with American politics. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2020-07-02 09:00:08 UTC ]
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Need some cheering up and an out-of-this-world story? Pick up some of the funniest science fiction books this side of the galaxy. Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2020-06-30 10:34:22 UTC ]
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Over the weekend, the winners for this year’s Locus Awards were announced. For a little otherworldly, escapist fiction, read on! (Also, can we talk about this rocket-shaped trophy? The winners must be over the moon!) * SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL Charlie Jane Anders, The City in the Middle of the... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2020-06-29 15:20:49 UTC ]
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Stack your Pride TBR with these hopeful, queer science fiction and fantasy novels where queer characters are celebrated and highlighted. Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2020-06-29 10:35:00 UTC ]
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‘There are rare moments in history when leaders find their private lives uniquely connected to national events’ say producersCoronavirus – latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coverageMichael Winterbottom is set to bring Boris Johnson’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic to television. The... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2020-06-26 13:30:13 UTC ]
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Isaac Asimov’s Foundation trilogy has long been one of the great unadaptable science fiction works (read more on that here, along with a catalogue of Asimov’s awful serial harassment of women), but after 50 years, it has finally made it to screens. Starring noted tall man, Lee Pace (along with... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2020-06-23 14:28:10 UTC ]
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THE STARLESS SEA, Erin Morgenstern’s sophomore fantasy novel, takes effort to read, but there are countless narratively complex works of science fiction and fantasy that amply reward such effort: N. K. Jemisin’s The Fifth Season comes to mind as one recent, prominent example of the type. The... Continue reading at Los Angeles Review of Books
[ Los Angeles Review of Books | 2020-06-20 17:00:48 UTC ]
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The Once Over Casandra López Detail of a Cowlitz artist’s Large Coiled Gathering Basket, ca. 1900, cedar root and beargrass, Elizabeth Cole Butler Collection, Portland Art Museum, 2012.97.11 In spring 2020 I had the opportunity to teach two Native... Continue reading at World Literature Today
[ World Literature Today | 2020-06-18 13:23:07 UTC ]
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A digital collection of "global voices" will launch to coincide with World Refugee Day (20th June 2020). Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-06-08 08:51:48 UTC ]
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Many years ago, I heard a teacher of mine, the late John Gardener, once say that there are only two plots in all of literature: you go on a journey or a stranger comes to town. Or, as Stanley Elkin put it even more succinctly (in reference to science fiction), you go there or they […] Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2020-06-08 08:47:33 UTC ]
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From Quiz to Chernobyl, the one-off television series is the perfect antidote to the relentlessness of multi-season shows. But do they ultimately leave us wanting more?Broadcast across three nights as lockdown kept us glued to our sofas, ITV’s Quiz was the first new drama in a long time that... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2020-06-02 14:27:30 UTC ]
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Get to know the fantastic and thrilling world of the DINOSAUR TRAIN series, a shining example of science fiction for early readers. Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2020-06-02 10:35:52 UTC ]
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It’s been just over 45 years since the publication of Aiiieeeee!, a groundbreaking and trailblazing anthology that established the category of Asian American literature. Since then, we’ve seen the amalgamation of great organizations centering around Asian American Pacific Islander literature,... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2020-05-29 11:00:00 UTC ]
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Penguin Classics is to launch a new series of world science fiction "to challenge stereotypes about the genre". Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-05-28 09:00:55 UTC ]
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A NUMBER OF RECENT ESSAYS and articles have revisited classic literary texts that depict disease pandemics, scouring them for ideas and strategies that might prove useful in our current predicament. An essay in The Boston Review examines Boccaccio’s Decameron (1353), which emerged out of... Continue reading at Los Angeles Review of Books
[ Los Angeles Review of Books | 2020-05-27 19:00:30 UTC ]
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Everyone peaked too early. You remember. The beginning of lockdown, when suddenly half of your friends were FaceTiming you about Tiger King, or downloading a language app, and so many people ordered yoga mats online that they took an estimated six weeks to be delivered. Now the yoga mat... Continue reading at British Council global
[ British Council global | 2020-05-22 15:30:00 UTC ]
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Here are some of the finest poems of remembrance, or about remembrance, which can all be found in the wonderful anthology of remembrance poems, The Nation’s Favourite Poems of Remembrance. Remembrance – whether it’s recalling or remembering a past loved one, or commemorating someone who has... Continue reading at Interesting Literature
[ Interesting Literature | 2020-05-20 14:00:46 UTC ]
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Every year, Girls Write Now provides the opportunity for mentees to be published in a book form; in recent years, the print edition has been produced by Dutton, and the digital edition by the Feminist Press. Taking Our Place in History: The Girls Write Now 2020 Anthology invites you to witness... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2020-05-20 08:47:16 UTC ]
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