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 ]
OLIVER MORTON’S The Moon is a masterpiece of science journalism that throws fresh light on its eponymous subject. Morton mines fields as diverse as aerospace science, history, astrobiology, mythology, geology, and science fiction in pursuit of lessons the Moon can teach us about space... Continue reading at Los Angeles Review of Books
[ Los Angeles Review of Books | 2020-03-06 20:00:57 UTC ]
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The book is a sumptuous scrapbook of photographs, magazine covers, artwork and hundreds of articles. Continue reading at The Washington Post
[ The Washington Post | 2020-03-04 17:19:27 UTC ]
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THE WORMWOOD PLANT is ornamental and used as an ingredient in absinthe. The plant is enticing to smell and adamantly bitter to taste. It will refuse to leave your tongue even after you try to chase it away with sweeter flavors. It will stay with you, like a curse. The science fiction Wormwood... Continue reading at Los Angeles Review of Books
[ Los Angeles Review of Books | 2020-02-29 20:00:42 UTC ]
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I’d often start one project, only to realize that a more urgent one needed my attention. So I asked organizational experts to help give my to-do list strategy a makeover. As a solopreneur juggling multiple projects, clients, and income streams—copywriting, journalism, anthology editing, and... Continue reading at Fast Company
[ Fast Company | 2020-02-28 09:00:24 UTC ]
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In this episode of Reading Women, Kendra talks with Nicole Chung about the anthology she co-edited, A Map Is Only One Story out now from Catapult. From the episode: Kendra: Today, I’m talking to Nicole Chung, the editor in chief of Catapult Magazine and also one of the co-editors of the... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2020-02-26 09:47:43 UTC ]
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EPIC IS THE WAY: "The Mandalorian" has proven to be a big hit for Disney and its streaming service, Disney+ – and a Cary company helps make the magic come to life on the screen. Epic Games is helping Lucasfilm produce what design, tech and science fiction site Gizmodo called "real-time digital... Continue reading at Silicon Valley Business Journal
[ Silicon Valley Business Journal | 2020-02-24 18:26:44 UTC ]
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Congratulations to the finalists for the annual Nebula Awards! Presented by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, these awards have been celebrating writers working in the genres for the past fifty-five years. (Past recipients include N. K. Jemisin and Jeff VanderMeer.) This year’s... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2020-02-20 20:54:28 UTC ]
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This month, science fiction fans and Solaris lovers everywhere have cause to celebrate: six newly-illustrated editions of work by the late Polish author Stanisław Lem (1921-2006) are being published by The MIT Press. Lem’s influence on science fiction has been compared to that of authors like... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2020-02-20 16:57:37 UTC ]
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It’s an exciting year for the Los Angeles Times Book Prizes! This will be its 40th year of celebrating the literary community. The Times announced their 2019 Book Prize finalists today; the winners will be announced at a ceremony in Los Angeles on April 17th. Additionally, bestselling crime... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2020-02-19 17:41:26 UTC ]
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Psychologists have stigmatised science fiction fans as losers who retreat into fantasy worlds. This is unfair. Continue reading at The Conversation
[ The Conversation | 2020-02-18 10:26:09 UTC ]
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A reader new to science fiction and fantasy embraces the genre and explores some of the great new works of SFF on shelves now. Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2020-02-17 11:40:18 UTC ]
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20 of the best audiobooks narrated by black women, including fiction, classics, science fiction and fantasy, memoir, essays, and poetry. Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2020-02-14 11:38:06 UTC ]
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Cultural Cross Sections Alice-Catherine Carls Pachamama / Pichincha / Photo by Scipio Rocío Durán-Barba / Photo by Stephen Carls Rocío Durán-Barba is one of the most important voices of Latin American literature today. The author of more than fifty... Continue reading at World Literature Today
[ World Literature Today | 2020-02-13 15:00:14 UTC ]
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Book Reviews Dustin Pickering The introductory notes to Quesadilla and Other Adventures (Hawakal Publishers, 2019), edited by Somrita Urni Ganguly, lay the ground plan for the anthology. “Food is history,” writes Ganguly. “Food is memory. Food is... Continue reading at World Literature Today
[ World Literature Today | 2020-02-11 13:46:44 UTC ]
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What if we believed women? That’s the question at the heart of the new anthology Believe Me, edited by Jaclyn Friedman and Jessica Valenti which gathers together more than two-dozen leading voices on gender, power, and the most pressing issues shaping feminism today. Among them are Dahlia... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2020-02-04 09:49:39 UTC ]
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Now on its fifth series, the magic of Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton’s comedy anthology remains its ability to turn even the most banal of scenarios into disturbingly thrilling TVThe fifth series of Inside No 9 opens with an episode set entirely in a referees’ changing room. Four... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2020-02-03 13:56:16 UTC ]
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‘Do You Compute?’ investigates how technology went from being written off as science fiction to something we engage with every day. In the years following the end of World War II, computers were just starting to make their way into the public consciousness. The intimidatingly technical devices... Continue reading at Fast Company
[ Fast Company | 2020-01-27 09:00:47 UTC ]
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WILLIAM GIBSON NOTICES THINGS others miss. While his science fiction novels are often described as prescient, what defines Gibson’s body of work is the extraordinary refinement of his focus on the present. When everyone is talking about the features of the latest Silicon Valley gadget, he might... Continue reading at Los Angeles Review of Books
[ Los Angeles Review of Books | 2020-01-25 13:30:33 UTC ]
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Decades of science fiction assured us all that, yes, one day we'd be able to control the immensely complex gadgetry around us with just our voices. It was right, mostly. The rise of the virtual assistant, built atop still other developments in cloud... Continue reading at Engadget
[ Engadget | 2020-01-23 16:30:00 UTC ]
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Christopher Tolkien helped edit and publish much of J.R.R. Tolkien's work after the science fiction and fantasy writer died in 1973. Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2020-01-17 19:03:20 UTC ]
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