The Art of Penguin Science Fiction
A century of sci-fi book covers.
Link tags: science
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Cardigan Sci-fi • Robin Rendle
Cardigans are not entirely necessary for a show or a film to fit within the Cardigan sci-fi subgenre (although they certainly help). It’s the lack of polish in the world, it’s the absence of technological fetishism in the science fiction itself. The science or the tools or the spaceships do not sit at the heart of Cardigan sci-fi — it’s all about the people that wear the cardigans instead.
How to Imagine Climate Futures - Long Now
The best climate fiction can do more than spur us to action to save the world we have — it can help us conceptualize the worlds, both beautiful and dire, that may lie ahead. These stories can be maps to the future, tools for understanding the complex systems that intertwine with the changing climates to come.
Bones, Bones: How to Articulate a Whale
I found this to be thoroughly engrossing. An articulate composition, you might say.
I couldn’t help thinking of J.G. Ballard’s short story, The Drowned Giant.
💡 David Deutsch: Optimism, Pessimism and Cynicism
Not only was fire always dangerous as well as beneficial, so was the wheel. A spear could injure or kill your friends, not only your dinner. With clothes came not only protection but also body lice. With farming came not only a more reliable food supply but also hard, repetitive work – and plunder by hungry bandits.
Every solution creates new problems. But they can be better problems. Lesser evils. More and greater delights.
That’s what progress is. That is what is most visible today. And that is what cynicism must therefore besmirch, obfuscate and argue away if it is to make itself, and pessimism, superficially plausible.
Science Fiction-Media in Transition
Chip Delaney and Octavia Butler on a panel together in 1998 when hypertext and “cyberspace” are in the air. Here’s Octavia Butler on her process (which reminds me of when I’m preparing a conference talk):
I generally have four or five books open around the house—I live alone; I can do this—and they are not books on the same subject. They don’t relate to each other in any particular way, and the ideas they present bounce off one another. And I like this effect. I also listen to audio-books, and I’ll go out for my morning walk with tapes from two very different audio-books, and let those ideas bounce off each other, simmer, reproduce in some odd way, so that I come up with ideas that I might not have come up with if I had simply stuck to one book until I was done with it and then gone and picked up another.
So, I guess, in that way, I’m using a kind of primitive hypertext.
Science Fiction and Philosophy - Five Books Expert Recommendations
I’ve only read three of these five books, but after reading this rollicking interview with Eric Schwitzgebel, I’ve added the other two recommendations to my wishlist.
Untitled: a novel
Ben is writing a chapter a day of this cli-fi story. You can subscribe to the book by email or RSS.
“Dune,” “Foundation,” and the Allure of Science Fiction that Thinks Long-Term — Blog of the Long Now
Comparing and contrasting two different takes on long-term thinking in sci-fi: Dune and Foundation.
In a moment of broader cultural gloominess, Dune’s perspective may resonate more with the current movie-going public. Its themes of long-term ecological destruction, terraforming, and the specter of religious extremism seem in many ways ripped out of the headlines, while Asimov’s technocratic belief in scholarly wisdom as a shining light may be less in vogue. Ultimately, though, the core appeal of these works is not in how each matches with the fashion of today, but in how they look forward through thousands of years of human futures, keeping our imagination of long-term thinking alive.
the Intersection (2021) - YouTube
A great little sci-fi short film from Superflux—a mockumentary from the near future. It starts dystopian but then gets more solarpunk.
Imagine 2200: Climate Fiction for Future Ancestors | Fix
Twelve short stories of solarpunk cli-fi “envisioning the next 180 years of equitable climate progress.”
Whether built on abundance or adaptation, reform or a new understanding of survival, these stories provide flickers of hope, even joy, and serve as a springboard for exploring how fiction can help create a better reality.
Dystopias Now | Commune
These days I tend to think of dystopias as being fashionable, perhaps lazy, maybe even complacent, because one pleasure of reading them is cozying into the feeling that however bad our present moment is, it’s nowhere near as bad as the ones these poor characters are suffering through.
Kim Stanley Robinson on dystopias and utopias.
The energy flows on this planet, and humanity’s current technological expertise, are together such that it’s physically possible for us to construct a worldwide civilization—meaning a political order—that provides adequate food, water, shelter, clothing, education, and health care for all eight billion humans, while also protecting the livelihood of all the remaining mammals, birds, reptiles, insects, plants, and other life-forms that we share and co-create this biosphere with. Obviously there are complications, but these are just complications. They are not physical limitations we can’t overcome. So, granting the complications and difficulties, the task at hand is to imagine ways forward to that better place.
Solarpunk Is Not About Pretty Aesthetics. It’s About the End of Capitalism
Hannah Steinkopf-Frank:
At its core, and despite its appropriation, Solarpunk imagines a radically different societal and economic structure.
Why William Gibson Is a Literary Genius | The Walrus
On the detail and world-building in 40 years of William Gibson’s work.
A Century of Science Fiction That Changed How We Think About the Environment | The MIT Press Reader
From Mary Shelley and Edgar Rice Burroughs to John Brunner, Frank Herbert and J.G. Ballard to Kim Stanley Robinson, Paolo Bacigalupi, and Octavia Butler.
How Steven Weinberg Transformed Physics and Physicists | Quanta Magazine
His first popular book — The First Three Minutes, about cosmology and the Big Bang — became an instant classic and proved profoundly influential for both the general public and professional researchers. Many physicists, including me, started learning cosmology from this book.
The First Three Minutes blew my little mind as a teenager. It has stayed with me.
MD Nichrome by Mass-Driver
Marvin has some competition! Here’s another beautiful sci-fi variable font:
MD Nichrome is a display typeface based on the typography of paperback science fiction from the 70s and early 80s.
Bright Galaxies, Dark Matter, and Beyond | The MIT Press
A new biography of Vera Rubin by Ashley Jean Yeager. One for the wishlist!
Space Elevators: How a sci-fi dream could be built today
Surveying the current practical and theoretical factors for and against space elevators (including partial elevators—skyhooks!).