The Fear That Synthesizers Would Ruin Music
A German musicologist complained in 1954 that they reminded him of "barking hell-hounds."
On the History of the Artificial Womb
Will outside-the-womb gestation, increasingly viable for animal embryos, lead to a feminist utopia? Or to something like Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World?
Will Reanimating Dead Brains Inspire the Next Frankenstein?
In recent experiments, scientists brought back cellular functions to the brains of dead pigs, recalling early galvanism.
Can Science Fiction Predict the Future of Technology?
Science fiction isn’t limited to predicting tech developments: It’s more broadly concerned with imagining possible futures, or alternative presents.
Making Men Online
How the internet has both reinforced and tweaked traditional gender pathologies, especially for boys and men.
What The War of the Worlds Had to Do with Tasmania
H. G. Wells's famous science fiction novel imagines what would happen if Martians did to Great Britain what Europeans did to Tasmania.
Finding a Murderer in a Victim’s Eye
In late 19th-century forensics, optography was all the rage. This pseudoscience held that what someone saw just before death would be imprinted on their eye.
Queering Jack Sheppard
An interview with author Jordy Rosenberg about his mesmerizing novel, Confessions of the Fox.
Why We Still Love The Twilight Zone
Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone stood out in the "vast wasteland" of television in the early 1960s and still resonates today.
RIP Ursula K. Le Guin
"Isn't the 'subjection of women' in science fiction merely a symptom of a whole which is authoritarian, power-worshipping, and intensely parochial?"