A Moog synthesizer

The Fear That Synthesizers Would Ruin Music

A German musicologist complained in 1954 that they reminded him of "barking hell-hounds."
A fetus inside of an artistic depiction of an artificial womb

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?
Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Giovanni_Aldini,_Essai...sur_le_galvanisme..._Wellcome_L0023892.jpg

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.
A futuristic view of air travel over Paris as people leave the Opera.

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.
A man on a laptop

Making Men Online

How the internet has both reinforced and tweaked traditional gender pathologies, especially for boys and men.
An illustration from War of the Worlds

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.
Jordy Rosenberg

Queering Jack Sheppard

An interview with author Jordy Rosenberg about his mesmerizing novel, Confessions of the Fox.
Twilight Zone spiral

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.
Ursula Le Guin

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?"
BLADE RUNNER 2049

Do We Have Moral Obligations to Robots?

The recent film Blade Runner 2049 engages with questions raised by Karel Čapek and Isaac Asimov: What do we owe our creations (and what do they owe us)?