Exhalation

<h4>Sherryl Vint teaches at the University of California, Riverside. She co-edits the journals Science Fiction Studies, Science Fiction Film and Television and Humanimalia. She is the author of Bodies of Tomorrow and Animal Alterity, co-author of The Routledge Concise History of Science Fiction, and co-editor of the books The Routledge Companion to Science Fiction, Fifty Key Figures in Science Fiction and Beyond Cyberpunk.</h4>

Sherryl Vint

The Technologies That Remake Us: On Ted Chiang’s “Exhalation: Stories”

"The function of science fiction is not always to predict the future but sometimes to prevent it." — Frank Herbert

This Census-Taker

Accounts and Accountability

The Water Knife

Excavating a Future

<h4>Austin Grossman is a writer and game designer who has contributed to the New York Times and a number of video games. He is the author of the novel Soon I Will Be Invincible, which was published by Pantheon Books in 2007.</h4>

Austin Grossman

<h4>Vandana Singh is a member of the Framingham State Department of Physics and Earth Sciences. In addition to being a physics professor, Singh is also an internationally renowned SF author with more than a dozen published stories and several literary awards. </h4>

Vandana Singh

<h4>Patrick B. Sharp is the Chair of the Liberal Studies Department at Cal State, Los Angeles. His first book, Savage Perils: Racial Frontiers and Nuclear Apocalypse in American Culture looks at how Darwinist narratives of race and progress have influenced political rhetoric and stories about nuclear apocalypse. He has also co-edited with Dr. Jeannette Eileen Jones an anthology entitled Darwin in Atlantic Cultures: Evolutionary Visions of Race, Gender, and Sexuality.</h4>

Patrick B. Sharp

Jonathan Alexander is the author, co-author, or co-editor of 22 books, including the Creep trilogy, which consists of Creep: A Life, A Theory, An Apology (finalist for a Lambda Literary Award, 2017); Bullied: The Story of an Abuse (2021); and Dear Queer Self: An Experiment in Memoir (2022). Other recent books include the memoir Stroke Book: The Diary of a Blindspot (2021) and the scholarly work Writing and Desire: Queer Ways of Composing (2023). Alexander is Chancellor’s Professor of English at the University of California, Irvine.

Jonathan Alexander

Catherine Liu is most recently author of Virtue Hoarders: the Case Against the Professional Managerial Class (University &nbsp;of Minnesota Press, 2021). Author of two academic monographs, Copying Machines: Taking Notes for the Automaton and American Idyll: Academic Anti-Elitism as Cultural Critique, she has also published a novel called Oriental Girls Desire Romance. President of the Western Humanities Alliance, she edited a special issue of the Western Humanities Review (2016) on the topic of Prestige. She is at work on a memoir called Panda Gifts, and is a contributor to Liza Featherstone's collection False Choices: the Faux Feminism of Hillary Clinton. Her interest in the populist rebellion against the Professional Managerial Class seems to have been redeemed by recent events.&nbsp;&nbsp;

Catherine Liu

California in Science Fiction: The Future is Here

Don’t Let the Future Be Written For You: Sabrina Vourvoulias’s “Ink”

Astounding Wonder: Imagining Science and Science Fiction in Interwar America

Pulp Science

Zero History

Advertising Degree Zero: William Gibson's "Zero History"

"Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn't." — Mark Twain

Fiction

Sherryl Vint teaches at the University of California, Riverside. She co-edits the journals Science Fiction Studies, Science Fiction Film and Television and Humanimalia. She is the author of Bodies of Tomorrow and Animal Alterity, co-author of The Routledge Concise History of Science Fiction, and co-editor of the books The Routledge Companion to Science Fiction, Fifty Key Figures in Science Fiction and Beyond Cyberpunk.