SF

Orientalism in Our Code: “The Matrix Resurrections,” Hollywood, and Anti-Asian Violence

The Matrix's final lesson to me, in watching The Matrix Resurrections, is that I can no longer swallow its bitter pill....

JERRINE TAN

The Radical Opening of the Human and Black Love in Amazon’s “Black Stars: A Galaxy of New Worlds”

Bernabé S. Mendoza reviews a collection of SF stories that includes work by Nnedi Okorafor, Nisi Shawl, and Victor LaValle....

BERNABÉ S. MENDOZA

The Inhumanity of Work: On Olga Ravn’s “The Employees”

Lauren Nelson evaluates “The Employees,” a novel by Olga Ravn translated by Martin Aitken....

LAUREN NELSON

What Is Space Opera in the 2020s?

Grant Wythoff surveys recent books by Tade Thompson, Becky Chambers, and Arkady Martine that could be called space operas....

GRANT WYTHOFF

Violent Acts of Alien Intelligences: On Cixin Liu’s “The Three-Body Problem” and Mark Bould’s Climate Criticism

Sungshin Kim and Kurt Guldentops read Cixin Liu's Three-Body Problem trilogy against Mark Bould's criticism....

KURT GULDENTOPS, SUNGSHIN KIM

So Much More Than Nigerian Harry Potter: On Nnedi Okorafor’s “Akata Woman”

Jonathan P. Lewis reviews the third book in Nnedi Okorafor’s Nsibidi Scripts series, “Akata Woman.”...

JONATHAN P. LEWIS

YOUNG ADULT & CHILDREN’S LITERATURE

“The Fringe Is Where the Fun Really Happens”: A Conversation with Kathe Koja

The author discusses her versatile career and her first horror novel in decades, “The Dark Factory.”...

ROB LATHAM

Is Amazon the Borg? We Asked Their Workers

If Amazon is building a new future of capitalism (or something worse), it is doing so on the backs of its workers. What future do they envision?...

MAX HAIVEN, GRAEME WEBB, XENIA BENIVOLSKI

The Future Is Bloody: On Gretchen Felker-Martin’s “Manhunt”

Gretchen Felker-Martin’s “Manhunt” shines a light on how our bodies inhibit us, please us, disgust us....

CHRIST

Masculinity and the Polar Gothic: On Ally Wilkes’s “All the White Spaces”

Lowell Duckert reviews the new novel from Ally Wilkes, “All the White Spaces.”...

LOWELL DUCKERT

Acknowledgment: On Samuel Delany’s “Occasional Views, Volume 2”

Samuel R. Delany’s work moves between minor and major scales with dizzying speed....

ROBERT KIELY

Reading Sword-and-Sorcery to Make the Present Less Real

Jason Ray Carney on whether it’s justifiable to read sword-and-sorcery today....

JASON RAY CARNEY

In the Eye of the Sandstorm: On Nnedi Okorafor’s “Noor”

Nnedi Okorafor’s new novel follows a cybernetically augmented protagonist on a perilous journey of self-discovery....

AYANNI C. H. COOPER

“The Turner Diaries” and Pulp Fascism

How "The Turner Diaries" resembles classics of SF past....

NOAH BERLATSKY

The Future Is Black, Not Bleak

David Michael Jamison reviews “The Future of Black,” edited by Len Lawson, Cynthia Manick, and Gary Jackson....

DAVID MICHAEL JAMISON

POETRY

Ride or Die? Mark Bould and the Fast-and-Furiocene

Alison Sperling makes her way through “The Anthropocene Unconscious,” the new book by Mark Bould....

ALISON SPERLING

Magic, Mermaids, and the Middle Passage: On Natasha Bowen’s “Skin of the Sea”

Black feminist scholar and merwomanist melusine Jalondra A. Davis reviews Natasha Bowen’s “Skin of the Sea.”...

JALONDRA A. DAVIS

Is Geoengineering the Only Solution?: Exploring Climate Crisis in Neal Stephenson’s “Termination Shock”

Rebecca Evans reviews Neal Stephenson’s latest, “Termination Shock.”...

REBECCA EVANS

Fear Is the Mind Killer; What Enlivens the Mind? — “Dune”’s Alt-Victimhood and Radical Nonviolence in “Nausicaä”

Jerrine Tan compares “Dune” to “Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind.”...

JERRINE TAN

Repetition, with a Difference: On “Deathloop”

By assimilating gameplay repetition into its story, “Deathloop” hints at resolving the dissonance between game form and narrative form....

NATHAN WAINSTEIN

An Offbeat Ghost Story: On Priyanka Champaneri’s “The City of Good Death”

“The City of Good Death” deals in stereotypes related to India, but it also vividly presents the life of the characters in its lush prose....

SUPARNO BANERJEE

Whither Harmony Square?: Conspiracy Games in Late Capitalism

Today’s conspiracy fantasies come from a world where we feel that we are trapped in a game we can’t win. Can counter-conspiracy games be the antidote?...

MAX HAIVEN, A. T. KINGSMITH, ARIS KOMPOROZOS-ATHANASIOU

A Revisionist Mythos: Frankenstein Versus Cthulhu

New novels by Kim Newman and Michael Shea illustrate the power of popular myth....

ROB LATHAM

Nine-10ths of a Triumph: On John Steinbeck’s “Murder at Full Moon”

Although not the werewolf novel it was initially reported as being, “Murder at Full Moon” is something even better: a metafictional novel with teeth....

JESS NEVINS

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