Futurist Fiction
Despite his popularity as a science fiction writer, the late author Douglas Adams championed the value of planet Earth. In the late 1980s, he teamed up with zoologist Mark Cawardine for a BBC radio series called Last Chance to See, in which the pair tracks endangered species around the globe. Adams' 1990 book chronicling the... Continue Reading →
Fifty years ago today, emissaries from Earth--riding in a command cabin the size of a car, and guided by a computer less powerful than a modern smartphone--landed on our Moon and left Homo sapiens' first footprints on another world. In honor of the Apollo 11 anniversary, I chose this date to launch the print edition of my lunar-based... Continue Reading →
If you or a kid in your life need some sci-fi summer reading, I've got a book for you! Brave New Girls: Adventures of Gals and Gizmos goes on sale today. The fourth in its series, this anthology features 26 science fiction short stories starring STEM-savvy girls. All proceeds support the Society of Women Engineers... Continue Reading →
Rise of the Rocket Girls promised an intersection of two of my favorite non-fiction genres: science, and the too-often-overlooked impact of women in history. I expected a book comparable to Radium Girls, which portrays its subjects as memorable personalities in a suspenseful narrative; or Code Girls, the captivating account of female cryptologic analysts during WWII.... Continue Reading →
The shiny black hardcover jacket winked in the sun, mysterious as a unit of dark matter. I lifted the book from the sale table outside Borders Books & Music and flipped its pages. Elementary particles...wormholes...the uncertainty principle...reading this before I head off to college will make me sound smarter when I get there, right? And... Continue Reading →
I owe the discovery to The Radium Girls to book blogger Sarah at The Critiquing Chemist (if you haven't had the pleasure of her pithy literary analysis, I recommend visiting her site). She reviewed the book back in August and its subject--like most unusual historical episodes--immediately piqued my interest. A providential Amazon sale had the title... Continue Reading →
