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4 days ago | 
themarysue.com | Sarah Fimm
With the ever present threat of World War Three looming on the horizon, it’s hard to have faith in humanity’s future. Many sci-fi authors tend to pile on the pessimism, what with all their predictions of grimdark futures where super-corporations wage dehumanizing interstellar wars adding more meaninglessness to the already empty void. And yet, like a yellow sun rising on a distant planet, a small crop of sci-fi authors promise a warm and wonderful future.
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4 days ago | 
themarysue.com | Sarah Fimm
While one would think that worm riding chosen ones, planet hopping astronauts, or stargazing astronomers would be composed of all genders, much of the sci-fi canon is about a small subsection of the human genome: a bunch of guys. Looking for sci-fi novels with female protagonists that give the boys a run for their rocket fuel?
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1 week ago | 
themarysue.com | Sarah Fimm
Why start another famous series about some milquetoast Chosen One’s quest to defeat the Dark Lord when you could start an actually COOL fantasy series that no one else has ever heard of?
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1 week ago | 
themarysue.com | Sarah Fimm
When Ted Chiang wrote a cute little story about a linguist learning to picture-talk with some seven legged octopus aliens, I wonder if he knew that it would someday be adapted into a big budget Hollywood sci-fi movie with Amy Adams? If he learned heptapod speak, and with it their knowledge of the future, I’m sure he did.
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1 week ago | 
themarysue.com | Sarah Fimm
Ever since H.G. Wells’ The War of The Worlds hit the airwaves, humanity has become terrified alien invaders, unaware of the fact that aliens might just be terrified of us. To the objective and extraterrestrial observer, human beings are horrifying. For all our guises of civility – our business suits and cappuccinos and adult coloring books, we’re nothing more than a bunch of angry primates with the power to smash atoms and the gall to use it.
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1 week ago | 
themarysue.com | Sarah Fimm
Dear A24, if you’re reading this, boy do I have an idea for you. Ten of them, in fact. Looking for your next feature? Want something to really knock the movie-goer socks off your devoted following of cinephiles? These ten fantasy books could be your next feature length haymaker punch to separate your adoring audience from their footwear. Weird, dark, cerebral, and sexy in a slightly uncomfortable sort of way, these 10 fantasy books are perfect for your next Oscar bait theatrical endeavor.
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1 week ago | 
themarysue.com | Sarah Fimm
Something was in the water in 2015 – something fantastical, something magical, something that inspired a bloom of brilliant fantasy works to bolster us through the dark days to come. Despite three tumultuous presidential elections, a global pandemic, a rising billionaire class, and monumental social upheaval, these fantasy authors kept on keeping on.
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1 week ago | 
themarysue.com | Sarah Fimm
Science! But make it gay! Words to live by, if only the general scientific community would catch on. E = MC²? Nah, I prefer ME = LGBTQ². While the fundamental theorems responsible for shaping the laws of the physical universe could certainly use a bit of queering up, the science fiction genre has been rocketing off with queer themes to infinity and beyond. These authors are leading lights in the field of gay science, and are responsible for publishing 10 of the best queer sci-fi books of all time.
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1 week ago | 
themarysue.com | Sarah Fimm
Relativity? Time dilation? Quantum physics? BORING. When I read a star-spanning sci-fi epic, I don’t care about the physical motion of celestial bodies, I care about being moved by them. Space operas, aka “soft” sci-fi are science fiction stories about our universe without being bogged down by the pesky laws of physics. How do those sandworms in Dune not collapse under their own weight? How do Gideon and Harrow travel to distant planets without experiencing time dilation in Gideon the Ninth?
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1 week ago | 
themarysue.com | Sarah Fimm
The best sci-fi isn’t all alien invasions and pew-pew laser beams, sometimes the most affecting sci-fi stories are the ones that feel close to our reality but a little off. Crackling static from radio transmissions captured from the other side of the sun, bits of fragmented code that almost seem like they were generated by intelligent design, the shadow of conscious in the cold glow of a computer’s camera eye.
