Ray Bradbury’s Mirror to Our World

Democracy. Technology. The Media. The Science-Fiction Writer—Who Would’ve Turned 100 This Week—Has Never Been So Relevant

Happy 100th birthday, Ray Bradbury. But did you have to be so right about our world?

There were no candles and no cake on the YouTube or Twitter livestreams during a virtual Zócalo/Fowler Museum at UCLA event with ZYZZYVA, held to honor the late writer’s August 22, 1920 birth. But a lively panel of writers and scholars delved into Bradbury’s literary visions of the future, and the insights and warnings they still provide for humanity.

“Ray would often say he wasn’t trying to predict the future,” said Bradbury’s friend, actor and director …

Killing Your Audience Members Really Keeps Them Engaged

From Australian Sci-Fi to Music, Making Readers and Listeners Part of the Narrative Is an Underutilized Tool

One of the most common pieces of advice given to new writers is “Kill your darlings.” The Australian writers Jay Kristoff and Amie Kaufman have turned this advice on its …

Apple and the Demise of Cyberpunk

Without Cords and Jacks to Unplug, How Will Our Fictional Heroes Rebel Now?

Rightly or wrongly, we tend to speak of science fiction authors as prophets: We’re delighted to find that Philip K. Dick inveighed against the internet of things half a century …

Who Should Be Our Alien Liaison?

If Extraterrestrials Make Contact, Science Fiction Has Some Advice for Selecting Humanity’s Spokesperson

On May 25, 2015, a radio telescope in Zelenchukskaya, Russia, picked up a signal coming from star HD164595 in the Hercules constellation. We don’t know much about this star located …

Novelist Neal Stephenson

Wanna Be a Writer? Write 10,000 Pages, Then Throw Them Away

Neal Stephenson is the author of the three-volume historical epic “The Baroque Cycle” and the novels Cryptonomicon, The Diamond Age, Snow Crash, and Zodiac. Before discussing the relationship between science …

io9 Editor-in-Chief Annalee Newitz

Extremely Unusual in Some Respects

Annalee Newitz is editor-in-chief of io9, a website that covers science and science fiction, and author of Scatter, Adapt and Remember: How Humans Will Survive a Mass Extinction. Before moderating …