"My science fiction has different ancestors — African ones," says writer Nnedi Okorafor. In between excerpts from her "Binti" series and her novel "Lagoon," Okorafor discusses the inspiration and roots of her work — and how she opens strange doors through her Afrofuturist writing.
https://www.ted.com/talks/nnedi_okorafor_sci_fi_stories_that_imagine_a_future_africa
In episode 371 of the Functional Nerds Podcast, Patrick Hester and John Anealio welcome back Hugo-award winning author, Mary Robinette Kowal! Her book – The Calculating Stars – is out with its companion in the duology – The Fated Sky – will be out in August!
About The Calculating Stars: A meteor decimates the U.S. government and paves the way for a climate cataclysm that will eventually render the earth inhospitable to humanity. This looming threat calls for a radically accelerated timeline in the earth’s efforts to colonize space, as well as an unprecedented opportunity for a much larger share of humanity to take part.
One of these new entrants in the space race is Elma York, whose experience as a WASP pilot and mathematician earns her a place in the International Aerospace Coalition’s attempts to put man on the moon. But with so many skilled and experienced women pilots and scientists involved with the program, it doesn’t take long before Elma begins to wonder why they can’t go into space, too—aside from some pesky barriers like thousands of years of history and a host of expectations about the proper place of the fairer sex. And yet, Elma’s drive to become the first Lady Astronaut is so strong that even the most dearly held conventions may not stand a chance.
About Mary Robinette: Mary Robinette Kowal is the author of Ghost Talkers, The Glamourist Histories series, and the Lady Astronaut duology. She is a cast member of the award-wining podcast Writing Excuses and also a three-time Hugo Award winner. Her short fiction appears in Uncanny, Tor.com, and Asimov’s. Mary, a professional puppeteer, lives in Chicago. Visit her online at maryrobinettekowal.com.
http://functionalnerds.com/2018/07/episode-371-with-mary-robinette-kowal/
This week, Hugo Award winning and Nebula Award nominated author Mary Robinette Kowal talks about her Lady Astronaut duology, which is itself a prequel to her Hugo winning short story “Lady Astronaut of Mars”.
Mary talks about the research into space flight, space travel, and the science and engineering that went into her world-building and story, nearly-forgotten history of the role of women in rocketry and the space program, and meeting with the actual scientists putting people and deep space exploration robots into space.
What if you didn’t have to be a scientist to write science fiction?
Guess what people, Mary Robinette Kowal is about to blow your mind. She has the most incredible background I have heard on the show so far: Jim Henson Puppeteer, Voiceover actor, and Hugo-award-winning Science Fiction author. YES.
https://www.secretlibrarypodcast.com/episodes/mary-robinette-kowal
Kim Stanley Robinson is one of the biggest names in current science fiction. His most famous work is, arguably, the Mars Trilogy, but he is the author of seventeen novels and several collections of short stories. I could easily overburden you with biographical details and lists of his accolades, but I’ll leave that to this very comprehensive fan page.
I learned about Stan through my interview with Tim Morton in 2012—they are friends and, at the time, both lived in Davis. It took a year but, when I next passed through Davis, I was fortunate enough to get three hours to sit down with Stan and talk about the future. I was especially interested in Stan’s work because he is an incredible researcher and regularly uses his fiction to explore a variety of plausible economic, scientific, ecological, and social futures. In other words, he uses fiction to ask many of the same questions that we have been asking our interviewees throughout the project. The result, I think, is one of the strongest and most wide-ranging interviews in The Conversation.
http://www.findtheconversation.com/episode-63-kim-stanley-robinson/
An interview with Ursula K. Le Guin by TVAP (The Video Access Project) / The Creative Outlet, Inc.
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Climate change and population growth will combine in the twenty-first century to put an enormous load on humanity’s bio-infrastructural support system, the planet Earth. Kim Stanley Robinson argues that our current economic system undervalues both the environment and future human generations, and it will have to change if we hope to succeed in dealing with the enormous challenges facing us. Science is the most powerful conceptual system we have for dealing with the world, and we are certain to be using science to design and guide our response to the various crises now bearing down on us. A more scientific economics — what would that look like? And what else in our policy, habits, and values will have to change?
Winner of Hugo, Nebula and Locus Awards, Kim Stanley Robinson is best known for his award-winning Mars trilogy. He has published fifteen novels and several short stories collections, often exploring ecological and sociological themes. Recently, the US National Science Foundation has sent Robinson to Antarctica as part of their Antarctic Artists and Writers Program. In April 2011, Robinson presented his observations on the cyclical nature of capitalism at the Rethinking Capitalism conference, University of California, Santa Cruz. In 1984, he published his doctoral dissertation, The N…
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Once humans start colonizing other planets, how will politics work between Earth and those who live offworld? Ariel is joined by author Annalee Newitz and linguist Nick Farmer—who works on the show the Expanse—to discuss science fiction’s portrayal of realistic space politics!
https://www.tested.com/science/space/867975-offworld-how-would-space-politics-work/
Even if you haven’t seen 2001: A Space Odyssey, Stanley Kubrick’s mind-melting 1968 science fiction epic, you probably know at least something about it. It’s one of those movies, like Star Wars or Citizen Kane, that has become so thoroughly dissolved into our pop culture that you’ll have heard of the villainous computer HAL or know the famed music cue (Richard Strauss’ “Also sprach Zarathustra”) that plays over its most indelible images.
But how were those moments created? The story of 2001 is the story of an almost obsessive attention to detail, of a budget that almost completely destroyed the film’s studio, of an initial wave of terrible reviews that might have killed a lesser movie. At every step of the way along its production process (and even after its release), 2001 is a fascinating example of big-time moviemaking gone right.This week, Todd is joined first by Vox film critic Alissa Wilkinson to talk about 2001’s long legacy, then by author Michael Benson, whose book Space Odyssey Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke, and the Making of a Masterpiece is the definitive account of the making of the film, to talk about how this titanic achievement came to be.
https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/vox/i-think-youre-interesting/e/54242528
Tagged with film:title=2001 a space odyssey sci-fi science fiction
Bruce Sterling at The Interval: The future is a kind of history that hasn’t happened yet. The past is a kind of future that has already happened.
The present moment vanishes before it can be described. Language, a human invention, lacks the power to fully adhere to reality.
We live in a very short now and here, since the flow of events in spacetime is mostly closed to human comprehension. But we have to say something about the future, since we have to live there. So what can we say? Being “futuristic” is a problem in metaphysics; it’s about getting language to adhere to an unknowable reality. But the futuristic quickly becomes old-fashioned, so how can the news stay news?
Bruce Sterling is a futurist, journalist, science-fiction author, and culture critic. He is the author of more than 20 books including ground-breaking science ficiton and non-fiction about hackers, design and the future. He was the editor in 01986 of Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology (1986) which brought the cyberpunk science fiction sub-genre to a much wider audience. He previous spoke for Long Now about "The Singularity: Your Future as a Black Hole" in 02004. His Beyond the Beyond blog on Wired.com is now in its 15th year. His most recent book is Pirate Utopia.
https://theinterval.org/salon-talks/02018/oct/16/how-be-futuristic-bruce-sterling
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