Science, History, and Fiction in Everyday Life
Rendezvous with Rama (1973) is a novel by Arthur C. Clarke, set in the 2130s in the Solar System. Rama, initially mistaken for an asteroid, is instead a mysterious alien spacecraft in the shape of a 50-kilometre spinning cylinder, that…
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In 1967, Harlan Ellison put together a short-story anthology titled Dangerous Visions. Mildly put, this collection made history and “almost single-handedly [it] changed the way readers thought about science fiction.” What all the fuss was about? First of all, the quality…
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2312 (2012) by Kim Stanley Robinson is a SF novel about a (relatively) near future of interplanetary colonisation. Humanity has spread across the whole Solar System, settling down by many different means, from biomes in hollowed-out asteroids to cities on Mercury….
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An interview to Ken Liu, the SF Chinese-American writer, author of some excellent short stories (published on F&SF, Asimov’s, Analog, Lightspeed, Clarkesworld among others) and winner of many SF awards, has appeared on December, 17 on Amazing Stories. Regina Kanyu…
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Today is my first birthday as a blogger. The Earthian Hivemind was online first on December, 16 2013, just giving a flash report on Yutu, the Chinese Jade Rabbit on the moon. Only few lines, but I had to start…
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The Drowned World (1962) is a SF novel by J. G. Ballard, an author that has written in other literary genres and became especially famous thanks to a war novel, Empire of the Sun. Set in London in a far-away 2145, The…
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In addition to astrophysics and space exploration, I do also write articles about another of my favourite subjects, science in science-fiction, on this blog and elsewhere. The ones listed below have appeared in summer 2014 on Amazing Stories. Arrakis and Single…
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There are two things about this odd yet fascinating book worth mentioning straight away. The first is that, albeit featuring a seventeen-year old boy, it’s definitively not a YA story, under any standard. More: it is not the kind of book…
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The Shadow of the Torturer (1980) is a fantasy novel by Gene Wolfe. It is the first of four volumes in The Book of the New Sun series, and tells the story of Severian, an apprentice in the torturers’ guild….
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Here I am. Just finished validating my draft of 50,932 words. I barely believe I made it – but those words came somehow out from my Mac, and the screenshot is there to prove it. Wow. What my novel was…
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