Tag: fiction

“Dystopies climatiques”: some things just sound cooler in French

August 31, 2015

The cli-fi piece I wrote for The Atlantic has gone international! French publication Libération picked it up last weekend. My French language skills are currently limited to gist translation of old Edith Piaf songs, but I like the sound of “J.K. Ullrich est romancière.” Romancière is a much more elegant term than “obscure-but-determined indie author”, don’t … More “Dystopies climatiques”: some things just sound cooler in French

The Literature Museum: Sci-Fi and Sexism

August 25, 2015

“Think of it as the literature museum,” my father told me when I was fifteen. I was a dually-enrolled high school student at the local college, and frustrated with some of the ideas I encountered in the curriculum’s so-called classic novels. Dad, a veteran English major himself, helped me contextualize the antiquated stories by likening … More The Literature Museum: Sci-Fi and Sexism

Review: “We” by Yevgeny Zamyatin

August 2, 2015

1984 is often regarded as the original dystopia, but Orwell himself acknowledged that the novel was somewhat derivative. His inspiration? Yevgeny Zamyatin’s 1921 novel We, evolutionary ancestor of the totalitarian sci-fi stories so popular today. It’s easy to dismiss the book as cliched until one places it on the continuum of speculative fiction and remembers that … More Review: “We” by Yevgeny Zamyatin

Environmental Hazards: Five Challenges of Writing Climate Fiction (Part 7)

June 10, 2015

This post concludes a seven-part series discussing my experience writing climate fiction in my novel, Blue Karma. Conclusion Over the past week, I’ve shared the five greatest challenges I encountered writing the cli-fi genre: turning a vision into a narrative, defining the scope and thematic focus of the story, drawing inspiration from current events, and avoiding rhetoric. … More Environmental Hazards: Five Challenges of Writing Climate Fiction (Part 7)

Environmental Hazards: Five Challenges of Writing Climate Fiction (Part 6)

June 9, 2015

This post is part six of a seven-part series discussing my experience writing climate fiction in my novel, Blue Karma. Challenge #5: Step Away from the Soapbox As both a writer and a bibliophile, I think the greatest power of fiction is its ability to provoke thought. Here the cli-fi genre has a clear mission. Less than … More Environmental Hazards: Five Challenges of Writing Climate Fiction (Part 6)

Environmental Hazards: Five Challenges of Writing Climate Fiction (Part 5)

June 8, 2015

This post is part five of a seven-part series discussing my experience writing climate fiction in my novel, Blue Karma. Challenge #4: The Headline Tango Writing Blue Karma felt like a race against time. Over the year it took me to finish it, more and more headlines about epic droughts , floods, and changing attitudes about water use peppered the … More Environmental Hazards: Five Challenges of Writing Climate Fiction (Part 5)