Tag: Margaret Atwood

Sex, Stories, and Sedition: The Non-Fictional Fallout of Overturning Roe vs. Wade

June 26, 2022

Cockatoos outside echoed my screams when I woke to news that the U.S. Supreme Court had overturned Roe vs. Wade. More than half of Americans believe abortion should be legal, but the 2016 presidential election proved that popular majority is no guarantee of political outcomes. Once again, well-funded reactionary agendas corrupted the system, this time … More Sex, Stories, and Sedition: The Non-Fictional Fallout of Overturning Roe vs. Wade

The Science of “Syzygy”: Genetic Engineering

July 23, 2017

“Just take a bite.” She appraised him suspiciously, then dropped her jaw like a snake and bit into the pitaya’s flesh. “What is this?” she mumbled around ravenous bites. “It’s called a pitaya. Tons of vitamin C and calcium. Our scientists blended in genes from a legume to—.” A wet mouthful of pulp flew across … More The Science of “Syzygy”: Genetic Engineering

Sci-Fi Strikes Back: How Genre Fiction Can Combat Scientific Censorship

January 30, 2017

No longer content to misshelve his favorite fictions in the non-fiction section of our national discourse, our new Librarian in Chief now wants to ban the entire 500 class of the Dewey decimal system: science. Last week the Trump administration issued a so-called “gag order”  banning federal science institutions—including the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Department of Agriculture, and Department of … More Sci-Fi Strikes Back: How Genre Fiction Can Combat Scientific Censorship

The Literature Museum: Sci-Fi and Sexism

August 24, 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