Despite his popularity as a science fiction writer, the late author Douglas Adams championed the value of planet Earth. In the late 1980s, he teamed up with zoologist Mark Cawardine for a BBC radio series called Last Chance to See, in which the pair tracks endangered species around the globe. Adams’ 1990 book chronicling the … More Last Chance To See Our Planet: 30 Years, 2 Reviews, 1 Earth
Fifty years ago today, emissaries from Earth–riding in a command cabin the size of a car, and guided by a computer less powerful than a modern smartphone–landed on our Moon and left Homo sapiens’ first footprints on another world. In honor of the Apollo 11 anniversary, I chose this date to launch the print edition of my lunar-based … More Walk the Moon: A Sci-Fi Book Launch Honoring Apollo 11
If you or a kid in your life need some sci-fi summer reading, I’ve got a book for you! Brave New Girls: Adventures of Gals and Gizmos goes on sale today. The fourth in its series, this anthology features 26 science fiction short stories starring STEM-savvy girls. All proceeds support the Society of Women Engineers … More “Brave New Girls”: A Sci-Fi STEM Anthology
Rise of the Rocket Girls promised an intersection of two of my favorite non-fiction genres: science, and the too-often-overlooked impact of women in history. I expected a book comparable to Radium Girls, which portrays its subjects as memorable personalities in a suspenseful narrative; or Code Girls, the captivating account of female cryptologic analysts during WWII. … More Book Review: “Rise of the Rocket Girls” by Nathalia Holt
The shiny black hardcover jacket winked in the sun, mysterious as a unit of dark matter. I lifted the book from the sale table outside Borders Books & Music and flipped its pages. Elementary particles…wormholes…the uncertainty principle…reading this before I head off to college will make me sound smarter when I get there, right? And … More A Brief History of How Stephen Hawking Inspired My Sci-Fi
I owe the discovery to The Radium Girls to book blogger Sarah at The Critiquing Chemist (if you haven’t had the pleasure of her pithy literary analysis, I recommend visiting her site). She reviewed the book back in August and its subject–like most unusual historical episodes–immediately piqued my interest. A providential Amazon sale had the title … More Review: “The Radium Girls” by Kate Moore
Wild Type 