Tolerance. Understanding. Empathy. Lack of prejudice towards people who are different in some way. These are all wonderful things, but they can be deadly for fiction. Or, at the very least, dry and boring. And science fiction, especially written science fiction, on top of all of its other […]
Timothy Zahn is the author of the bestselling Star Wars novel of all time, which to a certain kind of critic sounds like winning a contest to be the stupidest person on the block. The book in question, Heir to the Empire, was published in 1992 and attracted […]
Six million people listen to a radio broadcast, and a quarter of them run screaming from their houses. Their frenzy and fear infect many other people who have no idea what’s going on. Mass panic! Are the Martians really invading? The streets are crowded with people who all […]
If you’re the kind of reader who wants to know what happens next, then China Mountain Zhang by Maureen F. McHugh might not be the book for you. This debut novel from 1992 has intriguing characters and a few strands of plot, but overall it operates a little […]
You get drafted in the year 1997, your brain tortured out of its pacifism by hypnotic compulsion to kill. Many of your troopmates die in training on the icy planet of Charon, past Pluto. You spend the next thousand years, fighting a skirmish then sleeping through a trip […]
Joe Cube is a regular Silicon Valley guy, worried about his relationship with his wife and the upcoming Y2K crisis. One day a fourth-dimensional being named Momo manifests in his house and she wants to make a deal: she’ll supply 4D antennae, and Joe can market cellphones that […]
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The Cultural Gutter 