For fans of speculative fiction, the early 21st century has been both a triumph and a challenge: a triumph because our beloved genre has gained popularity and respect, and a challenge because sorting through the ever-increasing surfeit of new works can be paralyzing. It helps immensely when an enterprising author takes the time to identify […]
“How could be have been guilty of such hubris? He had put himself in harm’s way, and by doing so had put his family in danger. How could he not have known that staying in New Orleans, a city under something like martial law, would endanger him? He knew better. He had been careful for […]
“When I began observing the world’s largest chimpanzee colony, at Burgers’ Zoo in 1975, I had no idea that I’d be working with the species for the rest of my life. Just so, as I sat on a wooden stool watching primates on a forested island for an estimated ten thousand hours, I had no […]
Geography is one of the glaring weak points in American education. I’m college-educated, but know relatively little about world geography, and even less about how it shapes national economies and political strategies. A portion of my ignorance can be attributed to personal preferences and limitations, but it’s a good bet that my geopolitical blind spots […]
“All our land was enriched with my treasures buried in it, thickly inhabited just below the surface with my marbles and my teeth the my colored stones, all perhaps turned to jewels by now, held together under the ground in a powerful taut web which never loosened, but held fast to guard us.” ––We Have […]
“I wished they were dead. I would have liked to come into the grocery some morning and see them all, even the Elberts and the children, lying there crying with the pain and dying. I would then help myself to groceries, I thought, stepping over their bodies, taking whatever I fancied from the shelves, and […]
“Broadly speaking, geopolitics looks at the ways in which international affairs can be understood through geographical factors: not just the physical landscape––the natural barriers of mountains or connections of river networks, for example––but also climate, demographics, cultural regions, and access to natural resources. Factors such as these can have an important impact on many different […]
With legalization gaining steam across the nation, it seems we are about to close the chapter on cannabis prohibition in the long, sordid history of America’s “War on Drugs.” The question is no longer “Will we have full legalization?” but “How soon?” There will no doubt continue to be heated debates about cannabis’s place in […]
“A stranger hurrying as fast as he could over the icy sidewalks looked in. He saw a circle of singing people bathed in the clean white light from a tree, and his heart did a somersault, and the image stayed with him; it merged with him even as he came home to his own children, […]
There was a time when I thought Michael V. Hayden and his ilk were scum, but, as Hayden himself acknowledges: “You can only dehumanize an enemy from a distance” (238). Once I let Hayden into my head, he gave my liberal, civilian ass a serious reality check. Despite its nonlinear format and a bevy of […]