Tag Archives: Science Fiction

Arts & Culture

Local Author Nisi Shawl Explores the Borders of Sci-Fi and Horror in ‘Our Fruiting Bodies’

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by Amanda Ong

Local Seattle science fiction author Denise “Nisi” Shawl has recently published a new collection of short stories, Our Fruiting Bodies — stories that Shawl says reflect some of the intersections of science fiction and horror. 

“[Our Fruiting Bodies is] a particular kind of beauty that sinks beneath your skin and stays with you. That’s what I’m trying to invoke in people,” Shawl said. “It’s for people who want to be surprised.” 

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Arts & Culture

Graphic Novel ‘The Eightfold Path’ Explores Intersections of Buddhism and Afrofuturism

by Amanda Ong

Charles Johnson, former emeritus professor of English at the University of Washington, has recently released his latest book The Eightfold Path, a graphic novel with coauthor Steven Barnes and illustrator Bryan Christopher Moss.

The Eightfold Path is an anthology of interconnected Afrofuturistic parables inspired by the teachings of the Buddha. It traverses media, stories, cultures, and ideas. Johnson and coauthor Steven Barnes are both practicing Buddhists and have incorporated their beliefs into this series of Buddhist stories that intersect with science fiction and Afrofuturism.

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Arts & Culture

FRIDAY Fiction: The Perfect Girl

by Lola E. Peters

The drunk walked away unscathed. My father died instantly. My mother, true to form, clung to life. For seven days I sat by her hospital bed vacillating between “you’ve had a good life, mom, it’s OK to go” and “no, not yet, we’re not done.” On the last day, with the doctor standing over her, she suddenly opened her eyes, looked straight at me and said, “I’m so sorry Diana. My perfect girl. We’re so sorry. If only we’d known.” Then she closed her eyes, exhaled, and died. Now it was sure: there would never be a conversation between us that ended in certainty.

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Arts & Culture

FRIDAY FICTION: Pickney

by Sebrina Somers

I had tapped into the network and cloned my ID tracker to run the Great Wall Marathon. The point wasn’t to just get the fastest time, any hacker could do that. My goal was to run a race convincing enough to win the cash prize and add the gold medal to the trophy collection in my bedroom. That meant fooling the judges into believing I was actually there. No easy feat when I was sitting on my front porch on the other side of the planet.

I heard a tap on the screen door a few feet away and ignored it. The race was about to begin, and I still needed to tie up a few loose ends. I had uploaded my travel itinerary a week ago and coded my avatar to wander the streets of Beijing for the last two days. Now, I just needed to situate my tracker in the middle of the race pack at the Yin and Yang Square start line, sync it to the timing chips assigned to my race bibs, and run my biometric avoidance program so that I didn’t occupy the same geo-space as any of the physical runners, or other illicit virtual runners for that matter.

There was another tap on the door, a little louder this time. They could wait. The first wave of runners had just set off and I needed to be ready to start with the second wave.

“I…can…see…you…” A quiet voice stammered through the screen door.

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Arts & Culture

FRIDAY FICTION: From the Final Field Notes of a Future Cultural Worker

by Julie-C

The plan is working. Or maybe it’s backfiring. In either case, I have solidified a seat on the newest Citizen Participation Requisite Group (CPRG) of post-Secession Seattle.

This particular CPRG is being convened by a joint effort through the Post-Secession Office of Aesthetic Curation (PSOAC), aided by the Cultural Commodities Bureau (CCB) that operates under the Office of Economic Dominance (OED). Civic bureaucracy, am I right? Shit, I’m practically a walking glossary of municipal acronyms these days, so the systemic matrices aren’t new to me. This recent shift of my own positioning inside it, though, is interesting.

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Arts & Culture

Sistah Scifi Makes Space for Stories Black Geeks, Nerds, and ‘Weirdos’ Will Love

by Beverly Aarons

Witchcraft, futuristic tech, goblins, mermaids, magical spells, dystopian/utopian futures, and other fantastical imaginings are all common themes in science fiction. And every Black nerd knows that there is a sizable number of Black people who love to read the genre. So why is it still so difficult to track down speculative fiction stories written by contemporary Black women authors? There’s certainly no shortage of Black women writing in the genre. And many of those writers are incredibly prolific. The biggest challenge seems to be curatorial. Some of these works remain “undiscovered” by a wide swath of readers because there are not enough people who seek out, read, and vet published science fiction stories written by Black women. 

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