June 29, 2019
Hats off to all you magical people out there! I mentioned in last week’s roundup about us not getting rain in my corner of Japan, then wished for your help in securing said rain through whimsical, unscientific means, and voilà! It rained! Not all week, but in long-enough spurts to actually mean something to the poor, dried-out land around here.…
June 24, 2019
They might not be raindrops on roses or whiskers on kittens, but that doesn’t mean that we love them any less. Welcome back to My Favorite Things, the weekly column where we grab someone in speculative circles to gab about the greatest in geek. This week, we sit down with award-winning artist and musician Steven Archer, whose art will be…
February 27, 2018
Talk about Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and someone inevitably hums or whistles that famous five-note sequence created by John Williams for the film. A recent viewing of the film got me thinking about other intersections between music and science fiction. Music abounds in fantasy: Alex Bledsoe’s Tufa series King Rat, China Mieville The Name of the…