How do you know if a robot is female?
Recently, Feminist Frequency recommended vN to its Twitter feed, which caused one follower to ask: “Interesting, how do you know when a self replicating robot is female?” I had to think about this for a second. Or, more accurately, I had to re-enter the headspace I inhabited when I wrote early drafts of vN. The [...]
An open letter to kids who just watched Iron Man 3
Hi there. If you want to understand what this post is about, you should probably watch Iron Man 3. Go ahead. It’s a really fun movie. You’ll like it. It’s okay. I can wait. I don’t want to spoil you.
Strong female characters
Like many other writers, I spend a lot of my time thinking about strong female characters. This train of thought is so common that it even came up at a recent dinner party. We were talking about Buffy, and how it’s easy for her to be a symbol of female empowerment because she’s already super-powered. [...]
Whining isn’t Sexy: Rage about Nerd Rage
So, in response to reading this Buzzfeed piece about how comics pro Tony Harris hates female cosplayers — only some of them, though, which we’ll get to in a moment — I tweeted Pro tip: geeks of all genders who are confident in their geekery and their sexuality get laid more often. Confidence is sexy. [...]
Fascists and Futurism
So there I was at Chicon 7, attending a panel called “Human or Robot: Is Human Spaceflight Necessary?” with Ben Bova. Bova was the moderator, and there were no other panelists beside the two of us. (There were more of us scheduled, but none of them showed. I assume they were hung over.) The panel [...]
My Favorite Things: “Kids on the Slope” and Watanabe’s canon
Kids on the Slope is slice-of-life anime, and it’s also a rare case of director Shinichiro Watanabe (Cowboy Bebop; Samurai Champloo) adapting an existing work: a manga called Sakamichi no Apollon by Yuki Kodama. Wikipedia summarizes the plot like this: The beginning of summer, 1966. Because of his father’s job situation, freshman high school student [...]
“Are you concerned with where science fiction is going?”
I was in the car with a friend on the way to a foresight gig with the advisory council for a major philanthropy broker, and as we waited at a red light he said: “I’ve been meaning to ask you a challenge question for a while.” “Shoot,” I said. “Are you concerned with where science [...]
More on that whole New Aesthetic thing…
Rahel Aima has a new essay on the New Aesthetic, and I really enjoyed it. Not least because it quotes me. As my mom said: “Remember when you quoted other people in your own essays?” Well yes, of course I do. Mostly because I still do it. But it’s a nice feeling nontheless. It means [...]
I still think you should watch Madoka.
A while back, I wrote a bit about why you should watch Puella Magi Madoka Magica. At the time, I had only watched four episodes. Now I’ve seen all twelve, and I still agree with that. Here’s why. Puella Magi Madoka Magica, currently streaming for free on Crunchyroll, is quite frankly one of the best [...]
Bordertown, Surveillance, and the Evil Eye
Last summer, I participated in the Bordertown design studio, a ten-week seminar on the subject of cities divided by borders. Everyone involved developed a deliverable, which we exhibited at the Detroit Design Festival. At the time, I was too blown away by the city of Detroit and its inhabitants to talk about my own work. [...]
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Photo: Kayleigh McCollum Madeline Ashby…
...is a science fiction writer, strategic foresight consultant, anime fan, and immigrant. Her debut novel, vN, is available now. (Here are some reviews.) Her non-fiction has appeared at BoingBoing, io9, WorldChanging, Creators Project, and Tor.com.Books
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