The interviewer is Willis E. McNelly, a professor of English (specializing in science fiction). Herbert discusses artistic as well as conceptual decisions made in the writing and background world building for Dune. Highly recommended for any fan of the book. See also Dune and The Butlerian Jihad and Darwin Among the Machines. The Bene Gesserit program had as …
The novella Gulf predates almost all of Heinlein’s novels. Online version. The book Friday (1982) is a loose sequel. Wikipedia: Gulf is a novella by Robert A. Heinlein, originally published as a serial in the November and December 1949 issues of Astounding Science Fiction and later collected in Assignment in Eternity. It concerns a secret society …
My kids have been reading lots of books over the break, including an adventure series that involves time travel. Knowing vaguely that dad is a theoretical physicist, they asked me how time travel works. 1. Can one change history by influencing past events? OR 2. Is there only one timeline that cannot be altered, even …
Arrival is based on a short story by Ted Chiang: Story of Your Life. Despite what some have said, the main plot idea (as I remember from the story; I have yet to see the film) goes well beyond the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis — it also requires that human consciousness (potentially) extend beyond the confines of the usual time …
Dalton Conley is University Professor of Sociology and Medicine and Public Policy at Princeton University. He earned a PhD in Sociology (Columbia), and subsequently one in Behavior Genetics (NYU). His take on the application of genetic technologies in 2050 is a bit more dystopian than mine (see below). I think he underrates the ability of …
“Alpha children wear grey They work much harder than we do, because they’re so frightfully clever. I’m really awfuly glad I’m a Beta, because I don’t work so hard. And then we are much better than the Gammas and Deltas. …” Brave New World was written in 1932. In 1958 Huxley reconsidered his dystopian novel …
Alfred W. McCoy, Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, writes on global geopolitics. The brief excerpts below do not do the essay justice. Geopolitics of American Global Decline: Washington Versus China in the Twenty-First Century … On a cold London evening in January 1904, Sir Halford Mackinder, the director of the London School …