Articles & Essays
I Miss Music. That’s Why I Quit Streaming
“In a world where we can more readily offload our critical thinking to AI and algorithm-driven platforms, we all have to draw our own lines in the sand, and weigh what we stand to gain or lose, what matters to us, and what is worth keeping. I can’t change the way the world listens, but by turning away from streaming and choosing more engaging and ethical ways of listening, I am also inviting music back into my life in a meaningful way. If music really matters, then maybe a little effort on the part of the listener isn’t such a terrible thing. It might even be a wonderful thing. Maybe one of the best things.”
Read the full article here.
“The PEN World Voices Festival as it Happened: “Dystopian Fiction: The Future Present Tense.”
“When we learned…that Donald Trump would be our next president, sales of novels like Orwell’s 1984 and Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale skyrocketed almost overnight. People seemed eager to read the sort of novel that shows us what our world might become if the worst, or some version of it, were to actually happen. What drives us to seek out these types of stories in times of real-world turmoil? Why do we turn to dystopian fiction in increasingly difficult times?”
Read the full piece here.
A Map With No Edges: Science Fiction Across Cultures
" Dreams of aliens and other worlds are as universal as the drive for exploration or questions of time or purpose—things which have never been confined to any one place . . . science fiction only takes a small spark of speculation, the need to question, and the ability to imagine some wild, wonderful answer."
Read the full essay here.