Here's my reading (MP3) of Let's get better at demanding better from tech, a Locus Magazine column about the need to enlist moral, ethical technologists in the fight for a better technological future. It was written before the death of EFF co-founder John Perry Barlow, whose life's work was devoted to this proposition, and before the Google uprising over Project Maven, in which technologists killed millions in military contracts by refusing to build AI systems for the Pentagon's drones. — Read the rest

Every year, the readers of Locus Magazine collaborate with its editorial board to nominate and vote on their favorite science fiction and fantasy works; this year's finalist list came out today, and I'm pleased to see my novel Walkaway among some very good company indeed.

Every year, Locus Magazine's panel of editors reviews the entire field of science fiction and fantasy and produces its Recommended Reading List; the 2017 list is now out, and I'm proud to say that it features my novel Walkaway, in excellent company with dozens of other works I enjoyed in the past year.

Dragon Con's Dragon Award ballot was just published and I'm delighted to learn that my novel Walkaway is a finalist in the "Best Apocalyptic Novel" category, along with Daniel Humphreys' A Place Outside the Wild, Omar El Akkad's American War, Declan Finn and Allan Yoskowitz's Codename: Unsub, N.K. — Read the rest

My latest Locus Magazine column is Weaponized Narrative, about the pulp fiction convention of mashing up "man against nature" stories with "man against man" stories to tell "man against nature stories" (first the tornado smashes your house, then your neighbors come over to eat you).

My latest Locus column is "Fill Your Boots," in which I talk about how scientists, sf writers, economists and environmental activists have wrestled with the question of abundance — how the "green left" transformed left wing politics from the promise of every peasant living like a lord to the promise of every lord living like a peasant.

In 2015, Kim Stanley Robinson wrote a compelling and sobering article for Boing Boing titled, "Our Generation Ships Will Sink." Robinson argued that humanity's hope for spreading among the stars, an ancient longing popularized during the Golden Age of science fiction, and later, the Golden Age of television and science fiction film, was an impossible longing that we would most likely never be able to fulfill. — Read the rest

My new Locus column is "It's Time to Short Surveillance and Go Long on Freedom," which starts by observing that Barack Obama's legacy includes a beautifully operationalized, professional and terrifying surveillance apparatus, which Donald Trump inherits as he assumes office and makes ready to make good on his promise to deport millions of Americans and place Muslims under continuous surveillance.

Kameron "Geek Feminist Revolution" Hurley notes that writers like Octavia Butler crafted stories that feel eerily prescient of our present moments with books like Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents — but not because they were fortune tellers, but because trumpism — corrupt confiscation of wealth, overbroad policing powers, discriminatory hiring practices, impunity for violent abusers — has been a daily fact of life for brown people, women and queer people.

In my latest Locus column, The Privacy Wars Are About to Get A Whole Lot Worse, I describe the history of the privacy wars to date, and the way that the fiction of "notice and consent" has provided cover for a reckless, deadly form of viral surveillance capitalism.

Leonard Richardson isn't just the author of Constellation Games, one of the best debut novels I ever read and certainly one of the best books I read in 2013; he's also an extremely talented free/open source server-software developer who has been working for the New York Public Library on a software project that liberates every part of the electronic book lending system from any kind of proprietary lock-in, and, in the process, made reading library ebooks one trillion times better.

My latest Locus column, "Peak Indifference", draws a comparison between the history of the "debate" about the harms of smoking (a debate manufactured by disinformation merchants with a stake in the controversy) and the current debate about the harms of surveillance and data-collection, whose proponents say "privacy is dead," while meaning, "I would be richer if your privacy were dead."

The readership of Locus magazine have chosen their favorite fantasy and science fiction works of 2015, and the winners make for a very exciting summer reading list indeed!

Publishing is in a weird place: ebook sales are stagnating; publishing has shrunk to five major publishers; libraries and publishers are at each others' throats over ebook pricing; and major writers' groups are up in arms over ebook royalties, and, of course, we only have one major book retailer left — what is to be done?

My new Locus Magazine column, Wicked Problems: Resilience Through Sensing, proposes a solution the urgent problem we have today of people doing bad stuff with computers. Where once "bad stuff with computers" meant "hacking your server," now it could potentially mean "blocking air-traffic control transmissions" or "programming your self-driving car to kill you."

My new Locus column is What If People Were Sensors, Not Things to be Sensed?

The winners from last night's Locus Awards Banquet in Seattle have been announced:

My latest Locus column, Shorter, is about the destructive myth of talent, which leads people to mistakenly believe that they're innately good at things, rather than having gotten good by practice.

The Locus Award — nominated and voted by science fiction fans — has published a particularly fine shortlist this year (in contrast to the hijacked Hugo Award ballot); I'm extremely proud to see my novella The Man Who Sold the Moon from Hieroglyph on the list.

Locus magazine has published its annual recommended reading list, which signposts the best in science fiction and fantasy from the previous year.