Building Yesterday’s Future–For Everyone
Zenna Henderson’s first six stories featuring the People—immigrant aliens who’ve escaped the destruction of the home planet and come to the American Southwest—were published as a fix-up, Pilgrimage, in 1961. Through these curiously gifted aliens Henderson explored themes of difference and belonging that still have relevance today.
The initial name for the shop in 1976 was The United Metropolitan Improved Crumpet Baking & Punctual Delivery Company. Customers nodded, smiled, and called it The Crumpet Shop.
Continuing to pair the early speculative tools for reading with more deeper analytical resources is still in order, so in that vein we’re going to converse about how speculative poetry wrestles with deeply sociopolitical thematic matter.
One of my favorite novels when I was a teen science fiction reader was Andre Norton’s Catseye. In the 1960s, Andre Norton, better known for adult science fiction, was also one of the most important writers of science fiction for teens.
Once a sleepy neighborhood in Seattle, Ballard is now a go-to area for great food and fun on the beach.
We should keep acquainting ourselves with some of the standout poets in this wonderful genre, so this week we’re chatting with SFPA Grand Master and editor David C. Kopaska-Merkel!
One might be surprised to learn that three (!) works of Czech speculative fiction in translation—all by Josef Nesvadba—were published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction over the course of 1962.
I am writing this statement in order to share the status of Seattle Worldcon’s current journey through living up to our theme of Building Yesterday’s Future—For Everyone. We have received a number of concerns asking how the convention will respond to orders and actions of the U.S. government, which we condemn, that create hostile conditions and travel barriers for LGBTQ+ members and international members.
The geoduck (pronounced “gooey duck”) is the world’s largest burrowing clam, and they’re one of our weird and wonderful native species—as well as the school mascot for The Evergreen State College.
Now that we have enough early-stage tools to discuss what makes poetry speculative, it’s a good time to consider something just a little bit more complex: what is the poem confronting that is valuable for us?