My "The Hunger Games" module with SPACE (Signum Portals for Adult Continuing Education) online via Signum University is currently a candidate for September 2025. This is a proposed first module of five, one for each of the five Hunger Games novels by Suzanne Collins. Each week will include one recorded lecture and one live discussion section. Voting runs through August 1. I hope you will join us as we explore the lessons we may learn from Panem.

May the odds be ever in our favor!

More information is here.

On my latest “Looking Back on Genre History” segment on the StarShipSofa (Episode 758), I discuss science fiction, nuclear weapons, and the ongoing relevance of the classic Level 7 by Mordecai Roshwald.

Here is the link!

Join me in June 2025!

June is almost here! Next month I will be offering my month-long "Meet The Last Man" module with SPACE (Signum Portals for Adult Continuing Education) online via Signum University.

Mary Shelley's novel is one of the most relevant books we can read right now, and I can't wait to discuss it with students!

Watch the teaser here:

Watch on YouTube

More information is available here.

On my latest “Looking Back on Genre History” segment on the StarShipSofa podcast (Episode 756), I discuss two pioneering dystopian novels published fifty years apart, works with much to say to each other and to us in 2025. Here is the link!

1>New "Looking Back on Genre History"

On my latest “Looking Back on Genre History” segment on the StarShipSofa podcast (Episode 754), I discuss (in a spoiler-free way!) Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins, intellectual history, and genre references. Here is the link!

Pictured is the cover of Sunrise on the Reaping: A Hunger Games Novel by Suzanne Collins. The cover art is purple, and it shows the image of a flint-striker pendant depicting a snake facing a mockingjay.

Pictured is part of a quote by Scottish Enlightenment thinker David Hume, a quote listed as an epigraph to Sunrise on the Reaping. The relevant part reads, "Nothing appears more surprising to those, who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye, than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few; and the implicit submission, with which men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers...." The key phrase here is "implicit submission."

Pictured is a quote from the late-eighteenth-century protest poem "The Common and the Goose," which is quoted in Sunrise on the Reaping. This excerpt reads, "The law demands that we atone/ When we take things we do not own,/ But leaves the lords and ladies fine/ Who take things that are yours and mine."

My 12-week graduate course on the Dystopian Tradition will be offered this summer online at Signum University. I'm so glad that this class made; these works, and the conversations they make possible, are more important and relevant than ever.

Pictured is a stack of books including George Orwell's 1984, Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower, Sheri Tepper's The Gate to Women's Country, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, M.T. Anderson's Feed, Kate Wilhelm's Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang, Frederik Pohl and C.M. Kornbluth's The Space Merchants, Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games, and Mordecai Roshwald's Level 7.

I'm delighted to say that it's back! My month-long module "Meet The Last Man" module with SPACE (Signum Portals for Adult Continuing Education) online via Signum University has been confirmed for June 2025.

Mary Shelley's novel The Last Man is one of the most relevant books we can read right now, and I'm really looking forward to exploring it with students!

Here is more information.

Watch on YouTube

My graduate course on the Dystopian Tradition will be offered again this summer online at Signum University if there's sufficient interest. I hope the class will make, because it seems more relevant than ever.

On my latest “Looking Back on Genre History” segment on the StarShipSofa podcast (Episode 750), I revisit the brilliant The Tomorrow Series and other works by John Marsden and discuss the lasting contributions of science fiction scholar H. Bruce Franklin.

Here is the link!

On my latest “Looking Back on Genre History” segment on the StarShipSofa podcast (Episode 748), I revisit the brilliant The Twilight Zone series and discuss Monsters on Maple Street: The Twilight Zone and the Postwar American Dream by David J. Brokaw.

Here is the link!

New Publication in 2024:
An essay, "‘Lifting Old Curses’: The mirror dance of The Flowers of Vashnoi and The Mountains of Mourning" in Short But Concentrated #2: a second essay symposium on the works of Lois McMaster Bujold, edited by Una McCormack.

New in Paperback in 2024 (previously published in hardback & ebook in 2023):
Two books, Star Trek: Essays Exploring the Final Frontier and Star Wars: Essays Exploring a Galaxy Far, Far Away, both co-edited with Emily Strand.

Some of the university and conference talks I gave this year are now online.

“Missing Students & Their Fictional Afterlives: True Crime, Crime Fiction, and Dark Academia" (presented at the Popular Culture Research Network’s “Guilty Pleasures: Examining Crime in Popular Culture” conference).
View this presentation here.

Why You Should Read The Last Man by Mary Shelley

Watch on YouTube

Why You Should Read Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

Watch on YouTube

"A Fortnight in the Wilderness" with Alexis de Tocqueville

Watch on YouTube

I've been on a Mary Shelley roll lately! On my latest “Looking Back at Genre History” segment on the StarShipSofa podcast (Episode 747), I revisit the brilliant Frankenstein. Here is the episode.

Pictured are open pages of The New Annotated Frankenstein by Mary Shelley and edited by Leslie S. Klinger. The pages show sepia-toned decorative artwork around the edges and a vintage illustration of Victor Frankenstein fleeing his awakened Creature.

One of the most relevant works you can read today was published in 1826.

Here I make my case for why you should read The Last Man by Mary Shelley.

Watch on YouTube

On my latest “Looking Back at Genre History” segment on the StarShipSofa podcast (Episode 745), I discuss the New Wave in science fiction and the Dangerous Visions anthologies, including the newly-published The Last Dangerous Visions.

Image (posted by Blackstone Publishing) of the three science fiction anthologies Dangerous Visions; Again, Dangerous Visions; and, on top of the stack, The Last Dangerous Visions.

Just in time for Halloween, here is my talk for the McConnell Center at the University of Louisville on “Why You Should Read Frankenstein”!

Watch on YouTube

I am very happy to share that my essay "‘Lifting Old Curses’: The mirror dance of The Flowers of Vashnoi and The Mountains of Mourning" has been published in Short but Concentrated #2: A Second Essay Symposium on the Works of Lois McMaster Bujold, edited by the brilliant Una McCormack. The ebook version is free for download here.

The cover of Short But Concentrated #2: a second essay symposium on the works of Lois McMaster Bujold edited by Una McCormack. The abstract shapes of the background art are bright jewel tones.

Octavia E. Butler's "must read" masterpiece Parable of the Sower (1993) begins its first chapter on July 20, 2024.

Starting next week (April 2024), I will be offering the month-long module "Meet The Last Man" with SPACE (Signum Portals for Adult Continuing Education) online via Signum University.

Mary Shelley's novel The Last Man is one of the most relevant books we can read right now, and I'm really looking forward to exploring it with students!

Here is more information.

Watch on YouTube

My latest "Looking Back on Genre History" segment is the second of a two-part review of the anthology AI Narratives: A History of Imaginative Thinking about Intelligent Machines, edited by Stephen Cave, Kanta Dihal, and Sarah Dillon, published by Oxford University Press in 2020. It's now up on the new episode of the StarShipSofa podcast.

Here is the link for part 1!

Here is the link for part 2!

If you listen, I hope you enjoy.

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