Gerry Canavan is an associate professor in the English department at Marquette University, teaching 20th- and 21st-century literature. His current research projects include Science Fiction and Totality and Modern Masters of Science Fiction: Octavia E. Butler, as well as co-editing The Cambridge Companion to American Science Fiction and the journal Science Fiction Film and Television. His edited collection of critical essays, Green Planets: Ecology and Science Fiction, is available now from Wesleyan University Press. He is also the author of Octavia E. Butler, out this fall from the Modern Masters of Science Fiction series from University of Illinois Press.
CONTRIBUTOR ARTICLES
Apocalyptic Childhood: On Cixin Liu’s “Supernova Era”
Cixin Liu’s “Supernova Era” offers a tantalizing glimpse into another universe where parents won’t simply let their children die without a fight....
Welcome to “The Handmaid’s Tale” Expanded Universe
As literature, "The Handmaid’s Tale" condemned us — but, as franchise fiction, "The Testaments" is full of miracles....
We Are Going on an Adventure: On Adrian Tchaikovsky’s “Children of Ruin”
Gerry Canavan reviews Adrian Tchaikovsky's "Children of Ruin," the sequel to his 2015 novel "Children of Time."...
For the Purposes of Education as Well as Recreation: Historical Notes on “The Handmaid’s Tale (Special Edition)”
None of the adaptations of “The Handmaid’s Tale” have yet found themselves able to include the actual ending of the novel....
No Follow-Through
“Star Trek” seems paralyzed by the idea of doing the one thing the fans of the series actually want....
No, Speed Limit: John Scalzi’s “The Collapsing Empire”
John Scalzi’s “The Collapsing Empire” is one of the most important revisionist hyperspace narratives to come along in some time....
Utopia in the Time of Trump
The future is here, it just hasn’t finished melting yet....
The Discovered Country: “Star Trek Beyond”
“Star Trek Beyond” is fine. It’s mostly enjoyable … It’s "Star Trek", neither at its best nor its worst, and I like "Star Trek" even at its very worst....
Quiet, Too Quiet
Cixin Liu's "The Dark Forest" takes up the Fermi Paradox as one of its central narrative and thematic problems....
The Warm Equations
"Aurora" and "Seveneves" break us out of our supremely well-rehearsed habit of apocalypse and let us see the option of a different future than permanent, hopeless standoff....
“There’s Nothing New / Under The Sun, / But There Are New Suns”: Recovering Octavia E. Butler’s Lost Parables
THE BAD NEWS is waiting for us on the first page of the first chapter of Octavia E. Butler’s 1998 ...
Knowing No One’s Listening
The Unpublished Miscellanea of Octavia E. Butler: Part One of a Two Part Series ...
No Dads: Cuckolds, Dead Fathers, and Capitalist Superheroes
IN HIS SEMINAL “The Myth of Superman” (still one of the finest essays on superheroes ever written), Umberto Eco ...
Struggle Forever
ldquo;SORRY, BUT IT'S TRUE. It has to be said: the stars exist beyond human time, beyond human reach. We live ...
