Category: science

• Ideas aren’t unique, execution is

  In his seminal book What Technology Wants, Kevin Kelly notes that while we celebrate Charles Darwin, Alfred Russel Wallace independently came up with the same theory of evolution around the same time, both of them inspired by Thomas Malthus’s …

• The Science of Fiction on Veil

  Maddie Stone published a generous, thoughtful, and mind-expanding essay exploring the implications of the near future extrapolated in my latest novel:

  Geoengineering, or hacking the planet to cool it down, is either a maniacal plan dreamt up by foolhardy scientists

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• What If a Tech CEO Tried to Save the World With Geoengineering?

  OneZero just published an exclusive excerpt from my new novel (warning: minor spoilers):

  As the climate crisis grows increasingly dire, a radical question is appearing on more politicians’ lips: What if we geoengineer our way out of the mess? The

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• Kim Stanley Robinson on how we live in a science fiction novel that we’re writing together

  From The Coronavirus is Rewriting Our Imaginations:

  These events, and others like them, are easier to imagine now than they were back in January, when they were the stuff of dystopian science fiction. But science fiction is the realism

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• The promises and perils of geoengineering

  I went on the Technotopia podcast to talk to John Biggs about geoengineering, the future of climate change, and the inspirations behind my forthcoming novel, Veil.

  Complement with my conversation with Andrew Liptak about Veil, how it feels

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• Andy Matuschak and Michael Nielsen on the possibility space for quantum computing

  From Quantum Computing for the Very Curious:

  For the most part the way we understand quantum computing today is at an ENIAC-like level, looking at the nuts-and-bolts of qubits and logic gates and linear algebra, and wondering what the

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• Maria Popova on reality’s density of wonder

  The remarkable opening line of Maria Popova’s Figuring:

  All of it—the rings of Saturn and my father’s wedding band, the underbelly of the clouds pinked by the rising sun, Einstein’s brain bathing in a jar of formaldehyde, every grain

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• Oliver Morton on science journalism and humanity’s fascination with the moon

  I interviewed Oliver Morton about science writing, the relationship between science and science fiction, and the creative process behind his latest book, The Moon:

  In World War II, two of the signature technologies of science fiction came about in

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• Kim Stanley Robinson on how to spark hope in a future ravaged by climate change

  Maria Popova says that critical thinking without hope is cynicism and hope without critical thinking is naïveté. Kim Stanley Robinson’s New York 2140 finds the golden mean between the two. He challenges us to reevaluate our own assumptions and priorities

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• Daniel Suarez on the future according to CRISPR

  Synthetic biology is changing what it means to be human. For thousands of years, we’ve used technology to shape biology. We domesticated and bred plants and animals, trained our minds with meditation and asceticism, drove species to extinction, and ingested

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