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In the past few years, something very exciting happened in the field of human genetics: After decoding the human genome, scientists began to realize that the old paradigm of genes as the sole player of inheritance had to be modified.
One of my colleagues wrote about was the idea of “requickening,” which, to vastly oversimplify, was the thought that by taking on a saint’s name, a convert also took on a part of that saint’s identity.
Philosophers like to think science works in an orderly way, in which scientists propose hypotheses, conduct experiments to validate their ideas, then emerge triumphantly from the laboratory to publish their results. Sometimes that happens.
We all face loss, and we all face how cold and harsh reality can be at times. To see or feel that this is shared by all of us is powerful, even through as simple a vehicle as a science fiction story.
Just as a single important equation in physics can hold a myriad of solutions and describe a dazzling array of behavior, so too a sufficiently rich story.
The Cold Equations” was originally published in Astounding Magazine in 1954, and was Godwin’s fourth published story.
Welcome to issue fourteen of Lightspeed! Here’s what we’ve got on tap this month … Fiction: “The Cold Equations” by Tom Godwin, “The Old Equations” by Jake Kerr, “Sweet Sixteen” by Kat Howard, “Face Value” by Karen Joy Fowler. Nonfiction: “The Cold Legacies” by Mike Brotherton, “The First Step to Enlightenment is Abject Failure” by Jeff Hecht, “The Superpowered Potential of Epigenetics” by Ekaterina Sedia, “Feature Interview: Mary Doria Russell” by Kat Howard.
The world turned digital some years ago, but I like to be in touch with pencils and paper during the preparatory phase. A few strolls in the lush woods surrounding my studio help definitely!
Eunuchs are the way to go—avoid all the soap opera, all the falling in love and the anger and the possible murder and jealousy, definitely.
It’s a cliché that when the aliens arrive, they appear over the White House, or Tiananmen Square. But why shouldn’t they arrive in the developing world?
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