Fiction
33 articles-
Blackout in the Brain Lab
What will happen to the organoids? A work of fiction. -
Los Angeles Is Gone
In an excerpt from his new novel, the author drowns La La Land. -
Most of the Mind Can’t Tell Fact from Fiction
Stories, fiction included, act as a kind of surrogate life. You can learn from them so seamlessly that you might believe you knew something—about ancient Greece, say—before having gleaned it from Mary Renault’s novel The Last of the Wine. You’ll also retain false information even if you didn’t mean to. That seems like a liability: […] -
The Great Silence
A parrot has a question for humans. -
Echos
What happens when a person is simultaneously lost and found?
-
The Case for Treating Gatsby as a Real Person
Tibetan Buddhists have a concept called the “tulpa,” thought-created beings who develop an existence independent of their creators.
-
Defy the Stars
What’s the real difference between man and machine? -
Will Lovelace and Babbage Save the Economy?
A fictional tale starring the inventors of the first computer. -
Why Do We Get Transported by Stories We Know Aren’t True?
In Jasper Fforde’s lighthearted “Thursday Next” series of books, people can use a “prose portal” to enter the world of a book, to change the plot or kidnap a character. The prose portal is an imaginative metaphor for a familiar experience: feeling taken away by a narrative, sucked into a good book so that we […] -
The Weaker Sister
When we have to evacuate Earth, only the strong will survive. -
Whom He May Devour
Saving her planet would ban her from paradise.