Articles and Essays
“Marcel Duchamp’s Turning Point.” Los Angeles Times. March 18, 2012. Essay on the hundredth anniversary of Marcel Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase No. 2.
“Simon Says: It’s Not About You!” The Daily Beast. April 14, 2012. Essay on The Wire’s David Simon and fabulists Mike Daisey and Greg Mortenson.
“New Yorker Profile? No, Thanks.” Salon. May 12, 2012. Essay on the New Yorker feature curse.
“The Secret for Smart People.” The Daily Beast. June 5, 2012. Essay on recent books on creativity and the power of thought.
“The Tools is Slick and Savvy—Like a Hollywood Remake.” The Daily Beast. June 13, 2012. Review of The Tools by Barry Michels and Phil Stutz.
“The Lehrer Affair.” The Rumpus. July 11, 2012. Essay on Jonah Lehrer and the ethics of “self-plagiarism.”
“Will McAvoy, You’re So Smart!” Salon. July 23, 2012. Essay on the use of historical irony in The Newsroom and other works of fiction.
“Karl Rove’s Labyrinth.” The Daily Beast. November 20, 2012. Essay on Karl Rove’s surprising love of the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges.
“Reply All.” The New York Times Magazine. March 31, 2013. A short excerpt from my blog post on the poet Anne Carson.
“Lessons from The X-Files.” Salon. September 17, 2013. The twentieth anniversary of The X-Files and its lessons for modern television.
“Dictionary of the Khazars (Male Edition).” The Syllabus. London: Verbivoracious Press. 2015. A short essay on Milorad Pavić’s remarkable novel.
“Xenu’s Paradox: The Fiction of L. Ron Hubbard and the Making of Scientology.” Longreads. February 1, 2017. An overview of the science fiction and fantasy stories of the controversial founder of dianetics and the Church of Scientology. Featured on The A.V. Club on March 12, 2017.
“Astounding Stories.” The Astounding/Analog Companion. March 27, 2018. Essay on the background reading I conducted for Astounding.
“The Rest is Noise.” The Astounding/Analog Companion. June 28, 2018. Essay on Raymond F. Jones’s science fiction story “Noise Level.”
“The Campbell Machine.” Analog Science Fiction and Fact, July/August 2018, 125-133. An expanded excerpt from the book Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction, exploring the death of Campbell’s stepson and his ensuing fixation on psionic machines.
“Dawn of Dianetics: L. Ron Hubbard, John W. Campbell, and the Origins of Scientology.” Longreads. October 23, 2018. Excerpt from Astounding on Campbell’s influence on Hubbard’s ideas during the development of dianetics. Featured on Boing Boing on October 29, 2018.
“What Isaac Asimov Taught Us About Predicting the Future.” New York Times. October 31, 2018. Essay on Campbell, Asimov, and the origins of psychohistory.
“The Man Who Made Science Fiction What It Is Today.” Lithub. November 7, 2018. Excerpt from Astounding on the legacy of John W. Campbell.
“How Astounding Saw the Future.” New York Times. January 10, 2019. Visual essay on the art of Astounding and Unknown.
“The Most Powerful Force.” Uncanny Magazine. January/February 2019. Essay on John W. Campbell and the evolving market for short science fiction.
“Rising Seas, Migrants, War: A Timely Novel From John Lanchester.” New York Times. March 5, 2019. Review of John Lanchester’s dystopian novel The Wall.
“Preface.” Frozen Hell. April 1, 2019. Introductory essay to the first publication of the original draft of the novella “Who Goes There?”, which I rediscovered in John W. Campbell’s papers at Harvard.
“Analogous Ideas.” The Astounding/Analog Companion. April 23, 2019. Discussion with the author Frank Wu on our Analog stories “At the Fall” and “In the Absence of Instructions to the Contrary.”
“A 1995 Novel Predicted Trump’s America.” New York Times. July 14, 2019. Essay on The Tunnel by William H. Gass and its resonance with contemporary politics.
“Making Waves: The Inventions of John W. Campbell.” Analog Science Fiction and Fact, January/February 2020, 44-50. Essay cowritten with Edward M. Wysocki, Jr. on John W. Campbell’s inventions and patent for a waveform generator.
“Asimov’s Empire, Asimov’s Wall.” Public Books. January 7, 2020. Essay on Isaac Asimov’s history of groping and other forms of unwanted touching of women across multiple decades and its impact on the science fiction community.
“The Art of Noise.” Analog Science Fiction and Fact, March/April 2020, 4-7. Guest editorial on the story “Noise Level” by Raymond F. Jones.
“Tales From the Script.” The Astounding/Analog Companion. July 7, 2020. Essay on the writing of my short story “Retention.”
“The Slow Arrival of Dawn.” The Tunnel at 25 Symposium. September 7, 2020. Essay on the writing of my New York Times piece on The Tunnel.
“A Climate-Crisis Novel Offers True-to-Life Snapshots of Survival.” New York Times. November 17, 2020. Review of Cynan Jones’s dystopian novel Stillicide.
“Alone on a Spaceship, Trying to Save the World.” New York Times. May 4, 2021. Review of the novel Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir.
“False Flag.” Slate. June 30, 2022. An investigative article on Bob Heft, the man who claimed to have designed the 50-star United States flag. This was the first piece to definitively disprove Heft’s story, which was cited as fact by numerous otherwise reputable sources.
“The Dramatic Failure of Buckminster Fuller’s ‘Car of the Future.'” Slate. August 2, 2022. Excerpt from Chapter 5 of Inventor of the Future.
“What Steve Jobs learned from Buckminster Fuller during their only meeting.” Fast Company. August 2, 2002. Excerpt from the prologue of Inventor of the Future.
“A Futurist’s Last Act Was to Transform Chemistry—After Death.” The Daily Beast. August 6, 2022. Excerpt from the epilogue of Inventor of the Future.
“Inside the 20th Century’s Weirdest Architectural Breakthrough.” Gizmodo. October 17, 2022. Excerpt from Chapter 7 of Inventor of the Future.
“A Fun Crypto Origin Story That Happens to Be Totally Wrong.” Slate. December 26, 2022. Essay on Buckminster Fuller and cryptocurrency.
“In the ‘Cozy Catastrophe’ Novel, the End of the World Is Not So Bad.” New York Times. January 2, 2023. Essay on R.C. Sherriff and his novel The Hopkins Manuscript.
“The Martian Chronicles.” New York Times. May 19, 2023. Review of For the Love of Mars by Matthew Shindell.
“It’s Really First-Class Work.” The Atlantic online. July 27, 2023. Interview with the historian Richard Rhodes about the film Oppenheimer.
“Chimes at Midnight: How Jeff Bezos Reset the Clock of the Long Now.” Asterisk. Fall 2024.
“Uncanny X-Men.” New York Times. November 17, 2024. Review of Absolution by Jeff VanderMeer.
“How Brady Corbet Made The Brutalist on a Teeny-Tiny Budget.” Slate. December 20, 2024. Interview with director Brady Corbet on his film The Brutalist.
“How Sherlock Holmes Broke Copyright Law.” The Atlantic online. January 7, 2025.