Science Fiction
An annotated collection of 4 books & essays on science fiction, spanning 1909 to 1969. Featuring works by E. M. Forster, Stanisław Lem, Philip K. Dick — each with editorial commentary oriented to digital product practice.
The Machine Stops
Forster wrote this in 1909, before broadcast radio, and predicted the screen-mediated life with uncanny precision. Humanity lives underground in individual cells, every need supplied by a global Machine, meeting only thr…
Solaris
Scientists orbit a planet-sized sentient ocean, determined to make contact with a truly alien intelligence — and the ocean answers by dredging up their most painful buried memories and building them into living "visitors…
His Master's Voice
If Solaris is the mirror rendered as emotion, His Master's Voice is the mirror rendered as epistemology. A vast, brilliant, well-funded team sets out to decode a signal from space, and never manages to confirm they have…
Ubik
Philip K. Dick's novel about a world where reality keeps decaying in ways the characters cannot quite identify — and Ubik, a commercial spray-on product that seems to restore it. Dick's register is unusual: paranoid scie…