Allan Dyen-Shapiro
This is What America Sounds Like
"This is what America sounds like." I heard the line last weekend at a dinner theater that found a way to open near my home. All the...
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Allan Dyen-Shapiro
Science Fiction Author
Allan Dyen-Shapiro
- Mar 12, 2021
To Address the Climate Catastrophe, Americans Need to Break Abortion's Stranglehold on Politics.
It's dropped off the headlines, but I would still maintain that the central fault line in US politics is over abortion. With the climate...
Allan Dyen-Shapiro
- Feb 20, 2021
Travelers: David Wasn't The Mary Sue He Appeared To Be
David was my favorite character from the Canadian-migrated-to-Netflix science-fiction TV show Travelers. He begins the show as Marcy's...
Allan Dyen-Shapiro
- Dec 12, 2020
Honorifics, Pen-Names, Handles, and Zoom IDs
The Wall Street Journal published an editorial recently, criticizing the new First Lady for continuing to go by Dr. Jill Biden rather...
Allan Dyen-Shapiro
- Nov 7, 2020
Pulling Back from the Brink of Fascism by Listening. And Eating Pizza.
The analysts bemoan their epiphany that half of America was willing to vote for a man with fascist leanings. In their eyes, voting for a...
Allan Dyen-Shapiro
- Nov 2, 2020
Political Economy from Science Fiction Writers
Although the pandemic has been awful in many ways and killed far too many—and I would never dare to minimize this tragedy—it has led to...
Allan Dyen-Shapiro
- Oct 17, 2020
Ignorance of the Canon: Plusses and Minuses
I didn't start reading science fiction until I was in my late thirties. Sure, I'd encountered some of the classics in high school English...
Allan Dyen-Shapiro
- Aug 10, 2020
A 1987 Octavia Butler Story "Commenting" on Today's New York Times Feature
Identity—it's who you are—partially born into, partly chosen, and in part forced upon you. It was the subject of two different stories I...
Allan Dyen-Shapiro
- Jul 4, 2020
OF PANGOLINS, RECOMBINATION, ACE2, FURIN, ENDANGERED SPECIES, RACISM, AND XENOPHOBIA
"Kung flu," "the Chinese virus," "enormous evidence" that the coronavirus outbreak originated in a Chinese biotech lab—these phrases used...
Allan Dyen-Shapiro
- May 27, 2020
EXPERTISE, EMPATHY, AND VIRTUE SIGNALING
Like many of you who have been sheltering-in-place, with my now-virtual day job having settled down a bit, I've been catching up on TV...
Allan Dyen-Shapiro
- Apr 18, 2020
My Perspective on the Revelations from the CDC
The investigation, reported in this Washington Post article, has revealed what went wrong with testing for the coronavirus in the US. The...
Allan Dyen-Shapiro
- Mar 14, 2020
Because of COVID-19, You Will Need to Euthanize Your Lab Animals. Well…
Science Magazine today came out with a news story about researchers having to shut down their labs because of COVID-19-related...
Allan Dyen-Shapiro
- Jan 2, 2020
Science Fiction and Green Politics in the 2020s and Beyond: Thoughts on Gibson’s The Peripheral
When I began writing science fiction just before the beginning of this last decade, I had a mission. It was related to the mission that...
Allan Dyen-Shapiro
- Dec 23, 2019
Mr. Robot as a Comment on Revolutions and Revolutionaries
With the Emmys this show has garnered, it’s safe to say I’m not alone is judging it the best science fiction television show in recent...
Allan Dyen-Shapiro
- Dec 7, 2019
Shiny new tech to save us all! Sort of.
The flashy headline attracted my attention: a new energy source from rivers meeting the oceans. Blue membranes. I liked the name....
Allan Dyen-Shapiro
- Nov 2, 2019
"To me, fair friend, you can never be old," said my buddy Bill, but that doesn't apply
I admit it—I like ridiculous titles. The Internet has been atwitter (pun intended) with a hullaballoo that seems to me will be a tempest...
Allan Dyen-Shapiro
- Oct 13, 2019
Either a Solution to a Major Cause of Famine or Shoddy Science—I Don’t Know
By 2050, half of the world’s arable land will be salt-stressed due to rising sea levels. Although transgenic tomatoes that are more...
Allan Dyen-Shapiro
- Sep 5, 2019
Nuclear Power, Carbon Capture, Fracking: Prophets of Avoidable Doom are Right, for the wrong reasons
Yesterday’s Climate Change Town Hall uncovered rifts between the Democratic Presidential candidates. On the one extreme, Cory Booker...
Allan Dyen-Shapiro
- Jul 28, 2019
Jessica versus the Hellcat: moral philosophy from Season 3 of Jessica Jones
I was going to give up on this series after the first couple episodes of its last season. I had loved the first two seasons. The morally...
Allan Dyen-Shapiro
- Jun 10, 2019
And Now for Something Controversial
For a long time, I felt that the role for men in the country’s debate over abortion was to shut up and not get involved. It was an issue...
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