Non-Fiction

Here are some essays, reviews, and occasional pieces I have written over the years.

A MEMOIR

A TALK ON THE POST-HUMAN FUTURE

Imagining the Human Future: Up, Down, or Sideways

MY MOST CONTROVERSIAL ESSAY

Creating the Innocent Killer: Ender's Game, Intention, and Morality

TWO PIECES ON JAMES PATRICK KELLY

Cutting up an Ox (Introduction to Kelly's Think Like a Dinosaur and Other Stories)
The Rime of the Ancient Scrivener (doggerel on the occasion of Kelly's birthday)

SEVERAL ANNOTATED LISTS (ready to provoke argument)

29 Years, 29 Books: The Works that Most Influenced SF, 1963-1992
Ten Underappreciated SF Novels

ABOUT OTHER WRITERS

Lawrence Rudner and Memory's Tailor
Final Grade Report: Andy Duncan

JUST FOR FUN

The Education of Gregory Frost
Who I'll Cast When They Let Me Direct...

OPINIONS: Several Essays from the defunct magazine Short Form:

"'A Letter from the Clearys' and the SF Audience" (in which I gratuitously insult sf readers)
"Why SF is Not Welcome in the Parlor" (in which I explain what Langston Hughes and I have in common)
"Robert Heinlein: One Sane Man?" (in which I gratuitously insult the greatest American SF writer)
"Crowley's Blues" (in which I dive deep into John Crowley's story "In Blue")
"Demonizing Literature"(in which I defend James Joyce and literary fiction)

OTHER STUFF

A brief note on the Heaven's Gate suicides
A Commencement Talk from December 1999