Essays, Op-Eds, Interviews

Learn more about me at AdaPalmer.com, or about my music at SassafrassMusic.com. Meanwhile, here are links to more of my work in different corners of the web, including published essays and articles, op-eds, guest blog posts, interviews, and my guest appearances on podcasts and vidcasts.

For audio/video links only, click here.

Most Recent Pieces:

Interview with UChicago News: There’s no such thing as a ‘golden age,’ says Renaissance scholar
Existential Hope Podcast: On How Speculative Worlds Can Help Us Demand A Better Future
Hope Is A Verb Podcast: A History of Saving the World
Video panel: Lakeshore PBS: The Roundtable Perspective 723, The Impact of Science Fiction
Column: Strange Horizons: A Mitfreude of Anime and Manga’s Relationship with Anglophone Science Fiction (Or, This Essay WILL NOT Try to Get You into Anime and Manga!)
Guest Post: Before We Go: Hopepunk, Optimism, Purity, and Futures of Hard Work
Guest Post: Nine Bookish Lives: A Future that (Thinks it) Doesn’t See Gender
Guest Post: Books, Bones, and Buffy: Octopus Rights and Imaginary Civil Rights Allies
Video Panel: CUNY: Imagining the Future: Science Fiction and Social Science
Guest Post: Track of Words: Q&A Ada Palmer Talks Terra Ignota
Essay: Uncanny Magazine: Expanding Our Empathy Sphere Using F&SF, a History

CATEGORIES:

Most Recent Pieces
Top Recommended
Read Sample Chapters of Terra Ignota
My Blog, ExUrbe, Top Recommended Posts & Pages
Music
History and NonFiction
Science Fiction and Terra Ignota
Anime and Manga
- My Writing and Talks
- Interviews and Discussions
Vidcasts

Top Recommended:

Column: Strange Horizons: A Mitfreude of Anime and Manga’s Relationship with Anglophone Science Fiction (Or, This Essay WILL NOT Try to Get You into Anime and Manga!)
Essay: Uncanny Magazine: Expanding Our Empathy Sphere Using F&SF, a History
Essay: Uncanny Magazine: Censorship and Genre Fiction: Let’s Broaden our Broader Reality
Essay: Uncanny Magazine: The Protagonist Problem
Op-Ed: New York Times: Why Is Silicon Valley So Obsessed With the Virtue of Suffering?
Op-Ed: Washington Post: Why Trump’s decision to intervene in campus speech policies is so dangerous
Essay: BoingBoing: How #Article13 is like the Inquisition: John Milton Against the EU #CopyrightDirective
Video: Singularity Podcast: Ada Palmer on on Pandemics, Progress, History, Teleology and the Singularity
Video Series: Censorship and Information Control During Information Revolutions
- Censorship and Information Control, “Best Of” Playlist
- Censorship and Information Control, Full-Length Sessions in Order
Tor.com: Writing about Writing and Writing about Shakespeare
Chicago Maroon: The Skill We All Need Most Right Now Is Self-Care

Read Sample Chapters of Terra Ignota

My Blog, ExUrbe, Top Recommended Posts & Pages

Music: Sassafrass

Text: Cory Doctorow for Boingboing: Sassafrass: choral folks songs about space and Icelandic mythos
Video: Fan-Made Trailer for Sundown: Whispers of Ragnarok (stage play), 2013.
Sundown: Whispers of Ragnarok – Sassafrass Singers
Sassafrass in Concert at Chessiecon, 2017

History & Nonfiction (for scholarly publications see my CV)

Presentations, Events & Essays
- Video Lecture: The University of Chicago Alumni Weekend, Tracing Censorship of Radical Ideas Across Centuries
- Video Lecture: The University of Chicago Graham School, A Conversation with Ada Palmer on the Nature of Intellectual Transformation
- Text: Tor/Forge Blog, What the Future Will Call This Era
- Video Lecture: Lumen Christi Institute: San Marco: the Dominican Monastery at the Heart of Renaissance Florence, lecture for the Lumen Christi Institute
- Video Series: Censorship and Information Control During Information Revolutions
  - Censorship and Information Control, “Best Of” Playlist
  - Censorship and Information Control, Full-Length Sessions in Order
- Video Discussion: Lumen Christi Institute: The Inquisition, What Really Happened, with Ada Palmer, Hannah Marcus and Daniele Macuglia, at the
- My Talk on Censorship at Chessiecon 2017 (3 videos)
- Videos: NEH Summer Workshop: Roman Comedy in Performance (free online videos of Roman Comedy scenes performed in different variations in Latin and English for comparison):
  - blog
  - YouTube Channel
  - My scenes: Bacchides English (masked, spoken), Bacchides Latin (masked, sung), BacchidesEnglish 2 (no masks), and Pseudolus(slapstick/mocking), 2012.
  - See also our discussion of making the Bacchides skits.
Interviews & Discussions
- Radio Discussion: BBC Radio 4 Moral Maze, What is history for, July 03, 2024
- Text: Against the Great Forces of History, Cory Doctorow
- Video Discussion: In Lieu of Fun, In Lieu of Fun, Episode 34: Ada Palmer, April 27, 2020
- Video Discussion: In Lieu of Fun, In Lieu of Fun, Episode 424: Ada Palmer, May 26, 2021
- Audio Interview: You Are Not So Smart Podcast: “Is Progress Inevitable?”
- Audio Interview: Getting Smart Podcast: Ada Palmer on Learning From the Past and the Future
Articles That Consulted Me
- Text: Washington Post: The rediscovery of this writer in the Renaissance opened the way to the modern world (and, more important, the invention of political science)

Science Fiction and Terra Ignota

Science Fiction & Craft of Writing
- Video panel: Lakeshore PBS: The Roundtable Perspective 723, The Impact of Science Fiction
- Video panel: CUNY: Imagining the Future: Science Fiction and Social Science
- Guest Post: Before We Go: Hopepunk, Optimism, Purity, and Futures of Hard Work
- Audio Interview: diyMFA: Writing Speculative Fiction — Interview with Ada Palmer
- Text: Huffington Post: 7 Sci-Fi Writers Predict The Future Of The Olympics
- Panel write-up: Worldcon 2015: Notes from The Future of Government, written up by William Hertling. Panel includes Karl Schroeder, Charles Stross, Joe Haldeman, Bradford Lyau and Ada Palmer.
- Panel write-up: Boskone 2015: Romance and Flensing, written up by Max Gladstone. Panel includes Debra Doyle & Chris Jackson.
- Text: The Portland Mercury: A Guide to Making Book Readings Less Terrible
Me Discussing Terra Ignota
- Tor.com: Writing the Science Fiction Future of Global Politics
- Guest Post: Books, Bones, and Buffy: Octopus Rights and Imaginary Civil Rights Allies
- Tor.com: Writing a Future in Which You Choose Your Own Nation
- Tor.com: Writing the Distant Future of Global Politics
Articles & Interviews About Terra Ignota
- Video: Acceptance speech for the Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire for the French translation of Terra Ignota
- Wall Street Journal: Overwhelmed by Social Media, Cybersecurity and Other Tech Topics? Read These Books.
- Scientific American: A Utopia with Caveats: Why Peace on Earth Might Require Big Sacrifices
- Scientific American: When Science Fiction Meets Social Science
- Barnes and Noble: How to Build a Future History: Ada Palmer Discusses the Terra Ignota Series
- The Bibliosanctum: In Terra Ignota, Diaspora Becomes Nations Without Borders
- Inverse: ASK A PROPHET | Ada Palmer’s Sci-fi Novels Are Historical Fictions From The Deep Future
- UChicago Magazine: The future of science fiction is not American
- The Chicago Maroon: Uncommon Interview: Hugo Award Finalist Ada Palmer
- Novel Gazing Redux: Interview with Marissa Lingen
- The Future Fire: Interview by Cait Coker
- Video: Interview with Chris Rhodes about Terra Ignota. *
- Too Like the Lightning
  - My Bookish Ways: An interview with Ada Palmer, author of Too Like the Lightning
  - Audio: The Kitchen Tree: Fran Wilde’s Cooking the Books
  - Audio: Conlangery SPECIAL #2: Too Like the Lightning
  - Audio: Podcast Interview on The Methods of Rationality
  - Audio: Dungeon Crawlers Radio Interview
  - Audio: Roundtable Podcast
  - Audio: Interview on Conlangery
  - Audio: Interview on Inverse: Historical novels from the future
- Seven Surrenders
  - Tor/Forge Blog: What Will the Future Call This Era?
  - Tor.com: Writing a Future in which You Choose Your Nation
  - Video: Interview about Seven Surrenders at Helsinki
  - Audio: Functional Nerds Interview
- The Will to Battle
  - Podcastle: Interview
  - Tor/Forge Blog: Other Story Ingredients
- Perhaps the Stars
  - Guest Post: Track of Words: Q&A Ada Palmer Talks Terra Ignota

Anime and Manga

My Writing & Talks
- Strange Horizons: A Mitfreude of Anime and Manga’s Relationship with Anglophone Science Fiction (Or, This Essay WILL NOT Try to Get You into Anime and Manga!)
- Smithsonian Freer/Sackler Galleries Osamu Tezuka Event, with Ada Palmer, Helen McCarthy, Natsu Onoda Power, and Fredrick Schodt, December 2009 (essays by all panelists available through website). Except I think this is down so we may need to re-upload my essay or something
- Tor.com: Manga and Anime in Which No Bad Things Happen
- Tor.com: Chronicling Japanese Folklore: The Ghosts and Monsters of Shigeru Mizuki
- The Guardian: Osamu Tezuka, father of manga and scourge of the medical establishment
- Panel write-up: Worldcon 2014: Which 21st Century Comics will be Remembered in 50 Years, written up by Ada Palmer. Panel includes Maura McHugh, David Baillie, Hannah Berry, John Anderson, Adam Rakunas and Ada Palmer
Interviews & Discussions
- - Text: Manga Out Loud: Tezuka’s Barbara with Ada Palmer, Fred Schodt, Helen McCarthy
  - Text: Manga Out Loud: Princess Knight Vol. 2, with Ada Palmer, Helen McCarthy, and Kate Dacey
  - Text: The Guardian: Osamu Tezuka: Father of manga and scourge of the medical establishment
  - Text: The Sci-Fi Block: A Beginner’s Guide to Astro Boy
  - Text: Publisher’s Weekly: Tezuka’s Black Jack Returns
  - Text: BuzzyMag: Anime Expert ADA PALMER – Exclusive Interview
  - Text: CNN: “Costumed Fans put a Gender Spin on Classic Characters

Vidcasts

Existential Hope Podcast: On How Speculative Worlds Can Help Us Demand A Better Future
Hope Is A Verb Podcast: A History of Saving the World
Singularity Podcast: Ada Palmer on on Pandemics, Progress, History, Teleology and the Singularity
Singularity Podcast: Ada Palmer on Viking Ethics, Laws of History, Partial Victories, and Terra Ignota