Annalee Newitz

“Are we not witnessing a strange tableau of survival whenever a bird alights on the head of a crocodile, bringing together the evolutionary offspring of Triassic and Jurassic?”

“A series of studies in the 1990s and 2000s revealed that as women gained more access to education, jobs, and birth control, they had fewer children. As a result, developed countries in weste...”

“'The Red' is the first book in a trilogy that gained a big following as a self-published e-book, and is now out in paper from Saga. It introduces us to reluctant hero Shelley, a former anti-...”

“Critics have called alien epic 'Avatar' a version of 'Dances With Wolves' because it's about a white guy going native and becoming a great leader. But Avatar is just the latest scifi rehash...”

“Whether 'Avatar' is racist is a matter for debate. Regardless of where you come down on that question, it's undeniable that the film - like alien apartheid flick 'District 9', released earli...”

“'Avatar' imaginatively revisits the crime scene of white America's foundational act of genocide, in which entire native tribes and civilizations were wiped out by European immigrants to the...”

“Women are being welcomed into science fiction, but it's through the back door.”

“The myth that young people should leave the nest at 18, never to return, started with iconic American Benjamin Franklin.”

“I am a big proponent of character arcs that show us how people change over time.”

“A group of scientists wanted to find the most effective mosquito repellents. So they tested 10 different substances, including campout standbys like DEET, as well as a random choice: Victori...”

“Radio Shack is meeting the fate of many other stores that were wildly popular in the twentieth century, including record stores, comic book stores, bookstores and video stores.”

“Cities might become biological entities, walls hung with curtains of algae that glow at night and sequester carbon, and floors made from tweaked cellular material that strengthens like bones...”

“Humans have continued to evolve quite a lot over the past ten thousand years, and certainly over 100 thousand. Sure, our biology affects our behavior. But it's unlikely that humans' early ev...”

“The U.N.'s current projection is that humanity will number 9.3 billion individuals in 2050 and then hit 10.1 billion by 2100. Meanwhile, our energy resources are dwindling, and droughts thre...”

“When Usenet was eclipsed by websites in the late 1990s, people from that world - many of them programmers - wanted to bring the freewheeling, amazing discussions of Usenet to the web. And th...”

“In the 1970s, as historians became enchanted with microhistories, economists were expanding the reach of their discipline. Nations, states and cities began to plan for the future by consulti...”

“Evolutionary psychology has often been a field whose most prominent practitioners get embroiled in controversy - witness the 2010 case of Harvard professor Marc Hauser, whose graduate studen...”

“I founded io9 back in 2008, and I watched it journey from the farthest reaches of space to its current home under this atmosphere bubble on Ceres.”

“In the 1920s and 30s, when Radio Shack was young, a much earlier generation of nerds swarmed into these tiny shops to talk excitedly about building radios and other transmission devices. You...”

“We're seeing a new 'Gilded Age,' where inheritance is a deciding factor in who becomes the wealthiest.”