What looks to be a slowly revealed origin story for one of Trek’s most infamous villains feels purposeful, subtle, and positively inspired. (2019)

The brutal mansplaining takedown in Star Trek: Discovery’s season-two premiere carried a pointed message — one that’s exactly in-line with a franchise that’s always been about progressive politics. (2019)

Today’s weird kids’ YouTube channels have nothing on the first season of Pokémon

It wasn’t perfect, but Carlton Cuse’s alien invasion drama explored authority and totalitarianism in a fresh, often surprising way. (2018)

The diverse Brazilian Netflix drama proves dystopian TV doesn’t have to be laser-focused on suffering to be worth a binge. (2018)

And the show’s casually dismissive treatment of him is wasting some terrific story opportunities. (2018)

An easy-to-follow guide to navigating hard social media conversations about sexual assault, racism & other traumas. Second in a six-part series on online ethics for Medium. (2018)

The series shows us our nightmares, but it also needs to show us how to live with them. (2018)

By asking fans to re-examine Star Trek’s rosy future as hard-won instead of inevitable, Discovery’s creators are reinventing the franchise for a political era where the inexorable march toward social progress is no longer a given. (2018)

Is it possible the internet will be a garbage fire hellscape forever? And if so, what then? First of a six-part series on online ethics for Medium. (2018)

"Hang the DJ" explores the emotional and technological limits of dating apps, and in doing so perfectly captures the modern desperation of trusting algorithms to find us love—and, in fact, of dating in this era at all. (2017)

A new Jetsons comic, out this week from DC Comics, finally broaches the question of why the Jetsons and their community live their lives in the upper atmosphere, and the answers it offers aren’t pretty. (2017)

On the extreme ironies of Blade Runner 2049, a story about the evils of dehumanization that does exactly that to its nonwhite and non-male characters. (2017)

Despite Clark’s ever-pristine musicianship, her first performance of MASSEDUCTION featured little of the frenetic, eccentric energy that has propelled her star upward in recent years. (2017)

On the sociology of "relatable" fame, fan exploitation, and what happens to popstars when their normal-ness fails. (2017)

The famously reclusive artist finally played a U.S. show at this year's FYF Fest in L.A. Was it worth the wait? (July 2017)

Contributed a few things to Pitchfork's retrospective in honor of one of the greatest musicians of all time, including the script for this video version. (May 2017)

But in order to work, Bryan Fuller’s Starz adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s flawed 2001 novel will have to be. (April 2017)

Somehow missed the Buffy train the first (or second, or third) time around? Wonderful television awaits you—as long as you don’t watch the show’s first 12 episodes. (2017)

When decades of social and political history have shown that large-scale resistance often results in the sacrifices of minority causes, often in the name of the greater (mostly whiter, straighter, and cisgender) good, what does “solidarity” mean?

The worst-case scenarios of Charlie Brooker’s techno-dystopian parables don’t seem too grim to an audience already living in hell.

An analysis of context clues—and a few bold assumptions—about the future that inspires people to kill robots for fun. (2016)

The recurring bloodbath in HBO's Wild West A.I. thriller isn't gratuitous. (2016)

The toxicity of Hollywood's celebration of bad men who did real bad things. (2016)

It’s great news that the feminist dystopian novel will be adapted into a TV series. But why tell progressive stories onscreen if we can’t learn from them?

Hermione’s Time-Turner may have saved the day, but it also glorified burnout.

Dystopian fiction mimics what it actually feels like to be in the world, so if it ends up scaring people, well, that's because the world is scary. (2014)

If you want a totalitarian world that obscures its suffering and oppressed under a gleaming state-sponsored banner, look no further than the Sochi Winter Olympics. (2014)

The chilling barbarism contained in The Hunger Games: Mockingjay likely has the opposite effect of a Kill Bill or Grand Theft Auto: When it resonates at all, it's probably breeding more empathy, not less. (2014)

A retold fairy tale only works if it actually tells a better story. (2014)