Posts by Sarena Straus
What If Creators Turn Against Their Creations?
At the heart of ReInception is a creator who invents a technology to help people, but comes to regret his invention when it’s put to unintended use. In the way that life often imitates Science Fiction, Dr. Geoffrey Hinton, who built a neural net in 2012, recently quit his job with Google and now speaks…
Read MoreBook Recommendations for Everyone On Your List
Books make the best gifts! Here are some recommendations for everyone on your list. I have my personal recommendations, as well as a few from my voracious reader teenagers. There’s a good mix of some suggestions by better known authors (but maybe not their well-known books), as well as some from smaller presses that are…
Read MoreGuest Blog at Shepherds.com
Head on over to Shepherds.com to check out my guest blog: The best science fiction novels with kick ass female characters If you aren’t familiar with Shepherds, it’s a great resource for discovering new novels based on all kinds of quirky lists. You can input just about any combination of things that you love and…
Read MoreWhat if we had the technology to guarantee consent?
As a former sex crimes prosecutor, I think about consent a lot. I wonder, as technology evolves, how that will impact consent and what that will mean for relationships. When we have technology embedded in our bodies, including ones that can record verbal and bodily responses, or that can capture video, what will that mean…
Read MoreWhat If We Lacked Autonomy Over Our Reproductive Rights?
Future Science Fiction heavily contemplates unintended consequences. As an attorney, I think a lot about this. One of the things I imagine in my forthcoming novel, ReINCEPTION, is the unintended consequences of the government controlling reproductive rights. Today in the US, we are talking about our government’s right to determine whether women can terminate pregnancy. …
Read MoreWhat If There Were a Magic Pill?
Asking “What If” is a great way to start brainstorming book ideas. I began envisioning the 2126 world of ReInception while reading the book The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg at the same time that I stumbled upon an article on transcranial magnetic stimulation. Putting the two together, I wondered, “What if we had…
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