Ursula

double poem day

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 22:14:42 GMT

Two of my poems were published today! They're both science-and-technology poems about immigration in the US in the past year. Secondary Filters is up at Strange Horizons, and an audio version of Leaning on the melting point is on the PoetTreeTown Soundcloud.

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what elegant stars

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 21:36:25 GMT

I'm writing a story for What Elegant Stars, an anthology of stories about space opera and fashion (or textiles!) that's Kickstarting right now.

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January journal: science fiction periodization

Thu, 22 Jan 2026 02:05:55 GMT

glowingfish asked:

The Golden Age of published science-fiction was more or less from 1955 to 1975 (lets say). Why did it end when it did? Do you think that science-fiction (or fantasy) published after 1975 was different, or do you just think it had less ability to become part of the "canon"?

This is really non-standard periodization! Wikipedia has the Golden Age of science fiction starting in the late 1930s, in connection with sci-fi magazine publishing history; the end of your period is solidly New Wave.

The counter-argument is the aphorism that the Golden Age of science fiction is twelve; by that rule, it's interesting to think about who was twelve in 1955-1975, or whatever guidelines you want to pick, and what influence they might have had on defining a canon, once they reached their twenties or thirties. The people who were twelve between 1955 and 1975 were mostly baby boomers, in the standard US generational framework; that was my parents' generation (and glowingfish's parents', I'm guessing), and it makes sense that the stories they considered formative would seem quasi-canonized to our generation.

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the iron garden sutra

Sun, 19 Oct 2025 20:37:14 GMT

I don't seek out horror stories. As a result, when I encounter a piece of media that has a lot of horror in its DNA, my reactions can be a bit off-kilter. The normal failure mode here would be to get too creeped out. But sometimes, trained by happier adventure stories, I go the other way and am not scared enough.

I was off-balance in one direction or the other throughout much of A.D. Sui's novel The Iron Garden Sutra. There's a scene early on where the protagonist Iris, a monk who has dedicated himself to caring for the dead, falls asleep in a mossy clearing beside a pile of skeletons. Iris is comforted by the hard ground and the quiet dead. I, a person who likes moss, loves camping trips, and routinely picnics in graveyards, found it genuinely cozy. I slowly worked out that this was the wrong approach to take.

Iron Garden Sutra is a haunted house book--but the house is an overgrown generation ship, and all of its passengers are long dead. The book contains a gruff but good-hearted engineer, a biologist who's fascinated by tree signaling, and the delights of apples from long-abandoned orchards, all of which are rightfully compelling. But because this is a haunted house book, if Iris is venturing out of his self-imposed isolation to connect with someone or something, there's a good chance that someone's about to get killed.

The element of the book I found personally most stressful wasn't death or dying, but rather Iris's approach to fasting. This is part of his monastic practice, but it's inflected through his childhood trauma in ways that are eating-disorder-adjacent; if that's a topic that's difficult for you, you may want to tread carefully here.

Because I missed or wilfully ignored much of Iron Garden Sutra's classic horror foreshadowing, yet was reading through my metaphorical fingertips in some of the quieter passages, my sense of the book doesn't entirely cohere: I can tell you about the structure from an intellectual standpoint, but my own experience was one of fragments. I liked many of the fragments very much! I enjoyed the authorial stance that one of the scariest things you can do is hand a firearm to an untrained person, and I thought the eventual romance was sweet.

This isn't the sort of horror story where everybody dies; indeed, despite my struggles with haunted-house structure, I'd say science fiction genre demands win out. The gore and the preoccupation with whether it's possible to communicate with the inhuman (or even with other humans) are both at Adrian Tchaikovsky levels, if that helps with your own calibration.

(I read this book via a Netgalley ARC; in the US, it comes out in February. A.D. Sui and I are friendly via Neon Hemlock.)

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Mon, 06 Oct 2025 17:45:01 GMT

I'm on A Meal of Thorns this week talking about Melissa Scott's Burning Bright: why I love it, what makes it space opera or cyberpunk, and the mystery of the ending.

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Thu, 02 Oct 2025 18:21:43 GMT

My October AMS Feature Column, The Hypergeometric Flower Pot, follows a train of thought from high Balatro scores to a famous infinite series.

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worldcon schedule

Sun, 10 Aug 2025 14:09:37 GMT

At seven days post-Paxlovid, I am reasonably confident in saying that I'm going to be at Worldcon! I look forward to seeing some of you there.

Thursday, Aug 14th

Poetry Readings Thursday
1:30 pm - 2:30 pm
Room 445-446

Reading: Ursula Whitcher
3:30 pm - 4:00 pm
Room 428

Interstellar Flight Press reading
7 PM
Seattle Beer Company, 1427 Western Ave

Friday, Aug 15th

Queering History
10:30 am - 11:30 am
Room 423-424

Poetry in World-building
3:00 pm - 4:00 pm
Room 433-434

Saturday, Aug 16th

Science Non-Fiction (Poetry)
10:30 am - 11:30 am
Room 447-448

Hugo Awards
8:30 PM
Ballroom 1, fifth floor

Sunday, Aug 17th

By the Numbers: Mathematics in Science Fiction
9:00 am - 10:00 am
Room 334

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Thu, 24 Jul 2025 00:14:45 GMT

My local library interviewed me about North Continent Ribbon!

It was an interesting conversation because the interviewer isn't a habitual science fiction reader. I'm always curious about what non-genre readers focus on.

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Wed, 18 Jun 2025 21:36:57 GMT

North Continent Ribbon is shortlisted for the 2025 Ursula K. Le Guin prize, along with Rakesfall, Sapling Cage, The City in Glass, and a bunch of other fascinating-looking books I haven't read yet.

I am so, so, so thrilled.

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an unexpected career development

Fri, 16 May 2025 00:34:58 GMT

I have acquired a literary agent! I'm going to be working with Lauren Bajek, of Liza Dawson Associates, who represents both science writing and science fiction.

I'm tremendously excited and a little bit boggled--I'd been keeping an eye on this agency because I'm acquainted with Hannah Bowman's husband in my mathematician guise, and Lauren's literary taste sounded a lot like mine, but I didn't expect anything to happen this fast.

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two cool things

Mon, 05 May 2025 20:54:56 GMT

My latest newsletter contains a couple of things I'd like you to know about:

An old friend has a story in Clarkesworld about a knitting mathematician. (Similarities to your correspondent are probably intentional! :) )
The audio from my KGB books reading is live!

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Tue, 22 Apr 2025 16:28:37 GMT

Earth Day call log:

ursula used Governor Gretchen Whitmer's contact form to ask her to deny a permit to the proposed Line 5 oil pipeline, and will further celebrate Earth Day by attending a protest in support of EPA federal employee union members this afternoon.

The Sierra Club is trying to break a record for the most origami fish, if you want a fun craft for celebration.

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Wed, 16 Apr 2025 13:48:26 GMT

My essay On Approaching Hard Problems, about a dear friend and attacks on the NSF, is reprinted in the latest edition of MAA Focus.

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NYC reading

Wed, 09 Apr 2025 20:35:36 GMT

If any of you are looking for a last-minute thing to do in NYC, I'm reading at the KGB bar tonight!

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Tue, 01 Apr 2025 19:11:54 GMT

My column The Teddy-Lambkin Theorem is live today. Check out my illustrations!

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Sat, 15 Mar 2025 14:21:38 GMT

My most recent newsletter has good news about a friend and a bunch of book and story recommendations.

Also, Neon Hemlock is running a celebratory 50% off ebooks sale with the code ALLEMPIRESMUSTFALL. If you'd like a personalized rec, let me know what sort of mood you're in or what kind of representation you're looking for!

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Sat, 22 Feb 2025 21:16:40 GMT

A dear friend of mine lost her job last week. I wrote about how that happened, and our friendship.

(I used buttondown to make this one easier to share publicly--please do share the link if you are so inclined!)

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waging a good war

Thu, 20 Feb 2025 18:49:49 GMT

Thomas E. Ricks, Waging a Good War: How the Civil Rights Movement Won its Battles, 1954-1968.

Ricks is a U.S. military historian. If you're used to thinking about nonviolence as a set of lofty ideals, this project raises immediate questions: why would a military historian be interested? And why would someone who is morally committed to nonviolence--someone like me--care what he thinks?

But there's an intensely practical case for nonviolence as well. I learned this partly from reading Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan's work on nonviolent regime change, and partly by turning the counterinsurgency writing of David Kilcullen upside-down.

Here's the thing. Most people, regular people living under whatever government, just want to live their lives. To do that, they need to feel safe--not perfectly safe, but convinced that lightning or roving bands of leopards or the other generalized dangers of existence are unlikely to strike them personally. The task of a counterinsurgency operation is to convince people that their government can keep them safe. A group that wants to change government, for instance by overthrowing the incredibly repressive system of Jim Crow, needs to convince regular people that their government does not protect them.

One way to do this is to make the government's violence visible.

When you think of the civil rights movement this way, as a deliberate and ultimately successful campaign to confront a violent enemy, it's easier to see why a military historian would be interested.

Specifically, Waging a Good War is about the campaigns waged by the SCLC (Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Martin Luther King Jr.'s group) and the SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the group that organized the Freedom Summer). It describes the Movement's strategy (how people chose, or failed to choose, their overarching goals) and tactics (how they pursued them), with regular comparisons to U.S. military campaigns. Most of the comparisons reference World War II; it's clear that Ricks prefers writing about people whom he thinks are the good guys, though he doesn't try to beatify any of the leaders whose decisions he examines.

If you're looking for an overview of the civil rights movement with an emphasis on techniques that other protest groups might try to emulate, this is a very solid place to start. I found, as I hoped, lots of practical information about planning and training. I learned about many civil rights leaders whose names I had not known, and learned more about people of whom I had only heard in passing. In particular, this book is full of praise for the leadership and insight of Diane Nash. As a mathematician, I was aware of the Algebra Project founded by Bob Moses (a very different person from the city planner by the same name!), but had no idea about his foundational role in Freedom Summer. That portion of my ignorance has now been rectified.

One theme that I did not anticipate is PTSD, or, as Ricks often terms it, combat stress. He devotes a substantial portion of the book to the question of what happens after a major operation, how survivors recover or fail to recover. I've seen echoes of the struggles Ricks describes among friends who were heavily involved in the Black Lives Matter protests. The questions he raises about how an organization might try to plan for the aftermath of a huge effort are important. Even in activist circles, I've generally heard this discussed in terms of individual burnout, rather than as a problem of collective support.

Waging a Good War is clear about its own scope. Some elements of the civil rights movement fall outside that scope; in particular, this is not the right place to find a detailed account of the NAACP's legal strategy. A more serious and less intentional limitation is that this book does not contemplate the U.S. as a colonialist power. Occasionally, this flavor of patriotism impedes Ricks' efforts to find an appropriate military simile. Here he is talking about J. Edgar Hoover's FBI, for example:

There are few analogies for this situation in conventional modern Western military history. Rather, Hoover operated like a medieval warlord, both an ally of the sovereign and a danger to him...

I am not a military expert, but I don't think it's difficult to find twentieth- and twenty-first century examples of the U.S. cooperating with people it termed warlords!

But this isn't the kind of book you read to stoke your cynicism; it's the kind of book you read to gear up for a long march. If you think a book like Waging a Good War could be useful to you, it almost certainly will.

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February topics: the largest small hexagon

Tue, 11 Feb 2025 18:19:35 GMT

octahedrite suggested a post about "cool geometry topics". I waited until I stumbled on a cool geometry fact via work. This one's elementary but adorable: what's the largest small polygon? For the purposes of this riddle, "small" means that the diameter (biggest distance from one corner to another) is a fixed small number, which we might as well say is 1 unit. Then you try to find the largest area given that constraint.

It turns out that when the polygon has an odd number of sides, the largest small polygon is always a regular polygon. So the largest small triangle is an equilateral triangle, the largest small pentagon has five equal sides and angles, and so forth. But the largest small hexagon is not an equilateral hexagon! You can find a picture of it at MathWorld, see an animation of its rotations at the delightfully old-fashioned website Hall of Hexagons, or read Ron Graham's original paper, which involves an argument via the excellently named (by Conway, unsurprisingly) thrackleations.

The largest small octagons, 10-gons, and 12-gons have also been identified, but for even-sided polygons with 14 or more sides, finding the best one is still an open problem.

(You can suggest more topics here.)

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February topics

Tue, 04 Feb 2025 22:09:58 GMT

Suggest a topic and I'll try to post about it this month? (Past instances of this tradition are tagged january meme, though I see I'm only running a week or so later than last year.)

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on literary revenges

Thu, 23 Jan 2025 13:04:51 GMT

My essay comparing different lesbian space operas inspired by the Count of Monte Cristo is up now at Ancillary Review of Books.

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2024 in writing

Mon, 06 Jan 2025 18:40:46 GMT

2024 was an exciting year for fiction!

short story collection

North Continent Ribbon was released by Neon Hemlock Press.

novelette

The final story in North Continent Ribbon, "A Fisher of Stars," is an original novelette. (If you're reading for awards nominations and would like a review copy, let me know!)

short story

Frivolous Comma published Flannelfeet, a Wisconsin covid-era portal fantasy.

poetry

My poem "Hexavalent" was in Analog in January 2024, and "Beyond the Standard Model" is in Analog in January 2025.

essays about writing

The Poet’s Toolbox: Three Strategies for a Vivid Prose Voice (SFWA blog)
A Depth of Taste (writing about food in space opera), for Frivolous Comma
My Favorite Bit of North Continent Ribbon.

essays about math

Elliptic curves come to date night talks about a fun result combining economics, number theory, and algebraic geometry.

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don't sleep with the dead

Mon, 06 Jan 2025 01:37:04 GMT

Nghi Vo, Don't Sleep With the Dead.

Some years after the events of The Chosen and the Beautiful--or The Great Gatsby, which in this world is a semi-factual memoir by one Nick Carraway--dead men from the First World War are appearing on the streets of Paris, as early harbingers of a Second, and Nick is trying to figure out whether he's a real person. The case against it is that he is made out of paper. The case in favor has two parts: the man he was cut out to replace was an awful human being, and there are devils around who seem perfectly willing to bargain for his soul.

This novella is a game with voice, atmosphere, and untrustworthy narration that is going exactly where the title warns one shouldn't. Vo's writing always shines with details that give you a sense of other stories happening just outside the frame. Given the opportunity, I might have chosen to follow one of those stories--the Saint Paul cousin who either disappeared or transformed to someone three inches shorter, the ghosts of the trenches in Paris, the demon who appears as a wax model of a secretary--rather than pursuing Nick's particular charming brand of self-destruction. But that's always the question with Nick Carraway's stories: was the tragedy inevitable, or is he simply very good at not happening to act?

(I read this book as a Netgalley ARC. In the US, it comes out April 8.)

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bandido and bandida

Thu, 02 Jan 2025 22:09:40 GMT

I bought my eight-year-old niece copies of Bandido and Bandida for Christmas. These are card games that play like cooperative tile-laying games: the object is to prevent (Bandido) or aid (Bandida) the underground escape of a notorious criminal by constructing a maze with as many dead ends as possible.

I thought this worked really well as a game to play with both kids and adults. You can deal in a new player at essentially any time, which means it's easy to accommodate little sisters or grandparents who wander over and get curious about what you're doing, and since the cards are all segments of tunnels, the ability to read is not a prerequisite. (Bandida adds a few special cards that require a bossy eight-year-old or an adult rules reader for interpretation.)

However, these are not easy games to win! An ideal strategy would involve lots of coordination between players to block tunnels quickly. If you're pursuing a more casual "let's just figure out how to use this card" mode of play, the game turns unwinnable due to combinatorial explosion very quickly. The nieces and I got enough partial successes from blocking individual tunnels to keep ourselves entertained, but I'm curious about what an adults-only playthrough of this game would look like.

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in which I am somewhat like a vinyl record

Thu, 19 Dec 2024 14:45:21 GMT

My latest newsletter has a poem and interesting readings of North Continent Ribbon.

The poem is "Beyond the Standard Model," currently up at Analog, which I'm really proud of. And there's also a podcast with our very own sabotabby!

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