Annalee Newitz (born May 7, 1969) is an American journalist, editor, and author of both fiction and nonfiction. From 1999 to 2008, Newitz wrote a syndicated weekly column called Techsploitation, and from 2000 to 2004 was the culture editor of the San Francisco Bay Guardian. In 2004, Newitz became a policy analyst at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. With Charlie Jane Anders, they also co-founded Other magazine, a periodical that ran from 2002 to 2007. From 2008 to 2015, Newitz was editor-in-chief of Gawker-owned media venture io9, and subsequently its direct descendant Gizmodo, Gawker's design and technology blog. They have written for the periodicals Popular Science, Film Quarterly and Wired. As of 2019, Newitz is a contributing opinion writer at The New York Times.

Annalee Newitz
Newitz at the 2023 WonderCon
Born (1969-05-07) May 7, 1969 (age 55)
EducationUniversity of California, Berkeley
Occupation(s)Journalist, editor, author
Websitetechsploitation.com

Early life

edit

Newitz was born in 1969, and grew up in Irvine, California, graduating from Irvine High School, and in 1987 moved to Berkeley, California.[1] In 1996, Newitz started doing freelance writing, and in 1998 completed a Ph.D. in English and American Studies from UC Berkeley, with a dissertation on images of monsters, psychopaths, and capitalism in twentieth century American popular culture,[2] the content of which later appeared in book form from Duke University Press.[3][4][5]

Around 1999, Newitz co-founded the Post-World War II American Literature and Culture Database in an attempt to chronicle modern literature and popular culture.[6]

Career

edit
 
Newitz in 2019

Newitz became a full-time writer and journalist in 1999 with an invitation to write a weekly column for the Metro Silicon Valley, a column which then ran in various venues for nine years. Then they served as the culture editor at the San Francisco Bay Guardian from 2000 to 2004.[7]

Newitz was awarded a Knight Science Journalism Fellowship for 2002 to 2003, supporting them as a research fellow at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.[8] From 2004 to 2005 Newitz was a policy analyst for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and from 2007 to 2009 was on the board of Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility. Newitz and Charlie Jane Anders, a Hugo award-winning author and commentator, co-founded Other magazine.[9][10]

In 2008, Gawker media asked Newitz to start a blog about science and science fiction, dubbed io9, for which Newitz served as editor-in-chief from its founding until 2015 when it merged with Gizmodo, another Gawker media design and technology blog property; Newitz then took on the same leadership of the new venture.[11][12] In November 2015, Newitz left Gawker to join Ars Technica, where Newitz has been employed as tech culture editor since December 2015. Newitz is a contributing opinion writer at The New York Times.[13]

Newitz's first novel, Autonomous, was published in 2017. Autonomous won the Lambda Literary Award and was nominated for the Nebula Award and Locus Award in 2018 for best novel.

Newitz's second novel, The Future of Another Timeline, published in 2019, was described on their website as: "[...] about time travel and what it would be like to meet yourself as a teenager and have a really, really intense conversation with her about how fucked up your high school friends are."[14] The book was received with acclaim by critics,[15][16][17] and was a nominee for the Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel.[18]

External videos
  Presentation by Newitz on Scatter, Adapt, and Remember, May 22, 2013, C-SPAN
  Washington Journal interview with Newitz on the Discover article "How to Death-Proof a City" (based on Scatter, Adapt, and Remember), June 5, 2013, C-SPAN

Their 2014 non-fiction science book Scatter, Adapt, and Remember: How Humans Will Survive a Mass Extinction was a finalist for the L.A. Times Book Prize.[13] They also wrote Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age, published in 2021.

They have also written for publications including Wired, Popular Science, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Slate, The Washington Post, Smithsonian, and more. They have published short stories in Lightspeed, Shimmer Magazine, Apex, and Technology Review's Twelve Tomorrows.

In March 2018,[19] with their partner and co-host Charlie Jane Anders, Newitz launched the podcast Our Opinions Are Correct, which "explor[es] the meaning of science fiction, and how it's relevant to real-life science and society."[20] The podcast won the Hugo Award for Best Fancast in 2019.[21]

Personal life

edit
 
Charlie Jane Anders and Annalee Newitz at Swecon 2019

Newitz is the child of two English teachers. Their mother, Cynthia, worked at a high school, and their father, Marty, at a community college.[22] Since 2000, Newitz has been in a relationship with Charlie Jane Anders. The two began the podcast Our Opinions Are Correct in March 2018.[23]

Newitz has used singular they pronouns since 2019.[1]

Venues

edit

Awards and nominations

edit
Year Work Award Category Result Ref
2018 Autonomous John W. Campbell Memorial Award Shortlisted [30]
Lambda Literary Award SF/Fantasy/Horror Won [31]
Locus Award First Novel Nominated [32]
Nebula Award for Best Novel Shortlisted [33]
2019 When Robot and Crow Saved East St. Louis Theodore Sturgeon Award Won [34]
Our Opinions Are Correct Hugo Award Fancast Won [35]
The Future of Another Timeline Goodreads Choice Award Science Fiction Nominated
Sidewise Award Long form Won
2020 Locus Award Science Fiction Novel Nominated [18]

Bibliography

edit

Newitz's work has been published in Popular Science, Wired, Salon.com, New Scientist, Metro Silicon Valley,[36] the San Francisco Bay Guardian,[25] and at AlterNet.[7][26] In addition to these print and online periodicals, they have published the following short stories and books:

Novels

edit

Short stories

edit

Non-fiction

edit
  • White Trash: Race and Class in America. Routledge Press. 1997. ISBN 978-1135204495. Co-edited, with Matt Wray
  • The Bad Subjects Anthology. New York University Press. 1998. ISBN 978-0814757925.
  • Pretend We're Dead: Capitalist Monsters in American Pop Culture. Duke University Press. 2006. ISBN 978-0822337454.
  • She's Such a Geek: Women Write About Science, Technology, and Other Nerdy Stuff. Seal Press. 2006. ISBN 978-1580051903. Co-edited with Charlie Anders.
  • Scatter, Adapt, and Remember: How Humans Will Survive a Mass Extinction. Doubleday. 2013. ISBN 978-0385535922.
  • "Two Scenarios for the Future of Solar Energy". Hieroglyph: Stories and Visions for a Better Future. William Morrow. 2014. ISBN 978-0062204707. Edited by Kathryn Cramer and Ed Finn.
  • "California Futures: Imagining California's Future in the Pacific world". Boom: A Journal of California. 5 (1): 106–116. March 2015. doi:10.1525/boom.2015.5.1.106.
  • "Great Female Scientists in History". Particulates. Dia Art Foundation. 2018. Edited by Nalo Hopkinson.
  • "This changes everything". Views. New Scientist. 244 (3260): 24. December 14, 2019.
  • Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age. Norton. 2021. ISBN 978-0393652673.[39]
  • Stories Are Weapons: Psychological Warfare and the American Mind. Norton. 2024. ISBN 978-0393881516. OCLC 1398568649.

References

edit
  1. ^ a b Newitz, Annalee (2006). "About Annalee Newitz". Archived from the original on March 2, 2015. Retrieved February 19, 2015.
  2. ^ ProQuest, 2015, "Citation/Abstract: When we pretend that we're dead: Monsters, psychopaths and the economy in American popular culture [Newitz, Annalee... University of California, Berkeley], see [1], accessed February 19, 2015.
  3. ^ Newitz, Annalee (2006). Pretend we're dead : capitalist monsters in American pop culture. Durham: Duke University Press. ISBN 9780822387855. OCLC 220950460.
  4. ^ Pretend We're Dead: Capitalist Monsters in American Pop Culture. Duke University Press. Retrieved April 9, 2023.
  5. ^ "Book Review/Interview: Pretend We're Dead: Capitalist Monsters in American Pop Culture by Annalee Newitz | Blogcritics". Archived from the original on February 19, 2015. Retrieved February 19, 2015.
  6. ^ Cheifet, Stewart (January 8, 1999). Online Literature. Net Cafe. Retrieved August 13, 2018.
  7. ^ a b Newitz, Annalee (July 2, 2008). "My Last Column". AlterNet. Retrieved January 25, 2016.
  8. ^ Knight Science Journalism, 2015, "Alumni Fellows, Class of 2003: Annalee Newitz, culture editor, San Francisco Bay Guardian", "Annalee Newitz | Knight Science Journalism at MIT". Archived from the original on February 19, 2015. Retrieved February 19, 2015.
  9. ^ Marech, Rona (August 31, 2004). "A pop culture magazine for freaks and 'new outcasts' / Other journal is pro-rant, pro-loopy and pro-anarchy". SFGATE. Retrieved April 9, 2023.
  10. ^ Camille Dodero, 2003, "The New Outcasts," in the Boston Phoenix, November 14–20, 2003 [defunct weekly as of 2013, see "Newspapering is a Business: The Death of the Legendary Boston Phoenix". Archived from the original on February 19, 2015. Retrieved February 19, 2015.
  11. ^ Ingramm, Mathew (January 15, 2015). "Gawker Media merging Gizmodo and io9 teams into a tech super-hub | Gigaom.com". Archived from the original on April 7, 2022. Retrieved February 19, 2015.
  12. ^ Mankiewicz, Richard (February 21, 2010). "Science 2.0: Eureka's Top 30 Science Blogs". Archived from the original on July 14, 2012. Retrieved February 19, 2015.
  13. ^ a b "Scatter, Adapt, and Remember by Annalee Newitz: 9780307949424 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books". PenguinRandomhouse.com. Retrieved October 13, 2020.
  14. ^ Annalee Newitz, 2018, author's own website (online), techsploitation.com; accessed October 20, 2018.
  15. ^ Sheehan, Jason (September 26, 2019). "'Future Of Another Timeline' Edits The Past To Save The Present". NPR.org. Retrieved October 13, 2020.
  16. ^ "'The Future of Another Timeline' pulses with a daring punk-rock, time-travel tale". Los Angeles Times. September 27, 2019. Retrieved October 13, 2020.
  17. ^ Wolfe, Gary K. (September 24, 2019). "'The Future of Another Timeline': Annalee Newitz pens resonant novel for current moment". chicagotribune.com. Retrieved October 13, 2020.
  18. ^ a b Tor.com (May 29, 2020). "Announcing the 2020 Locus Awards Finalists". Tor.com. Retrieved October 13, 2020.
  19. ^ "Episode 1: Hope, dread, and Star Trek: Discovery". our opinions are correct. March 15, 2018. Retrieved December 6, 2020.
  20. ^ Stubby the Rocket (April 3, 2018). "Listen to Charlie Jane Anders and Annalee Newitz's New Podcast, Our Opinions Are Correct". Tor.com. Retrieved December 6, 2020.
  21. ^ "2019 Hugo Awards". World Science Fiction Society. July 28, 2019. Retrieved August 20, 2019.
  22. ^ Newitz, Annalee (September 1997). "Sexual Mutants of the Multiculture: BadPost Issue #33". Archived from the original on June 24, 2012. Retrieved February 19, 2015.
  23. ^ "our opinions are correct". our opinions are correct. Retrieved January 18, 2021.
  24. ^ Emily (May 23, 2005). "Interview: Annalee Newitz". sfist.com. Archived from the original on May 17, 2016. Retrieved January 25, 2016.
  25. ^ a b AAN Staff (June 19, 2002). "Bay Guardian Editor Named Knight Science Fellow". altweeklies.com. Retrieved January 25, 2016.
  26. ^ a b c "Spotlight on: Annalee Newitz, Author and Editor". Locus Magazine. January 8, 2014. Retrieved January 25, 2016.
  27. ^ a b Sterne, Peter (January 15, 2015). "Gawker Media merges Gizmodo and io9, names Annalee Newitz editor". Politico Media. Archived from the original on May 5, 2016. Retrieved January 26, 2016.
  28. ^ Seidman, Bianca (August 28, 2015). "Report: Women's accounts on Ashley Madison were fake". CBS News. Retrieved January 25, 2016.
  29. ^ a b O'Shea, Chris (November 16, 2015). "Annalee Newitz joins Ars Technica". Ad Week. Retrieved January 25, 2016.
  30. ^ "Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction News and Events". Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction. Archived from the original on August 30, 2018. Retrieved July 3, 2019.
  31. ^ "sfadb - Annalee Newitz". Science Fiction Awards Database. Retrieved October 19, 2018.
  32. ^ locusmag (June 23, 2018). "2018 Locus Awards Winners". Locus Online. Retrieved July 3, 2019.
  33. ^ "Nebula Awards 2018". Science Fiction Awards Database. Locus. Archived from the original on May 21, 2018. Retrieved May 20, 2018.
  34. ^ "Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction News and Events". Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction. Archived from the original on June 15, 2012. Retrieved July 4, 2019.
  35. ^ Cheryl (April 2, 2019). "2019 Hugo Award & 1944 Retro Hugo Award Finalists". The Hugo Awards. Retrieved July 4, 2019.
  36. ^ Newitz, Annalee (September 16, 1999). "Burning the Man". Metro Silicon Valley. Retrieved January 25, 2016.
  37. ^ "Announcing Three New Novels From Annalee Newitz". Tor.com. August 7, 2018.
  38. ^ Di Filippo, Paul (January 27, 2023). "'The Terraformers' is a dazzling look at the distant future". Washington Post.
  39. ^ "Review of Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age by Annalee Newitz". Publishers Weekly. September 28, 2020.

Further reading

edit
edit