Divine Sparks in Matter in Sci Phi Journal, December 2025
“In feeling like there exists a mysterious underpinning to the world, I’m certainly far from alone.”
Nuclear Rockets – An Idea Whose Time has Gone? in Amazing Stories, August 2025
“By shortening travel times (and perhaps enabling heavier radiation shielding like water belts), nuclear rockets could make crewed deep space missions safer by reducing human exposure to cosmic radiation, as envisioned in concepts like the Hermes cycler from The Martian.”
I was honored to be on a panel with legit space veterans at Worldcon Seattle, August 2025. Full link to video is here: “Cheap Access to Space: Living the Dream“. We talked telescopes and habitats and space infrastructure. I mostly listened.
By the Light of Brahman in Aeon, April 2025
“We aim to enquire here whether notions like this, drawn from classical Indian philosophy, could be applied to debates about the nature of consciousness in contemporary analytical philosophy of mind.”
Of Speaking With Forked Tongues in Sci Phi Journal, March 2025
“Orwell’s connections to British India are several.”
Advaita Vedānta And The Evolution Of Spacesuits in Sci Phi Journal, September 2024
“Raga is not alive. When she tells me she wants to learn more about the Advaita Vedānta tradition, it is most certainly because she is pursuing the information on behalf of one of her clients.”
Reality and Artificial Intelligence in Amazing Stories, July 2024
“While it may seem obvious to those in the field why achieving artificial general intelligence is the ultimate computational prize, it may not be so to everyone.”
James and Gregory Benford’s Starship Century in Tangent Online, April 2024
“There are means other than rockets to get ourselves to the stars.”
The Science Fiction And Philosophy Society: An Introduction in Sci Phi Journal, March 2024
“What counts as ‘doing’ philosophy has been debated for millennia.”
Sea and Space Laws in Amazing Stories, March 2024
“Billions of years of evolution have produced a species capable of unshackling life from Earth’s gravity well.”
Exhuming “They’d Rather Be Right” in Tangent Online, March 2024
“It was soon discovered that Bossy’s psychosomatic cellular rejuvenation technique could only heal the body if the mind did not stand in the way. To gain immortality, a person had to be able to give up all their cognitive prejudices, including everything they had thought they knew about how the world worked and why.”
Science Fiction and The Shaping of Belief in Sci Phi Journal, September 2023
“While Gernsback appears to take scientification and science itself as ‘I know it when I see it’, the demarcation problem between science and pseudo-science has continued to vex philosophers for centuries.”
Truth Embedded in a Tale in Sci Phi Journal, June 2023
“The dawn of the scientific era, when observational techniques began to challenge prevailing scholastic methods of syllogism and argumentation, was a period of violent upheaval in Europe. Philosophers of the time wrote stories about idealized, faraway lands, where societal conditions were optimal, and the good life was there for the taking.”
Recent Articles:
Starship Test #3 in Amazing Stories, March 2024
Starship Test 3 Quick Recap in Amazing Stories, March 2024
Starship Test 4 in Amazing Stories, June 2024
My fiction has appeared in print publications like Nimrod International Journal, North American Review, Santa Monica Review, Pleiades, Southern Humanities Review, Tampa Review, among others. A speculative story/recipe was included in the collection of fantastical mixology, Strange Libations: Dark Cocktails from the editors of Apex Magazine. My awards include a Yaddo Fellowship, a Breadloaf Writers Conference “waitership”, and a fellowship from Writing Downtown in Las Vegas.
I have degrees in astrophysics and electrical engineering. My interest in philosophy inspired me to cofound The Science Fiction and Philosophy Society. I’ve worked at start-ups, big consulting firms, and spent years designing and building cellular networks in South Korea, Italy, Belgium, and elsewhere. My technical publications include a paper evaluating code division multiplex access (CDMA) for microcell applications available in the IEEE Xplore digital library.
I also co-produced a short film, Sculpture 1, about an unlikely relationship that develops between two people in a small “figurative arts academy” in New York City. I was born in India, and spent part of my childhood in Zambia. I live in San Francisco.
Check out my Substack
Contact me at manjulamenon1@gmail.com
Manjula Menon 