READ Andrew Dana Hudson's companion piece to this essay, "The Weather Out There," a work of speculative fiction about communication between humans and across the stars — and what happens when that ...

I worked in the garden this morning. Put my hands in the dirt, wanting to harvest. But I’m holding off. Ticking down the days or hours until the transmission from Alsafi arrives. When it comes, I’ll ...

For 3.8 billion years, life has lived in a bath of solar radiance. The Sun’s illumination outlines which objects are appealing, bland, or repellant. Its powers of desiccation, blistering, bleaching, ...