About

Science fiction is everywhere in our lives. Whether it’s the latest blockbuster movie in theaters or streaming, hit novel, technological advancement, or space launch, the world around us could easily come out of the pages of a classic novel. Transfer Orbit helps make sense of science fiction and how it helps us understand the future.

This newsletter is a regular look at the latest news within the science fiction community, featuring analysis and commentary and updates about fiction, writing, and the future of reading.

Andrew Liptak is a writer and historian from Vermont. He is the Public Relations and Guest Services Coordinator for the Vermont Historical Society, and is the author Cosplay: A History (Saga Press, June, 2022), a broad history of how cosplay came to be a mainstream force, and what it says about our relationship with the stories we love. You can order it here.

Liptak has worked as a journalist for more than a decade, appearing in places such as Clarkesworld Magazine, Gizmodo, Grist, io9, Kirkus Reviews, Lifehacker, OneZero, Pando Daily, Polygon, Slate, Tor.com, Uncanny Magazine, VentureBeat, The Verge, and other publications.

His first short story, ‘Fragmented’, appeared in Galaxy’s Edge Magazine in May 2014 (reprinted at The Art of Future War Project in 2015 and more recently on Transfer Orbit). In 2024, he published ‘Embers’ with Horizon 2045’s Far Futures project. You can read it here. In 2014, he published his first anthology (co-edited with Jaym Gates), War Stories: New Military Science Fiction, which you can buy from Apex Publications, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Bookshop.org.

He graduated in 2007 from Norwich University with a bachelor’s degree in History and minor in Geology, and in 2009 with a master’s degree in Military History. He attended the Launch Pad Astronomy Workshop in 2014, and is an official "Mad Scientist" for the US Army's Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC).

He is represented by Seth Fishman of the Gernert Company. He lives with his wife, Megan, and children in central Vermont.

Got a news tip? Think that there's something I should be covering or take a look into? Let me know.