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 and is the Public Relations and Guest Services Coordinator for the Vermont Historical Society. He is the author of Cosplay: A History (Saga Press, 2022), a comprehensive look at how cosplay evolved into a mainstream cultural force and what it reveals about our relationships with the stories we love.

He holds a bachelor’s degree in History (with a minor in Geology, 2007) and a master’s degree in Military History (2009), both from Norwich University. In 2014, he attended the Launch Pad Astronomy Workshop, and he is an official “Mad Scientist” for the U.S. Army’s Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC).

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

He co-edited his first anthology, War Stories: New Military Science Fiction, with Jaym Gates in 2014. His fiction includes “Fragmented,” first published in Galaxy’s Edge Magazine (2014) and later reprinted by The Art of Future War Project and on Transfer Orbit, as well as “Embers,” published in 2024 through Horizon 2045’s Far Futures project.

Andrew’s work has been featured and cited in outlets such as Slate, Lifehacker, and The Washington Post, and has earned praise from genre figures including Daniel Abraham (The Expanse), who said “Liptak is really building himself a niche as one of the important critics and reviewers in the genre," and Allen M. Steele (Coyote, Arkwright), who called him “perhaps the sharpest and most knowledgeable member of a new generation of critics to enter science fiction over the past couple of decades.”

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

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