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Ada Palmer

Author, Historian, Musician

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  • Home
  • About
    • About Ada
    • Press Bios
    • Press Photos
  • Areas of Expertise
    • Historian
    • SF/F Fiction Author
    • Composer
    • Manga & Anime Consultant
  • Publications
    • Fiction
    • History
    • Music
    • Manga Studies
  • Podcasts & Blog
    • Podcasts
    • Blogging and Short Nonfiction
    • Ex Urbe (Blog)
  • Events
    • Upcoming
    • Event Archive
  • On the Web
    • Favorites
    • Reviews and Coverage
    • Personal Pages
    • Site Map
  • Contact
  • FOLLOW

Support on Patreon

Site Map

  • Home
  • About
    • About Ada
    • Press Bios
    • Press Photos
  • Areas of Expertise
    • Historian
      • Overview
      • Courses
      • Teaching
      • Publications
    • SF/F Fiction Author
    • Composer
    • Manga & Anime Consultant
  • Publications
    • Fiction
    • History
    • Music
    • Manga Studies
  • Podcasts & Blog
    • Podcasts
    • Blogging and Short Nonfiction
    • Ex Urbe (Blog)
  • Events
    • Upcoming
    • Event Archive
  • On the Web
    • Favorites
      • Essays, Op-Eds, Interviews
    • Reviews and Coverage
    • Personal Pages
    • Site Map
  • Contact

About Ada Palmer

 

All my projects stem from my overall interest in the relationship between ideas and historical change.  Our fundamental convictions about what is true evolve over time, so different human peoples in different times and places have, from their own perspectives, lived in radically different worlds with radically different rules.

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External Links

  • My Blog: Ex Urbe
  • My Podcast: Ex Urbe Ad Astra
  • My History Department Faculty Page
  • My Music: Bandcamp Store
  • My Posts on Tor.com
  • Tezuka in English (manga criticism)
  • My Amazon Author Page
  • Visit UnusualFrequency for Terra Ignota merchandise

Favorite Ex Urbe Blog Posts

  • On Progress and Historical Change
  • Machiavelli Series: S.P.Q.F.
  • The Shape of Rome
  • Sketches of a History of Skepticism
  • “The Borgias” vs. “Borgia: Faith and Fear” (accuracy in historical fiction)
  • Gelato Atlas
  • How to Spot Good Gelato

Recent Tor.com Posts

  • Tools for Thinking About Censorship
  • The “Plotter vs. Pantser” Writing Divide Has Been Exaggerated
  • Writing the Science Fiction Future of Global Politics
  • Manga and Anime in Which Nothing Bad Happens
  • Japan’s Folklore Chronicler Shigeru Mizuki (1922-2015)

Recent Strange Horizons Posts

I am a regular non-fiction columnist for Strange Horizons, a wonderful magazine that it’s been an absolute pleasure to work with. I’ll have an essay coming out a couple of times a year, and I’m very excited to be working on this.

  • Why All Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Are Historians
  • Feminist Futurism Versus Project 2025: An Empowering Speculative Salon
  • Science Fiction is an Intellectual Technology
  • The Ghost Did What?! Translation Exposing Providentialist Thinking
  • A Mitfreude of Anime and Manga’s Relationship with Anglophone Science Fiction (Or, This Essay WILL NOT Try to Get You into Anime and Manga!)
  • Writing/Realizing Disability + Power

Other Sites:

  • Ex Urbe Blog
  • My Music: Sassafrass
  • Buy My Music: Bandcamp

© 2026 Ada Palmer.  Site design by Clockpunk Studios

And Loki in His Prison is the first of Ada Palmer’s new Viking Mythology–focused historical fantasy duology Hanged God’s Game, coming June 1st, 2027.