We asked writers and editors to choose some of their favorite stories of the year in various categories. Here is the best in science and tech.

Solarpunk, a new genre of science fiction, demands radical optimism of its writers and readers. It takes the apocalypse as given, but doesn’t assume the worst of people living through it.

They tried every deterrent, including forced relocation, but Herschel the sea lion and his posse returned year after year to enjoy the free steelhead salmon buffet in Puget Sound.

Kimi Eisele contemplates coherence, the near extinction of the vaquita, and the expensive bycatch of being human.

Angora rabbit fur is fluffy, and silky, and was especially popular with two influential 20th-century groups: Hollywood starlets and Nazi officers.  

Many of California’s native ecosystems evolved to burn. Modern fire suppression creates fuels that lead to catastrophic fires. So why do people insist on rebuilding in the firebelt?

While science labors to comprehend the variety and volume of insects on earth, both are declining with disturbing speed, and the ecological consequences are troubling.

“On Vancouver Island, karst researchers hustle to save one of Earth’s most underappreciated—and fragile—ecosystems: an ecosystem hidden in plain sight.”

Amber Olsen needs to raise one million additional dollars to fund life-saving research for her daughter, Willow.

On pregnancy, demons, and Stranger Things.

Oh, your first wife died in a freak accident too?

Is it the black mold causing your headaches, or is it all in your head? Don’t turn to science. It has no answers.

It’s a field as small as the people it operates on, and for many parents, it’s the only hope their children have.

Physiognomy is a discarded 19th-century pseudoscience. Why can’t we stop practicing it?

Oh, did you think we didn’t realize that we’re fat? We’re all set, thanks, because the world never lets us forget it.

New books about the opioid crisis — “Dopesick,” “Fight for Space” and “American Fix” — have different ideas about who’s to blame and what to do next. Our critic says regulating supply can have deadly consequences, and we need to address users’ pain.

Cisco, Utah can’t be a ghost town, because Eileen Muza lives there, but people sure treat it that way.

Elon Musk can’t wait to send humans to the Moon and Mars. But before we land ourselves on other worlds, we need to remember how we’ve treated our own.

In the mountains of southwestern New Mexico, a seasoned fire lookout watches as his beloved forest and his personal life burn, and he tries to imagine what will arise from their ashes.

Sometimes it takes a touch of darkness to create something alluring.

Looks like you’ve got late-stage Patriarchal Medicine Syndrome. I’m so sorry.

When one female scientist’s thirty years of research contradicted the established theory of dinosaur extinction, people started calling her a bitch that should be burned at the stake.

Growth advocates in St. George, Utah want a billion-dollar pipeline to support a rising population. Conservationists don’t.

If humans can’t decide, “the future of life will be decided at random.”

A professor returns to the California military base where she grew up to make sense of her family’s role developing weapons for the US government.

“Plastics.”

Scientists knew how serious climate change is. Politicians knew. Energy companies knew. The U.S. was ready to act, and then we… didn’t.

A clone is not a clone, it’s a twin born at a different time — one that is only ever about 85 percent the same as the original.

Maybe pooping into porcelain bowls of potable water wasn’t the best idea we ever had.

Kathleen Drew-Baker died never having set foot in Japan, and never knowing what an impact her research would make. Plus, how to build a lazy bed, how to cook Irish blancmange, and other surprising seaweed stories.