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Over at science e-book review Download the Universe, Carl Zimmer says he's found the greatest science e-book yet created — and he just may be right. The book is Leonardo da Vinci Anatomy, and it's an iPad app that explores a collection of Leonardo's anatomy drawings (many of which were hidden from the public until the twentieth century) and explains the magnitude of the artist's contribution to science. Though Leonardo sometimes misinterpreted what he discovered, he nevertheless produced some of the most accurate anatomical studies of human musculature and organs ever seen before in the West. More »
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The love of Star Trek and other classic space operas is built on compromise, and a certain amount of irony. So many tropes in these shows are stylized to the point of unreality, and things happen to punch up the story, rather than for any real reason. Especially the deaths of "redshirts," or random extras. More »
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In Chuck Wendig's new novel Blackbirds, protagonist Miriam Black is a young woman with a superpower. Only, it's a terrible superpower – when she touches someone, she can see the exact date, time and method of their death, in a vivid and morbid vision. And there's nothing she can do about it. More »
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Peter David isn't just a prolific contributor to comics, novels, television and various other media, he's also a huge player in the field of movie novelizations. (As opposed to media tie-in novels, which he also casts a massive shadow in.) One day, future scholars will study the novelizations of Peter David, with elective courses in "The Embedded Ironies in David's Novelization of Ang Lee's Hulk.") And when scholars pore over David's novelizations for signs of Peter David's distinctive voice seamlessly integrating with whatever Hollywood archetypes he's dealing with this time around, they'll find his novelization of Battleship an important cornerstone. More »
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This is the year of the fairy-tale adaptation, from dueling Snow White movies to Grimm and Once Upon a Time. But quite possibly the most memorable take on fairy-tale archetypes isn't on any screen yet — it's Cinder, the cyborg Cinderella story by new author Marissa Meyer. More »
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Railsea, the new young adult novel by China Miéville, is quite literary but playful — with vast molehills of brilliant worldbuilding & lots & lots of ampersands. Utterly unlike any of the many shmoopy vampires & dystopian romances out there, one wonders whether this novel will find an eager audience among teenaged readers. More »
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If you're going to read just one Soviet-era Russian science fiction novel, it should be Arkady and Boris Strugatsky's dark, ambiguous Roadside Picnic. Originally written in the early 1970s, it's back in print in English after 30 years, with a brand-new translation by Olena Bormashenko and a riveting afterword by Boris Strugatsky about how the book was butchered by Soviet censors. It's a seriously intense tale of a man who risks his life and freedom to smuggle artifacts out of mysterious "Zones" where aliens landed. More »
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Madeline Ashby's new book vN is inevitably going to be compared to Philip K. Dick's "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" and its movie adaptation, Blade Runner. There's even a cheeky section where the robot heroine goes to work at a robot-themed restaurant called the Electric Sheep, where a lot of the menu items have names like "Tears in Rain." (It's a cocktail.) More »
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Imagine how world history might have changed if aerial combat had been invented in the early nineteenth century — by troops deployed on the backs of dragons. That's the premise of Naomi Novik's popular Temeraire series, where the Napoleonic Wars are fought in part with dragons and the balance of power is forever changed. More »
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Looking for a view of Maya technology that does not concentrate on absurd interpretations of calendars and December 21, 2012? If so, James O'Kon's The Lost Secrets of Maya Technology belongs on your bookshelf. The Lost Secrets of Maya Technology is the culmination of civil engineer James O'Kon's lifelong passion for studying the Maya and their technological advances, with information from four decades of study and fifty visits to remote Maya sites seamlessly brought together in this book.

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Mary Gentle is one of the most under-appreciated authors in the U.S. — but the British author's latest novel might finally be the one to introduce Americans to her deft touch. More »
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N.K. Jemisin is playing with the gods again — and it's just as good as the first time. Not that you would mistake her new novel, The Killing Moon, for her acclaimed Inheritance Trilogy, which started with The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms. The start of a new duology, The Killing Moon sees Jemisin delving deeper into the complexities of human nature, within a high fantasy framework. Spoilers ahead... More »
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Tired of cookie-cutter young-adult novels? The cure awaits, in the shape of E.C. Myers' astounding Fair Coin — a book which, among other things, achieves the feat of seeming like a dark fairy tale and a clever science fiction epic, rolled into one. It's a fast-moving book full of twists and cool character moments, and definitely ideal for adults who miss the days of engaging, idea-driven science fiction. More »
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Say you've already watched The Cabin in the Woods. Twice, even. And now you want to relive the genre-busting insanity a whole different way. Luckily, The Cabin in the Woods: The Official Visual Companion, out today, is just bursting with art and information. More »
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Nick Harkaway's first book, The Gone Away World, was a dazzling, frustrating, beguiling romp with an ingenious final twist that pulled everything together marvelously. His long-awaited second novel, Angelmaker, is is equally dazzling and frustrating — but more than anything, it leaves you feeling as though Harkaway's penchant for genre mashups has resulted in something really new. More »
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Astrophysicist and advocate Neil DeGrasse Tyson is someone that more people should listen to — and with his new book, you have a chance to win over your friends who haven't yet heard his pro-science message. His latest book, Space Chronicles: Facing the Ultimate Frontier, is an excellent collection of essays gathered from numerous sources over the last couple of decades. More »
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A lot of science fiction about the Earth's warmer future is dystopian, showing us drowned cities and people reduced to Road Warrior desperados. But Tobias Buckell's new novel, Arctic Rising, offers a far more complicated and realistic picture of what the world will look like when the poles melt. It's a breakneck eco-thriller about "Arctic Tiger" nations like Canada clashing with green mega-corporations over what to do about the Earth's climate. At every turn, Buckell will surprise you with plot twists that fly in the face of conventional wisdom about environmental issues, and with cool ideas about how people will adapt to life on the Arctic Rim. More »
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Back in the 1990s, there were a few queer science fiction anthologies that made waves, notably the Bending The Landscape books from Meisha Merlin. And since then, there's been a bit of a void in terms of print anthologies that really succeed in combining cutting-edge science fiction and fantasy with queer themes — at least, outside of erotica anthologies like the ones Cecilia Tan puts out. More »
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For the past few months, everywhere I go in San Francisco, I see young people in cool outfits all reading the same book: Haruki Murakami's long-awaited 1Q84. Not long ago, I was in a café where three out of the dozen patrons all had identical hardcovers, with the same blank stare gazing upwards from their dense pages. More »
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By the middle of this century, nearly two-thirds of the world's population will be living in cities. If we want their lives to be pleasant, and the resources they use to be sustainable, urban development is going to have to change radically. That's the thesis of architect Rachel Armstrong, who works with synthetic biology to create prototypes of "living cities" built using biological materials. She imagines a future where cities aren't built, but instead grown like plants or baked like bread. More »
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As we're about to head into the film version of The Hunger Games' arena, Smart Pop's The Girl Who Was on Fire invites us to return to the original novels, with essays by 16 young adult authors, exploring the politics, romance, science, and identity issues surrounding Katniss Everdeen, her friends, and her foes. More »
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Medieval fantasy stories about wizards and monsters are usually set in the epic countryside. But one of the many welcome tweaks to the genre in Saladin Ahmed's debut novel Throne of the Crescent Moon is that its magical showdowns take place in a medieval city. And not just some backwater city, either — Dhamsawaat is a giant, complicated, politically volatile metropolis that's like a cross between historic Baghdad and an Arabian fairy tale. More »
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A number of science fiction novels were published in the 19th century which hold up today and can genuinely be considered as good literature: Walter Besant's The Inner House, Joseph Nicholson's Thoth, and H.G. Wells' Time Machine. But the good novels are far outnumbered by the bad ones. The borders and matter of the science fiction genre were not consolidated during the 19th century, nor was a standard of professionalism in the genre set, and a number of bad writers produced wretched science fiction during that century. More »
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Why are so many movies so terrible? Why does it so often seem as though Hollywood stars and power players are locked in an unholy struggle to suck every last bit of coolness and genuine fun out of your favorite stories? More »
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Steampunk is usually associated with Europeans — and with a fascination with the glories of imperialism. So when a group of Singaporean writers put together a steampunk book, what will the results look like? And how about when you forbid "angst-ridden misery?" Jess Nevins investigates. More »
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Brimstone Angels by Erin M. Evans is not your typical fantasy novel. There's jealousy, unbidden powers, forbidden lust — and not a magic Macguffin in sight. More »
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Portland-based Paul Guinan and Anina Bennett are a husband-and-wife team of multimedia artists who have produced a variety of work from comics (the science fiction romance Heartbreakers and the superhero Chronos, among others) to the website and book about Boilerplate, a robot. Their new book, Frank Reade: Adventures in the Age of Invention, is their best work yet. More »
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The Sept. 11 attacks and the Iraq war have reverberated through science fiction and fantasy for over a decade, giving us plenty of stories of terrorism, wars of occupation and clashes of cultures. But Matt Ruff's The Mirage, which comes out next week, might just be the ideal prism with which to refract your memories of that brutal decade and see them anew. Plus it's an addictive, fascinating read, which keeps you guessing. More »
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In 1953, a tiny publishing house called Ballantine released The Space Merchants, a novel-length adaptation of "Gravy Planet," a Frederik Pohl short story that had taken the SF world by storm. That story was about the future of the advertising industry, written by a guy who had been an ad man for several years. Dark and snarkily political, The Space Merchants expanded on the original story (it was co-authored by C.M. Kornbluth), becoming a novel that Pohl says nobody wanted to publish. But it influenced at least two generations of SF writers, and offers a satire so sharp that it still draws blood even today. More »
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Howard Andrew Jones' Plague of Shadows is a solid entry in the "what happens to adventurers in their twilight years?" sub-genre of fantasy. The elf Elyana used to wander the world with her doughty companions, slaying evil wizards and malicious dragons. As the years passed, some friends died, others got old, and some treaded less heroic paths. When an old friend becomes afflicted with a magical disease, Elyana has to seek the one item that can save him. It's your standard "fetch the magic MacGuffin" plot, but the twists and turns along the way make this an adventure with unexpected heart and quite a few thrills. More »
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You think The Road was bleak? You found Zone One kind of dark and relentless? Bah. The latest literary apocalypse, Ben Marcus' The Flame Alphabet, is weirder, more disturbing and harder to deal with than any of your other literary calamities. More »
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Charles de Lint's latest novel, Eyes Like Leaves, is a rollicking epic quest fantasy in which a motley assortment of heroes and ordinary folk strive to save the Summerlord from the Icelord and keep the world from falling into Everwinter. But the most memorable part of it, almost certainly, is the care with which de Lint portrays the sources of magic — and the identity crises of shapeshifters. More »
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William Gibson is one of our finest science fiction authors, because he knows that people are the strangest products science has ever produced. And his new essay collection, Distrust That Particular Flavor, gives us insight into how he came to understand that so well, when many other SF authors struggle to see it. More »
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These days, fantasy novels seem to be all about realism. Or at least, semi-realism. Magic is pushed to the fringes, and only happens in rare cases. The focus is on gritty, relatable characters in a vaguely noir-ish world. Whether in epic fantasy or urban fantasy, there's been a bit more restraint lately in terms of throwing around other-worldly elements. More »
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Post-apocalyptic stories are chock full of wish-fulfillment. Rugged individualism holds sway. Every survivor is as special as Harry Potter, just by virtue of being alive. We get to rebuild this whole mess, without all that postmodern clutter. And so on. More »
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From Moroccan gangland to the London party scene, a man named Taggert is on a mission to save his lost love's daughter from a supervillain club promoter. Luckily, Taggert has some tricks up his sleeve, like the ability to control bodies (including his own) on a molecular level. But that may not help him when he's going up against illusionists, mind readers, animal controllers, and other strangely gifted individuals. With Ayize Jama-Everett's novel The Liminal People (Small Beer Press), you'll be sucked into a fast-paced story about superpowered people struggling for control of the underground cultures they inhabit. It's the story that failed TV series Heroes should have been. More »
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Maureen McHugh's latest short story collection, After the Apocalypse (Small Beer Press), is a dark look at what the next century might hold for ordinary people. Known for intense, character-driven work in novels like China Mountain Zhang and Nekropolis, McHugh makes even the most extraordinary circumstances feel as real as blood. These nine stories take place in a world that has been ravaged by prion diseases and economic collapse, even as it enters a new age of artificial intelligence and green biotech. You won't be able to forget the people you meet there. More »
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Time travel opens up all sorts of weird possibilities — especially when you visit your own past. There are paradoxes. There is endless weirdness. The past is a foreign country, so let's invade it and dump our toxic waste there. And so on. More »
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What kind of world are we leaving to our grandchildren? Can we even imagine a world after climate change? Some of the world's greatest authors, including David Mitchell and Kim Stanley Robinson, grapple with climate change and our future in a new story collection. Here's a review by Pauline Masurel from Green Prophet. More »
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The first thing to notice about Steampunk! An Anthology of Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories, out now from Candlewick Press, is that it's edited by Kelly Link and Gavin Grant. If you're unfamiliar with those names, or know them only as authors, take a look at their Small Beer Press, which consistently publishes some of the finest speculative fiction around. Their names on the cover guarantee we are in for genre-bending work and high-quality writing. Sure enough, this anthology plays with the notion of steampunk, stretches it beyond the limits of what that word typically means, and uses it as a springboard for assembling a terrific assortment of great reads. The main title of this book may be the eye-catcher, what with the exclamation point attached and all, but it's the subtitle that clues you in to what you can expect: Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories. More »
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