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The io9 Book Club meets every month to discuss a book, and then the author usually joins us for a chat. In February, we're meeting on the 21st to discuss Erin Morgenstern's The Night Circus. Watch for a post that day announcing the book club, and jump into comments for discussion! There's still time to read the book, too. 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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The "Better Book Titles" blog is one of the internet's great treasures — and if you haven't checked it out lately, you've missed some total gems. The blog is just what it sounds like — people post their versions of books with more appropriate titles. More »
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You probably know that Frank Herbert's Dune teaches that "fear is the mind-killer." But what else can you learn from Dune about the power of using your mind and avoiding negative thoughts? Psychologist Maria Konnikova delves into the real-life neuroscience that Paul Atreides taps into. More »
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Behold a collection of lovely images from the second season of George R.R. Martin's Game of Thrones. Get your first look at Bran Stark's new legs, Hodor, Balon Greyjoy, Brienne and a whole new clan of Baratheons. More »
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In an interview with So I'm Fifty, Above World author Jenn Reese talks about her planning process, including figuring out what her "candy-bar" scenes are: More »
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When you mention The Wizard of Oz, your average moviegoer's mind turns to such disparate topics as Judy Garland, ruby slippers, and apocryphal hanging munchkins. More »
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Samuel Youd, who died yesterday at age 89, was better known under the name John Christopher, one of several pseudonyms. And under that name, he was best known for creating the fearsome Tripods, alien invaders who enslave the human race with the mind-controlling "cap." Christopher's Tripod trilogy is a wonderful adventure story, but it's also a direct precursor to our current flood of young-adult post-apocalyptic/dystopian novels. He also wrote the ground-breaking eco-apocalypse novel The Death of Grass. The Guardian has a fantastic tribute to an influential, fascinating author who will be greatly missed. More »
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Film analyst Rob Ager has turned his focus on the "enduring and enigmatic enigma" of The Shining in an attempt to uncover the cryptic narrative tucked betwixt Stanley Kubrick's strange inconsistencies and the meaning behind the infamous black-and-white shot. More »
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Small Beer Press' latest volume, Three Messages and a Warning: Contemporary Mexican Short Stories of the Fantastic, contains 34 stories published in Mexico in the past decade — most of them from the past two years. Writing in the Seattle Times, Nisi Shawl praises this volume for presenting a fresher look at magical realism than people in the U.S. have seen lately: More »
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Lewis Carroll's first iteration of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was a much shorter work titled Alice's Adventures Under Ground. Although the final product is well known for John Tenniel's memorable illustrations, Carroll himself illustrated his original manuscript. 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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We read fantasy books for all sorts of reasons, including escapism, gritty action, and immersion into detailed, ornate worlds. But one great reason to read fantasy novels is because many of the genre's best works deal with how to be a good, ethical human being. More »
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What would The Hunger Games look like if Disney got its big white mitts on the franchise? How would all of the kiddie blood look if it had been line-animated? More »
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Speaking to DCist, John Hodgman explains that he felt embarrassed to be reading George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire at first, but then he got over it. For good reasons: More »
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Edgar Rice Burroughs published his first story, "Under the Moons of Mars," a hundred years ago this month. And even forty years ago, nobody would have predicted that Burroughs' creations, like Tarzan and John Carter of Mars, would still be shaping the entertainment landscape. Why does Burroughs continue to cast such a long shadow over pop culture? More »
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Locked away because of her strange waking visions and her nightmares, Faye is seeing a disturbing vision of the world's impending destruction — even as the real world beyond her walls is actually falling apart, thanks to an oil crisis which has caused chaos and mass rioting. 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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Alvin Schwartz's collection of haunting tales Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark is an important gateway drug into the world of the supernatural. And as terrifying as the stories about brides locked forever in an attic trunk truly are, it's the artwork by Stephen Gammell that kept you up at night. More »
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Your commute to work needs more post-apocalyptic heroic songs and interstellar voyaging. Tor.com has you covered, with a nifty free e-book collecting "Some of the Best from Tor.com." It includes stories by Michael Swanwick, Yoon-Ha Lee, Harry Turtledove, Paul Park, Nnedi Okorafor, and myself. You can pre-order the book now, and it'll be available for the Kindle (and other e-readers) on Feb. 14. [Tor.com] More »
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John Scalzi is the master of making us offers we can't refuse. And this time, he's letting you take money from his pocket and put it into the hands of Planned Parenthood. Recently, the Susan G. Komen Foundation bowed to pro-life bullying and withdrew support for Planned Parenthood's breast-cancer screenings. So for the next week, Scalzi is donating his share of the sales from his Subterranean Press e-books to Planned Parenthood, earmarking the funds for breast cancer screening. And Subterranean is following suit. So this is a great chance to buy some terrific books for Kindle or Nook, and make a difference. [Whatever] More »
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This year, February has an extra day, and it's packed with more excitement than you can possibly handle. There's a new Anne Rice book. Our favorite new TV show, The River, debuts. John Scalzi and Dan Dos Santos are at Boskone. The fantastic superhero movie Chronicle comes out, plus there are inexplicable sequels to Ghost Rider and Journey to the Center of the Earth. More »
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A new batch of TV pilots have leaked, and it looks like the studio is relentlessly cribbing what's hot. What do we have to look forward to? Another Grimm and The Hunger Games-lite. If there aren't more than two supernatural cop shows on the air at the same time, Atlas will let the Earth tumble into the abyss. More »
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The Dark Lords of the Sith. Most of us grew up fearing Darth Vader and his compatriots — but the Sith Order holds many other secrets to dread. And a new volume of Star Wars lore, Book of Sith: Secrets from the Dark Side, is chock full of monstrous Sith apparitions. More »
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Skin-bound books may sound like weird artifacts that belong in Evil Dead movies or Dungeons and Dragons campaigns. But from the 1600s to 1800s, these suede-like tomes were less necromancy, more commemorative plate. And hell, converting yourself into a human moleskine upon kicking the bucket made for a heartfelt present. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5881006&view=rss&microfeed=true "To be honest, I'm thinking much more about science than about religion when I'm writing. To me, art itself is a religion and the challenge to it is not religion, it's the hardcore materialism of science. So I spend quite a bit of time trying to make sense of how I seem to have a soul, I have this ghostly consciousness, yet I know as a believer in science that this is just coming from carbon, hydrogen and oxygen molecules. I think if you take science seriously there are a lot of interesting questions to ask. I would be happy if more novelists, not just science fiction writers, paid attention to that." — Freedom author Jonathan Franzen, quoted in the Telegraph 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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Sometimes it seems like science fiction, and especially fantasy, are genres that lend themselves exclusively to trilogies and long-running series. But some of the greatest writers in speculative fiction have only written standalone novels, not series or trilogies. More »
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Angry Robot Books just announced its young adult imprint, Strange Chemistry, last November — but they're already off to a thrilling start. The first three Strange Chemistry titles have been announced, and they're nothing like the usual rash of paranormal love triangles and Hunger Games-inspired dystopias we've been seeing lately. More »
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Trust the crew at W00tstock to come out and say what everybody else is thinking — Paul and Storm performed a new song last night at W00tstock Founder's Night in San Francisco, addressed to George R.R. Martin. And even though the lyrics acknowledge that the creator of Westeros is nobody's bitch, they still advise him to "Write faster." My favorite line: the bit about the six-page descriptions of every meal in his books. More »
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The latest trailer for Game of Thrones has a whole heap of nasty King Joffrey tricks. What a horrible little turd, we can't wait! Plus there's plenty of new scenes from a brooding Jon Snow and a truly ticked off Daenerys Targaryen. Welcome back Game of Thrones, we missed your blood, sex and tears! More »
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Yes, you read that right. Someone is putting out an anthology of tentacle porn (in written form, not comics), and all proceeds will go to benefit Oceana, a charity that works to protect the world's oceans. All of a sudden, hentai seems oddly... noble. The book is called Coming Together, Arm in Arm in Arm. More »
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What happens should you find yourself on the other side of a mirror, so that the girl staring at you from its surface becomes, well, you? Do you replace her? Does she replace you? Or do you come together into another, third girl altogether? 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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Once upon a time, not so long ago, everybody agreed what the label "steampunk" referred to. But now the term is being used to refer to all sorts of entertainments, from future history to adventures on other planets. Is it time to rethink what steampunk means? More »
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Haven't checked out Richard Kadrey's ridiculously fun noir urban fantasy Sandman Slim yet? Now's your chance. It's available for 99 cents on both the Kindle and the Nook. More »
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If you love a dash of weirdness and mile-a-minute storytelling, then you've never stopped loving the novels of Brian Aldiss. But anybody who's slept on Aldiss' dizzying writing is going to get a new chance to appreciate the master, who's probably best known for writing the story that became Spielberg and Kubrick's A.I. More »
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A couple of days ago, the esteemed Charlie Jane Anders looked at the dearth of new, sustaining pop culture heroes and villains. That, with the exception of Harry Potter, we haven't seen a new character with the perceived permanence of a James Bond or a Captain Kirk or Spider-Man — and she blamed it on a lack of a pulp media. Ah, but she was looking in the wrong place. More »
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Science fiction and fantasy are genres where almost anything can happen — as long as the author can make it seem plausible, and as long as it's part of a good story. But that doesn't mean there are no rules. If anything, the fact that these genres are so wide open mean that there are tons of rules out there, some unspoken and some written in black and white. More »
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