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Some people's futures are determined by popular vote: American Idol contestants, class presidents, and people who want to get gay married in California. But what if every aspect of our lives was determined by our reputation and popularity? Would our futures be better, or would the tyranny of the popular spin us into dystopia? 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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Rudy Rucker was the first author to win the Philip K. Dick Award, right after Dick's death in 1982. Around that time, Rucker was becoming aware of the new "Cyberpunk" movement and meeting the rebellious authors who were reimagining the union of humans and computers. In this exclusive excerpt from Rucker's new autobiography, Nested Scrolls, he talks about how both events influenced his writing, and what it was like to be a science fiction writer in those strange days. More »
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Bruce Sterling is known as a prescient futurist, a brilliant science fiction author, and the author of a seminal history of hacking called The Hacker Crackdown. Now he's published a manifesto about why Wikileaks was inevitable. More »
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You might think there's a limit to how weird Rudy Rucker or Bruce Sterling can get, but when they team up, their combined weirdness limit rises exponentially. Witness their strange, unsettling — and highly quotable — story "Good Night, Moon." More »
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The finalists for the 2009 Sidewise Awards, honoring the best in alternate history, have been announced. And just in case the version of you in this universe hasn't already read the novel and five short stories, here's your primer. More »
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In real life, Charles Babbage was a relatively unknown inventor who pioneered early computers. In modern alternate reality fiction, Babbage is a mad genius and steampunk icon. Here are some authors who resurrected Babbage's career a century later. More »
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We can't wait until our brains are hardwired into cybernests, so we can fully appreciate the hilariousness of SpaceCollective's guide to skepticism about the Singularity. My fave part: This illustration, explaining how "extreme shit going down" leads to The Future. More »
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If you're feeling that science fiction is just a little too organized for your tastes, NWSFS has the recommended SF reading list from this month's Seattle Anarchists Book Fair for you. If you need more, Bruce Sterling happily obliges. More »
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Science-fiction fans and writers, alike, tend to think of cities in too simplistic a fashion. Quotes from The Caryatids author Bruce Sterling and City Of Saints And Madmen author Jeff VanderMeer explain how you should really view urban infrastructure. More »
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Terri Schiavo was "the first celebrity posthuman," but posthumanism is coming for all of us, according to a group of science fiction writers who met to discuss the future of identity and media. More »
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Last week in Wellington, New Zealand, all the brightest future-minded web nerds gathered together at an event called Webstock. And scifi author Bruce Sterling keynoted with a lecture about how Web 2.0 is doomed. More »
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Sometimes the trashiest, pulpiest cover hides something truly spectacular underneath. Certainly that's the case with UK scifi writer Barrington J. Bayley. Admired by writers as diverse as Bruce Sterling and William S. Burroughs, Bayley wrote that he "oscillate[s] between two immovable positions: an overwhelming belief in my own eventual worth, and a crushing feeling of incompetence." Bayley passed away this week due to complications from bowel cancer. We discuss his career and legacy after the jump. More »
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A new Rudy Rucker story (or book) is cause for major celebration just by itself. But a new Rudy Rucker story, plus a whole site full of weird and inappropriate fiction edited by Rucker? Calls for, quite possibly, a naked body paint flashmob or something. Rucker has just posted the sixth issue of his ezine Flurb, which collects stories too weird, transgressive or genre-warping for regular magazines. I think I know what you're going to spend the rest of your afternoon/evening doing. More »
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Classic science fiction novels have many annoying writing tics that make it hard to enjoy them, but the word "grimly" has always seemed the worst. People are always speaking grimly, or staring grimly, or even smiling grimly. Of all the adverbs that attach themselves, like alien facehuggers, to science fiction prose, "grimly" is the worst — and the most unnecessary. And it's still cropping up all the time. More »
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