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There's only one thing we know for sure about the future: It'll be weird, and you can't really prepare for it. Just imagine trying to tell someone in 2000 how to prepare for life in 2011. But luckily, there's one surefire way to brace yourself for another round of future shock: by reading a slew of great satires, about people trapped in weird and incomprehensible worlds. More »
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Author Neil Gaiman is putting some of his cultural capital into creating a new boutique audiobook label through Audible.com — and the best part of it is that he may be exposing fans of literary fiction to a few unappreciated science fiction gems. In particular, he's featuring A Dimension of Miracles by Robert Sheckley, narrated by John Hodgman. Gaiman tells Salon.com: More »
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This month, many of us are trying to pound out a novel. The ultimate dream is to break into the publishing world with a debut that makes people sit up and take notice. And there's some good news on that front — some of science fiction and fantasy's most beloved writers have made a splash with their very first published novels. More »
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Finally, a reason to own an iPad. They've created an app that lets you access the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, that most indispensible resource, via your iOs device. It's basically an interactive edition of Douglas Adams' masterwork. More »
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When NPR revealed its list of finalists for its "Top 100 Science-Fiction and Fantasy Books" survey, we were struck by how diverse and wide-ranging that list was. Now the actual list of the 100 greatest books has been revealed... and it's quite a bit more conservative. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5830117&view=rss&microfeed=true The Guardian's book section has been running a slew of interesting and thought-provoking articles about science fiction books, including excerpts of rare interviews with Isaac Asimov and Douglas Adams, great authors choosing their favorite books, and a terrific China Mieville profile. Well worth checking out. More »
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Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy creator Douglas Adams wrote three Doctor Who stories in the late 1970s, but only two of them made it to the screen. The third, "Shada," was never completed due to a strike. More »
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Doctor Who has taken America by storm — and, amazingly enough, hasn't gotten an American remake. (Unless you count that 1996 TV movie.) What other British shows could find an appreciative audience across the pond? More »
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Recreating Douglas Adams' unique, bizarre humor is like catching cosmic rays in a bottle — messy, breathless, and likely to cost you a few fingers. So let's all celebrate the Dirk Gently pilot's success in some highly improbable comedy. Spoilers... More »
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We've been dying to see our first glimpse of BBC Four's new one-hour show, based on the Douglas Adams' clever Dirk Gently holistic detective novels. Wait no more — the first trailer has arrived! More »
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Yesterday was 42-day, the day when we ponder the meaning of Life, The Universe, and Everything. But Vancouver is still celebrating Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy: the book is Vancouver's "One Book One Vancouver" pick, causing some controversy. More »
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We're in the middle of a flood of literary novels that play with science fiction ideas right now. What's causing it? And how can science fiction benefit from all of this fresh energy? More »
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Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy creator Douglas Adams' other great work of anarchic science fiction, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, comes to the BBC this fall/winter, as a one-hour pilot. But what happens if Dirk gets an ongoing series? More »
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We live in an absurd universe. And once you throw in stuff like time travel, fiction can get even sillier than real life. But how can you write speculative fiction that lives up to our ridiculous world, without being dumb? More »
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Great science fiction and fantasy novels don't just expose us to other worlds and alternate timelines — they expand our minds and give us compass to steer by. Here are our favorite bits of advice and maxims from SF books. More »
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Scientists now believe there's a supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy. But back in the day, we dreamed the galactic center held God's home planet. Or a super-civilization. What else did science-fiction authors think we'd find there? More »
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Given their penchant for pan-galactic reigns of terror, Doctor Who's immortal villains clearly deserve a place in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy — and this artfully constructed infodump does the job quite nicely. [Topless Robot] More »
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China Miéville's detective story The City And The City is well on its way to being the award-winningest novel of the year. But it's not the only great novel about science fiction/fantasy sleuths. Here are 10 other SF detective classics. More »
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A defining thread of modern scientific thought is skepticism, the tendency to question accepted ideas until evidence is found to confirm or reject them. But what do skeptics do in worlds of magic, aliens, and other matters fantastic? More »
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We all complain every time Brian Herbert or Eoin Colfer takes over a beloved book saga. Why can't they just leave it alone? But which book series do you secretly fantasize about taking over and totally rocking out with? More »
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Of all the alternate worlds we're dying to visit, the greatest is that mythical room containing every book that was never written. Here are the dozen unfinished novels by science fiction's greatest authors, that we wish we could read. More »
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While Eoin Colfer tries to extend The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series past its expiration date, the BBC looks to adapt a different chapter of Douglas Adams' work. Coming to a television near you: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency. More »
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The greatest proof of Douglas Adams' genius is that his anarchic comedy seems effortless. But when anyone else tries to do it, they crash and burn. Exhibit A: And Another Thing..., the new Hitchhiker's novel that comes out next week. More »
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Celebrate three decades of The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, by reliving some of the oddest adaptations of Douglas Adams' classic works. We've got an exclusive excerpt from the revised and expanded edition of Neil Gaiman's Adams biography Don't Panic. More »
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Somebody wrote to the Wall Street Journal's book advice column to ask how you go about convincing your 13-year-old nephew to stop reading science fiction. Thank goodness the WSJ's in-house book nerd was smart enough to say: You don't. More »
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If the countless works of science fiction can agree on one thing, it's that the future isn't perfect. And, on the rare occasion when disputes can't be solved with an epic starship battle, it's time to bring in the lawyers. More »
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Long before computer animation and virtual reality, people were creating virtual worlds in a more traditional way: text. And some of the most vibrant and complete virtual worlds existed in a quirky genre of video game called the text adventure. More »
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When killer robots menace all the fleshy ones, your options are few: You can mount a feverish, last-ditch resistance, with everyone wearing camo pants. You can travel back in time naked. Or you could just get them to plug Marvin The Paranoid Android into their main computer. More »
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It's the ultimate loss - the destruction of your entire planet, and science fiction is full of characters who have had to live through this unimaginable tragedy. Warning! At least one truly massive spoiler ahead... More »
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The RMS Titanic sank almost a century ago, but it's still sailing through the imaginations of science-fiction writers and artists. Here are 10 Titanic tales, including Douglas Adams, Arthur C. Clarke, and Doctor Who. More »
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Planet Earth might be home sweet home, but is it really humanity's birthplace? We explore science fiction stories where humans come from everywhere but Earth, be it by colonization, alien experiments, or good old-fashioned panspermia. More »
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Hip-shaking, pill-popping rocker Elvis Presley officially died in 1977, but he keeps popping up, at least in science fiction. Think Elvis lives? We list scifi’s explanations for what really became of the King. More »
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Science fiction writers have fantastical powers. They can peer into the future, invent strange new gadgets and alien races, and make us lose hours between their pages. And some writers can even speak to us from beyond the grave, publishing new works months — and even years — after they’ve died. Here are just some of the works that made their way to the presses after their authors passed the real final frontier. More »
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Everybody needs a good mixtape to get them through the day. Especially when it's full of references to other stuff you love, like the vast wonders of science fiction. That's why we've compiled this futuristic mixtape for the internet age, full of the best science fiction songs of all time. Adjust your bass levels and get ready to jam: The aliens are coming and they've brought instruments. More »
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Seven years after his death, an unfulfilled idea of Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy creator Douglas Adams is about to come to fruition, as the BBC prepares to bring unlikely detective Dirk Gently into the Hitchhikers universe in a new radio series. This strange move is a result of creative frustrations that led Adams to consider changing the unfinished third Dirk Gently novel (following on from Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency and The Long Dark Tea-Time Of The Soul) into a book from the Hitchhikers series. 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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Click to viewWhy do so many amazing novels sprawl into so-so trilogies? Let alone blah tetralogies, or dull ten-book series? Blame "Herbert's Syndrome," in which a great writer gets tempted to keep writing about a popular universe, like Frank Herbert's Dune, long after its expiration date. (The Fantasy Review coined the term "Herbert's Syndrome" back in 1984, so Brian Herbert didn't enter into it.) Here's a handy guide to the symptoms and causes of Herbert's unfortunate ailment. More »
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In Star Wars and Star Trek, the main way to get around the galaxy is to use warp speed or flip on your hyperdrive, which is a bit like hitting the gas pedal as hard as you can so you'll get there a bit quicker. There's more science to it than that, involving subspace fields and hyperspace and all that jazz, but the end result is that you're traveling very quickly. But besides speed, what other faster than light alternatives are there? Check out our list of other ways to get there in scifi. More »
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One of the coolest text adventure games of the 1980s was Infocom's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, based on Douglas Adams' bestselling novel of the same name. Though the game was wildly popular, and a sequel to it was rumored repeatedly, nobody has ever known exactly what happened to that sequel. Until now. Andy Baio, the investigative journo-technologist at Waxy, has received a mysterious network drive from which he recovered all the notes, plans, emails, and information about what Infocom was going to do with the sequel that would have been called Milliways. And he's published it for all to see. More »
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Some of the greatest battles in science fiction haven't involved dogfights or shoot-outs, but time-traveling smackdowns, with two different people trying to change history out from under each other. Like Marty and Biff, trying to wipe out each other's timelines in this clip from Back To The Future 2. As soon as you have more than one time machine, you can have timeline-altering sniper fights, and whoever can erase the other person's time line first wins. Start your paradox engines, and may the slipperiest time-trickster win! More »
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