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Chan Koonchung's dystopian novel The Fat Years has caused an uproar in China and been translated into many languages, including a U.S. edition. In The Fat Years, everybody in China forgets everything that happened during a six-month period, and meanwhile the country becomes more propsperous, based on denial and selective amnesia. More »
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Check out the first trailer for The FP, a new dark dystopian movie in which gangs fight for supremacy... by playing Dance Dance Revolution. My favorite part? The bit where the gangsta tells the main character, JTro, "Dance with your mind!" More »
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Rod Rees' new novel, The Demi-Monde: Winter, combines virtual reality, steampunk and harrowing dystopia. What would you do if you were trapped in a virtual hell, full of the worst war criminals the world has ever known? Find out in our exclusive book excerpt — and also, find out the terrible meaning of UnFunDaMentalism. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5871426&view=rss&microfeed=true Remember how the internet was going to create a whole new class of creators, who were going to be supercharging our economy by noodling on their laptops? Those people are hurting, thanks to a one-two punch of economic meltdown and the phasing out of old jobs like "video-store clerk" and "newspaper writer." Turns out the Information Age isn't so hot for middle-class culture industry types after all. Former io9 reporter Scott Timberg has a great rundown of the lost potential of the "Creative Class" over at Salon.com. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5847802&view=rss&microfeed=true It's Banned Books Week, and the American Library Association has a list of the most frequently "banned or challenged" books of each year, from 2001 to 2010. And the list is pretty interesting reading — the Harry Potter books were on top of the list in 2001 and 2002, then dropped to number two in 2003, only to vanish off the list in 2004. (Obviously all that sorcery paid off eventually.) More »
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The market is being flooded with dystopian and post-apocalyptic novels aimed at tweens and teens, thanks to the success of Hunger Games and similar books. But Ashes by Ilsa J. Bick seems to stand out from the pack, by virtue of its weird premise and its author's background: Bick is a former Air Force Major and child psychologist, who's done a lot of research into Electromagnetic Pulses (EMPs). More »
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Want to see why we're excited about Andrew "Gattaca" Niccol's In Time? Check out this international trailer, which shows just how harsh a critique this futuristic thriller is of the gap between rich and poor. More »
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There's something so thrilling and electrifying about dystopian cityscapes — and this concept art of cyberpunk Paris totally hits our sweet spot. More »
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If you loved the post-apocalyptic prison saga of Incarceron, then you'll be excited to know Catherine Fisher has a new series, publishing monthly. We've got an exclusive excerpt for you: the first six chapters of Fisher's Relic Master Book One. More »
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Concept artist Diego Gonzalez created tons of art based on Paolo Bacigalupi's dystopian young adult novel Ship Breaker, and now he's edited it together into a harrowing, intense trailer. It will make the novel's environmental collapse feel all too real. More »
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Just who are these weird people that you see when you put on the mysterious sunglasses in They Live? What do they want? More importantly, what do they mean? Novelist Jonathan Lethem investigates, in three excerpts from his new book analyzing They Live. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5766538&view=rss&microfeed=true We're just guessing that the bioengineered paradise where a teenage girl and her clone fight over the same guy will turn out to be less than perfect once the truth is revealed, in the new young adult novel Beta by Rachel Cohn. Beta, coming Fall 2012 from Disney-Hyperion, will be the first of four books in a new series from Cohn, who's moving into YA fiction after having written several successful children's books, including the Cyd Charisse books. Here's how the press release describes the new series that starts with Beta: More »
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Remember back in the year 2000 when you'd feed your brat kids their breakfast pellets, head to work under the city's weather controlled dome, your computer overlords only knew you by your nine digit identification number, and you'd end your day fantasizing about a life before computers? More »
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SFSignal asks a bunch of writers and publishing professionals what publishing will look like 10 years from now — and the answers range from the hair-raisingly apocalyptic to the mildly jarring. More »
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This is the greatest scene in cinematic history. A dystopian overlord is getting his face whacked with a flogger by his personal dominatrix, when a hapless underling interrupts him. So the dominatrix teaches him a lesson... with fists and nipples. More »
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Peter Crowther's PS Publishing has put out some of the UK's most cutting-edge books of late, and now he's publishing his own trilogy with Angry Robot Books. In Darkness Falling, a blinding light covers the Earth... then the nightmare begins. More »
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Now that we know the Rapture is coming on May 21, it's time to prepare. So what will life be like after the Rapture? Judging from this awesome post-Rapture movie, it'll be just like other dystopian futures... only campier. More »
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As you may have noticed, we're obsessed with the Kowloon Walled City. Prior to the labyrinthine city's demolition, a Japanese research team drew up this huge cross-section map. It's in Japanese, but it's nonetheless astounding. [Deconcrete via William Gibson] More »
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Think the dystopian young-adult novel craze has died down? Guess again. A post-apocalyptic dystopian trilogy just scored over half a million dollars from a major publisher, plus a movie deal. We talked to author Julianna Baggott about her PURE trilogy. More »
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It's election day, and all indications are that the GOP will sweep Congress. What's the worst that can happen under the Republicans? Science fiction has the answer, with a wealth of stories about right-wing policies taken to horrendous extremes. More »
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Gary Shteyngart's Super Sad True Love Story is one of the most talked-about novels of the year — but it's also a genuinely impressive piece of dystopian satire. Anyone who wants to see clever near-future worldbuilding should check it out. More »
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Chan Koon-chung's novel in which everybody in China forgets a month, The Fat Years: China 2013, will come out in the US and UK next year, Chan's agent tells io9. The truth will be revealed! More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5605053&view=rss&microfeed=true For anyone who's curious to learn more about The Gilded Age: China 2013, the political novel we blogged about the other day, there's a fantastic new essay about it in Foreign Policy. Xujun Eberlein explains more of what makes this novel so subversive, but also provides a history of political science fiction in China, going back to 1904's The Moon Colony, in which an anti-Qing Dynasty scholar flees to the Moon, and 1932's Cat Country, a novel about cats living on Mars by legendary satirist Lao She. Really fascinating stuff. [Foreign Policy] More »
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It's 2013, and China's the only country to have survived an economic meltdown. The Chinese own Starbucks, which now serves longan dragon well lattes. So why can't anybody remember an entire month? That's the premise of a new dystopian novel. More »
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There's an absolutely fantastic profile of Patrick Ness, author of The Knife Of Never Letting Go, over at Publishers Weekly. Find out how he sold Knife based on just a 40-page excerpt, and how he's finishing another author's book. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5590946&view=rss&microfeed=true It's probably too late to stop our world from turning into a dystopia. But that doesn't mean you can't nudge society towards one type of dystopia or another. To help you decide which kind you'd prefer, Flavorwire has a hilarious quiz. Options include the dehumanizing futures of Vonnegut or Rand, a breed-then-die future like Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, or a Canticle For Leibowitz-style wasteland. Best figure out your ideal future dystopia — before someone else chooses for you! [Flavorwire] More »
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The Arab world's most prolific and best-selling science fiction author, Ahmed Khaled Taufiq, will finally appear in English, thanks to Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Publishing. In autumn 2011, we'll get an English version of Taufiq's novel Utopia, which isn't really utopian. More »
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The future is a beautiful place - and you can help make it that way, while picking up a paycheck at the same time. Here are 20 jobs that will help the human race avoid dystopia! More »
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The battle between Nigeria's haves and have-nots comes to a head amidst the post-apocalyptic, shattered landscape of Lagos some 50 years from now, in the new movie Kajola. Check out two trailers, full of explosions and crazy fight scenes. More »
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Totalitarianism towered over the 20th century — a leader-focused, oppressive form of rule in which the individual was crushed. Now it seems to have receded as an ideal. But will it be back? We asked the expert, Zbigniew Brzezinski. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5569906&view=rss&microfeed=true Cube Zero, the prequel to Vincenzo Natali's Cube, is surprisingly great. And the best bit is this scene where one of the inmates reaches the "Exit." And faces the ultimate question: Do you believe in God? More »
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If you only read one manifesto this week, you owe it to yourself to read Maureen Johnson's amazing rantifesto about people who try to turn themselves into Brands on the Internet. It's the funniest, most cheer-worthy thing I've read lately. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5559846&view=rss&microfeed=true "I have trouble believing in a government efficient enough to keep track of us all in the way that the government in Orwell's novel was able to do. More »
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Boneshaker author Cherie Priest writes a heartbreaking, unsettling essay about the Gulf of Mexico disaster, and the responsibility we all share. More »
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Science fiction writers and literary agents have been blogging the past few days about how to make your setting come alive. And young-adult author Beth Revis explains why this is doubly important in a novel about a future dystopia. More »
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For 12 years, Elizabeth director Shekhar Kapur has been trying to make Paani, his movie set during future water wars. Now that he's finally making it, he's tweeting photos that prove the water wars are already here. More »
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A dead turtle lays on the beach, its shell marked with orange paint for easy identification. This year's number of endangered sea turtle corpses found washed up from the Gulf of Mexico is double the usual amount. [Associated Press] More »
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Cities are havens for weirdness. From communities built around garbage to dogs that ride the subway, urban environments have fostered all manner of weird patterns. Here are the 10 freakiest urban ecosystems on the planet. More »
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A dystopian megacity, in which buildings merge together to become a single solid block, is the stuff of science fiction — but it already happened, in Hong Kong. The Kowloon Walled City was packed so tightly, it became an arcology. More »
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