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It's time again for the Concept Art Writing Prompt, where we ask you to write a piece of flash fiction in response to an unusual piece of artwork. This week, we're headed into the desert, where, of all things, a submarine lies rotting. You're the author, so tell us: How did it get there? More »
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Fire up your keyboards, kids; it's time for another Concept Art Writing Prompt. This week's writing prompt features a familiar character: the one, the only Godzilla. Will your flash fiction piece star the famed Japanese monster? Or will you give this parasol-wielding lizard man an entirely different identity? Post your story in comments More »
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For the past two weeks, you've delighted us with your flash fiction pieces about dead (and undead) giants and disembodied brains that surf the web. This week, your inspiration is a bit of otherworldly car trouble. As always, post your story in the comments. More »
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Welcome to another installment of the Concept Art Writing Prompt. Each week, we post a piece of unusual artwork, hoping to fire your imagination and get your fingers typing. If today's well-connected brain in a jar inspires you, write a piece of flash fiction and share it in the comments. More »
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Welcome to the Concept Art Writing Prompt, a new, much-demanded feature here at io9. Each Saturday, we'll post a piece of artwork, and ask you to write a piece of fiction based on that artwork in the comments. More »
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There are people in the world with life-stories that defy human imagination and expand our idea of what the human experience is like. And there are some people whose stories cross out of reality and into what reads a lot like a science fiction or fantasy epic. Take a look at the most fantastical tales that people have sold as memoirs. More »
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When an interviewer asked Hugo- and Macarthur-winning novelist Octavia Butler what she thought of her books being classed as science fiction, she said, "Really, it doesn't matter. A good story is a good story." In honor of Women's History Month, here is (some of) the story of Butler's life. More »
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There are a lot of cinematic crimes committed in the name of ending movies on a feel-good note. The twists range from technologically advanced spacecraft having one major weakness, to bad guys being swayed to the side of good after a brief pep-talk from a hero. These cheap ploys frustrate audiences, but they are in service of a sound principle: Almost no fictional story should have an unhappy ending. Especially in fantasy and scifi. More »
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What's the secret to coming in for a good landing on a short story — or a novel? Writer Cat Rambo shares a few secrets to coming up with an ending that satisfies your readers. More »
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Here's a uniquely brilliant way to celebrate the awesomeness that is Blade Runner. These moments may be lost like tears in rain, but Mo's commemorative tattoo is forever. Tattoo by Marc Cano. [via Tristan Crane] More »
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New Scientist asked ten scientists and fiction writers, including William Gibson, Kim Stanley Robinson and Margaret Atwood, to name their favorite "lost scifi classics." And to celebrate, New Scientist's having a fiction contest, judged by Neil Gaiman. 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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One of the most venerable science fiction podcasts is raising its game. For a six-month trial period, Escape Pod will be paying five cents a word for previously unpublished stories, and three cents (with a minimum of $100) for reprints. More »
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In this week's issue of The New Yorker, Sam Lipsyte's "The Dungeon Master" follows a group of teenagers who roleplay with a creepy, autocratic DM. The hilarious but jarring story illustrates how totally arbitrary dungeon-mastering can ruin a game. More »
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Mad scientists have haunted science fiction since Mary Shelley created Victor Frankenstein in the 1810s. But what kinds of research have fictional mad scientists done since? I was determined to find out. This chart shows what I discovered. More »
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What if there was a staircase that seemed to descend forever? It would become a tourist destination, and a place to commit suicide. But it would also be a place to lose yourself, as Peter M. Ball's new story proves. More »
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A lot of scifi transports us to a future world of high-tech plenitude. But in Carrie Vaughn's short story "Amaryllis," we get a more realistic future where human life is restricted to preserve the environment. More »
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You can't celebrate the awesomeness of concept art without paying special tribute to Star Wars. Ralph McQuarrie's paintings for the original trilogy inspired every concept artist today, and the prequels and video games' art was eye-popping. Here are our favorites. More »
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Just as Watchmen criticized the morality of superhero comics, manga like Bokurano and Fullmetal Alchemist criticize the "smiles and happy endings" of shonen manga. More »
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Do you like short works of fiction? Do you like things that are effin' strange? This may be the website for you. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5476680&view=rss&microfeed=true "I'd stalked William Gibson at one point at a book signing and had asked him what his secret to success was. You know I was a very hungry, very needy sort of writer and was just looking for any kind of a clue about how the whole thing worked. I sort of hovered over his shoulder while he was signing other people's books. I hit him with all of these questions and one of the things that he said was that he'd written short stories until somebody would take him seriously and that was when he managed to actually sell a novel. So I sort of took that to heart and went home and sat down and was like: 'OK, so I need to write a short story. How the fuck do I do this?' More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5432665&view=rss&microfeed=true Writing in BSC review, Charles A. Tan explains why it's great to have an umbrella term like "speculative fiction": More »
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These days, SF thrillers in which natural disasters end human life as we know it are mainstream fare. But long before M. Night Shyamalan and J.G. Ballard flirted with disaster, the authors of SF's Pre-Golden Age (1904-33) speculated wildly, and sometimes presciently, about the possible causes of dire biospheric transformations. More »
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They sound like crazy zombies, but the new webzine Brain Harvest is trying to bring web-based flash fiction back from the dead. And you can help, while advancing your career (or your upper lip). More »
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Paving the way for Vulcans, Slan, Espers, Professor X and Babylon 5's Lyta Alexander, SF writers of the Pre-Golden Age (1904-33) dared to imagine how normal people might react if telepaths were discovered among us. More »
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Long before Alan Moore asked "Who will watch the Watchmen?" science fiction writers of the Pre-Golden Age (1904-33) worried whether supermen would rescue us ordinary mortals - or try to dominate us. More »
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Time Magazine's Lev Grossman has done what a swarm of New York PR people could not — he's made me sort of optimistic about the future of publishing. Sort of. More »
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During science fiction's Pre-Golden Age (1904-33), writers dreamed up mechanical and quasi-organic humanoids so compelling that they continue to haunt today's scifi, forcing us to ask what it means to be human. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5126907&view=rss&microfeed=true Check out the hilarious discussion of the "paranormal penis" in urban fantasy and science fiction, over at Alpha Heroes. Did you know that alien cat-men had "orgasmic cock syrup?" Now you do. Less pleasant-sounding is the whole "barb" add-on. [via Literary Escapism] More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5125667&view=rss&microfeed=true Bizarre, pornographic silent movies turn up, allegedly made in 1911 — and then they start to feature uncannily real-looking Martians and other creatures straight out of Edgar Rice Burroughs' stories. The bitchy, demented story "The Film-makers Of Mars" could only be the work of Geoff Ryman (Air). It was published at Tor.com a while back, but now you can hear Ryman himself read it on the Starship Sofa podcast, and it gains a whole extra layer of snark in his own voice. You really need to hear Ryman discuss shaved pubes on Mars. Why? Because it's Saturday, and that's what one does on Saturdays. [Starship Sofa, via Books On Mars] More »
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Click to viewSome of the most gorgeous, evocative, and strange science fiction art you've ever seen comes from the covers of novels written between 1904-33, in SF's "pre-Golden Age." More »
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Richard K. Morgan (author of Altered Carbon) did an interview with the StarShipSofa podcast, and it's pretty thought-provoking stuff. He explains why trying to write short stories before you write novels may be a waste of time, why noir SF has made a comeback, and why he doesn't mind being called a pornographer. More »
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When it comes to future depictions of careers, things are always rather unfairly weighed towards the law enforcement angle - We've seen Robocop, Judge Dredd, Minority Report and even Future Cop. But who talks about the medical profession of the future? That was the thinking behind medical blog Medgadget's Sci-Fi Writing Contest, the winners of which were announced this weekend. More »
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With Wall-E director Andrew Stanton working on a film based on Edgar Rice Burroughs's 1917 novel A Princess of Mars, you need a crash course in books from this seminal era in science fiction. More »
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Earlier this year, I formulated an eccentric but strict periodization scheme, in which the Nineteen-Oughts (not to be confused with the 1900s), for example, run from 1904 through 1913; the Teens (not to be confused with the '10s) from 1914-23; and the Twenties (not to be confused with the '20s) from 1924-33. And so forth. More »
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One of the coolest books I read for the Tiptree Awards last spring was Dangerous Space by Kelley Eskridge. This collection of short stories deals with pain and sensuality, performance and art. And the best piece in the book is the main novella, about a rock band who use a new technology that enables the audience to feel the lead singer's twisted emotions. More »
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With America's economic future looking bleak, now's the time to read up on what to expect after the country fails altogether. Luckily, there are a whole host of stories about the fall of America, and the ravaging of our nation is a crime with many potential culprits. Here's the definitive list of suspects who might take us all down. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5058066&view=rss&microfeed=true A bunch of innocent teens are raving in the forest when . . . they're trampled by a giant woolly mammoth, re-animated after thousands of years in ice by an alien implant that tells it to KILL KILL. Summer Glau, whose powers of acting have been used more wisely in Firefly and upcoming Sarah Connor Chronicles, is the teen whose geek dad wants to save the mammoth because (you guessed it) IT COULD BE THE SCIENTIFIC PHENOMENON OF THE MILLENNIUM. More »
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The Tom Swift adventure novels have been optioned by former Nickelodeon executive Albie Hecht for a new Web, TV and film franchise. Tom Swift has been zooming around the universe and building retro-gadgets in nearly 100 books for roughly a century. What's taken Hollywood so long to pay attention? More »
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