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Why do so many of science fiction's greatest stories have to do with meeting — and possibly falling in love with — strangers and strange beings? Author Pat Cadigan, whose story "Angel" is in the new anthology Alien Contact, muses about the allure of Meeting the Other. More »
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Two anthologies of the year's best science fiction and fantasy released their tables of contents — and a large number of the stories came from online magazines, plus anthologies of original fiction. Bad news for the print magazines? More »
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Cugel the Clever is one of the great archetypal figures in SF literature, the vain trickster in Jack Vance's post-apocalyptic Dying Earth stories. Kage Baker wrote a new Cugel story for a Dying Earth anthology, and it's up at Tor.com. More »
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In this month's books, Greg Bear serves up disaster in deep space, while a beautifully designed book sheds new light on steampunk. Plus medieval utopias, star-crossed loves, and a flaming zeppelin! More »
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For many of us, it's still Independence Day weekend, and we're still grilling hamburgers and celebrating our country's freedoms. To commemorate the occasion, John T. Ottinger looks at a dozen science fiction books and stories that are uniquely American. More »
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This month, spend some time in Victorian steampunk England, hunt down lost artifacts on Mars, or get to know Batman a little better. You could also grab a drink in post-apocalyptic Wales. All that and more, in July books. More »
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A new writing workshop organized by the Magazine Of Fantasy & Science Fiction will provide three stories to the magazine per year, according to F&SF. And editor Gordon Van Gelder tells io9 it may actually boost unpublished authors' chances otherwise. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5305621&view=rss&microfeed=true The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction has established a new writing workshop with former Asimov's Magazine editor Gardner Dozois, and F&SF editor Gordon Van Gelder says the workshop will supply stories to F&SF in future. Although it's great for experienced editors like Dozois and Van Gelder to share their hard-won wisdom with aspiring writers, the implication that a "pay-to-play" workshop is going to be the main entry point for new writers to F&SF is causing some consternation. Prime Books editor Sean Wallace blogs: "Um, there are so many kinds of wrong with this I don't know where to start . . ." and one of his commenters suggests the catch phrase "ethics fail." (It's not an internet controversy unless there's word or phrase ending in "fail.") More »
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Whether you want a fun beach read or a sweeping philosophical epic, June's books have you covered. You can encounter witches in Toronto and killer courtesans, or you can delve into America's dismal future, or Alastair Reynolds' eon-spanning colonization saga. More »
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Here's what passes for good news in the world of print science-fiction magazines: the "big three" magazines only saw circulation declines in the low single digits in 2008, compared with double-digit declines in recent years. More »
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Virtual reality sounds like paradise: we'll upload our consciousnesses, ditch our smelly meat bodies, and be beautiful, immortal rockstars in a scarcity-free wonderland, forever. But technology never quite works out the way you hope it will, and science fiction writers have already pointed out four ways virtual reality could suck. More »
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"Perhaps most famously, Gibson wrote Neuromancer without the aid of a computer, and indeed, without knowing much about computers at all. This ignorance led to a lesson that every scifi writer, fan and everybody else should learn: your knowledge might be crippling your imagination. Gibson was free to imagine virtual social networks and complex visual interfaces primarily because he had no reason to think otherwise." — Avi Abrams, DarkRoastedBlend More »
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It's been 25 years of Gardner Dozios' The Year's Best Science Fiction, and the 25th anniversary edition totals 692 pages of testimony to the state of the industry. Dozois dedicates the first 51 pages alone to a summation of the previous year, a trend he started in the first volume a quarter of a century ago. Congratulations is in order for the editor of this venerable series. Now we judge whether this year's group was worthy of his attention. More »
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The New Space Opera, a recent anthology edited by Gardner Dozois and Jonathan Strahan, was supposed to testify to the resurgent vitality of the space-opera sub-genre. Instead, it showcases a new space-opera canon that's listless and cut off from the mainstream, argues reviewer Alan DeNiro in Rain Taxi. Find out why the space-opera renaissance doesn't make DeNiro want to sing, and why his review sparked a soul-searching discussion among the authors, below the fold. More »
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