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Not only is Iain M. Banks very generous with his time, he's also the author that British fans most want to see on the big screen. 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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Kurt Vonnegut was still alive when Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle consigned him to the sixth circle of Hell, in their 1976 novel Dante-inspired novel Inferno, which just had a follow-up, Escape From Hell. More »
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When you think about the archetypal science fiction story, chances are you think of the bold explorer, setting foot on a newfound planet in the name of a secure homeworld. But possibly the most pervasive narrative in science fiction is actually the story of refugees. They flee from planetary destruction, war, or just from overcrowding and ecological crappitude. The refugee story is the flipside of the gung-ho explorer story, but it might actually be the most uniquely science fictional story of all. More »
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The greatest alien visitors in science fiction are totally invulnerable — except for one crucial weakness. And the best almost-unstoppable aliens have a weakness that is more poetic than Sylvia Plath and William Blake put together. Just look at our video compilation of aliens encountering their most poetic Achilles heels, and then check out our complete round-up. More »
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Everybody always gives props to space captains: they're the ones sitting in the chair and commanding a spaceship going head-to-head with their bumpy-headed counterpart on the enemy ship. But one starship doesn't always win a space battle. Sometimes it's the general (or the admiral) sitting in an even bigger chair, who figures out where to send all the dozens, or thousands, of starships into battle like chess pieces. They're the tacticians and the master strategists, and we celebrate them below. More »
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Our promiscuous, body-swapping descendants will hit the skids in the third book in John Varley's Steel Beach trilogy — if he ever gets around to finishing it. Varley's Irontown Blues is one of the most long overdue books in science fiction according to SF Signal. Varley told Locus the book would be a futuristic detective story, and things would be "looking kind of bad for the human race" by the end of it. Other authors who should crank out those delayed works, according to SF Signal. More »
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