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Science fiction is overrun with Martians, from monstrous invaders to shapeshifting superheroes to Santa-kidnapping buffoons. To make sense of over a century's worth of Martians, we present this grid ranking scifi Martians on their goodness and just how alien they are (click to expand). More »
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The history of futurism is littered with goofy anachronisms and humiliating misses. But that doesn't necessarily mean science fiction should take its eye off the chronological horizon, says Little, Big author John Crowley. More »
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The New Yorker's Adam Gopnik has written an excellent retrospective on Norton Juster's The Phantom Tollbooth, in recognition of the iconic book's fiftieth anniversary. More »
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Mary Shelley's Frankenstein features a legendary creature that sprang from a literary legend. But is one as much of a fabrication as another? Astronomers actually traveled to the house that Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein in to see if her account of coming up with the concept was reality or fanciful lie. More »
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I'm standing amidst a throng of people in the entrance hall of Harvard University's historic Sanders theatre. Before me stands a man, wielding a flash light, who is coated from head to toe in gleaming silver body paint; he is wearing nothing, save for a pair of reading glasses and a tiny, aluminum-colored speedo. To my right, a scientist in a lab coat is working away feverishly at the bellows of an accordion. On my left, Nobel laureate Roy Glauber (physics, 2005) squeezes past me with a smile and a nod. Oh, and I'm pretty sure I just saw Amanda Palmer. More »
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Miranda July's new movie, The Future, plays with time obsessively and weirdly. Just the title hints at a battle against the sneakiness of time, creeping up on you. And in the film, time seems treacherous as well as unpredictable. More »
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There once was a noble project meant to recreate a famous hypothetical. Find out how many pages of Shakespeare monkeys actually could come up with in 10^35 pages. More »
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Poetry has a reputation for being an indulgent way to yammer on about a subject everyone's already tired of. Sure there are needless epics, but good poetry is actually designed to emphasize the strangest and most dramatic aspects of a situation as quickly as possible. That's why it can be a perfect venue for science fiction. Nothing needs to be over-explained or grounded in reality. Scifi poetry is about taking an original idea to its extreme, and stripping everything else away. Take a look at ten poems that do science fiction awesomely. More »
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ABC has greenlit a historical cop show starring Edgar Allan Poe, world-famous poet and pioneer of science fiction and horror, as the world's first detective. It will be set during the 1840s in Boston. Here's what the show must include. More »
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What sort of speculative fiction content appeals to literary writers and editors? Clarkesworld's Ryan Britt talked to editors at lit-mags Conjunctions and Opium, and a few literary authors. The key? Taking the speculative elements seriously, without too much earnestness. [Clarkesworld] More »
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Over at Conceptual Fiction, music writer Ted Gioia asks, "Did sci-fi writers from the 1940s and 1950s anticipate the future of serious literature better than the so-called serous writers?" More »
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Print may be dying all over, but is that any excuse to let science-fiction magazines retreat to the internet or non-existence? Of course not! Here's our five step guide on potential ways to save this venerable tradition. More »
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Do you spend hours analyzing the moral philosophy of Watchmen, the multicultural occultism of Promethea, or what Lost Girls says about storytelling and human sexuality? Consider submitting a paper to an upcoming academic conference on the work of Alan Moore. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5379327&view=rss&microfeed=true "I believe that the greatest danger to genre fiction nowadays is not the denial of respect from some notional group of literary tastemakers but the very real likelihood that sf/f may become respectable. Those who thirst for the foamy gray poison of respectability should consider the fate of jazz, once a popular medium, now respectable, ossified and ignored." — James Enge, quoted by Lou Anders, Bowing To The Future More »
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Sci-fi writers shaping US national security policy may sound like the stuff of comics, but it turns out that it's also happening in real life, as well. Be very afraid. More »
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Why is Robert Silverberg's Dying Inside not spoken of in the same breath as Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint, or John Updike's Rabbit Run? More »
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I made it to the Michael Chabon (The Yiddish Policemen's Union) and Matt Fraction (Casanova) dual appearance at Wondercon, which was well worth it for anyone into literary comics - or comic-bookish literature. More »
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Apparently, no matter how much swearing and girl-girl kissing they allow on television, some of you fancy lads insist on continuing to read books. In rejoinder, I offer an anecdote from my youth. More »
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When Jules Verne submitted his novel Paris in the Twentieth Century to longtime publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel in 1863, he might have had good reason to suppose his futuristic vision of an age to come would be accepted. Instead, Hetzel managed a scathing rebuke that still stings 145 years later. You think your boss is hard on you? Read on. 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 Tina Brown era was the heyday of science fiction at the New Yorker, which also published a decent amount of SF in the 80s. But the magazine has only published one SF story over the past decade, when the genre has supposedly been amassing tons of literary prestige. What's up with that? Here's our survey of the past 30 years' worth of science fiction at the New Yorker. More »
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One of Wired magazine's brainiest writers, Clive Thompson, has a great essay in the latest issue about why science fiction novels have become more philosophically rich than literature. He points out that scifi often gets the short shrift in literary circles, partly because it's perceived as just so generic. And yet so-called realistic literature is just as generic. In fact, there is a kind of poverty to literary fiction that refuses to bend the rules of social (or material) reality — one can only describe the world in such books, not suggest ways to change it. More »
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She's not exactly your typical science fiction writer, but Colorado poet Jessy Randall has done what precious few poets have ever done well: beautifully capture the way our emotional lives in the modern world have become infused with the imagery and alienness of science fiction. I just heard Randall give a reading in support of her new collection, A Day in Boyland (Ghost Road Press), and she had the audience eating out of her hand and laughing at poems about looking for boyfriends on other planets and imagining a future where women would have removable, sentient "bionic alabaster breasts." More »
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