http://cache.io9.com/assets/base/img/thumbs140x140/io9.com.png http://io9.com/tag/novels http://io9.com/tag/novels Over the past few days, the winners of the Bram Stoker Awards (for horror fiction) and the finalists for the Sidewise Awards (for alternate history) were announced. Want to know what the best terrifying stories and allohistories are? More »
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How has The Adjustment Bureau affected future Philip K. Dick movie adaptations? What's going on with Michel Gondry's Ubik? We chatted with the daughter of the legendary author, Isa Dick Hackett, about the secrets of filming Philip K. Dick. More »
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Taylor Kitsch is giving his best over-the-shoulder John Carter in the first-ever poster from Andrew Stanton's John Carter of Mars movie adaptation (now just titled John Carter). Look closely — you can see some pulpy bare-chested leather chest thong action! More »
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A new John Scalzi novel is always a cause for celebration, but Fuzzy Nation is also a "reboot" of a beloved 1962 Hugo-nominated novel, Little Fuzzy by H. Beam Piper. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5798366&view=rss&microfeed=true It's only taken 120 years, but the full text of Oscar Wilde's novel The Picture of Dorian Gray has finally gotten published. Wilde's editor J.M. Stoddart removed a large amount of "objectionable" material from the book prior to its first appearance in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine in June 1890, including "a number of things which an innocent woman would make an exception to." But after its first magazine publication caused a public outcry for its decadence, Wilde was forced to make deeper cuts, removing a lot of the homoeroticism from the book before it first appeared in book form in 1891. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5796955&view=rss&microfeed=true Want to get into the competitive world of science fiction novel-writing? It takes hard work and persistence... or you could answer this Craigslist ad. Just remember to include a photo of yourself, because that's important for some reason. [Craigslist] More »
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Scoring the director's chair in the live-action movie adaptation of Suzanne Collins' wildly popular Hunger Games series was no easy task. But Gary Ross knew exactly what to show the studio to beat out all the other Hollywood contenders. More »
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Will the next monster to fall victim to the paranormal romance craze be the monster from Mary Shelly's Frankenstein? Perhaps, but we're not panicking as Sony only has plans to bring back the monster, not Twilight-ize him... yet. More »
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Comic book writer and novelist Greg Rucka lists some of the craziest things he's done in the name of research. You can find out a lot of stuff on the Internet, but there's no substitute for real experience. 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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This hard-as-nails espionage comic was one of the best books of the '00s. Now finished, Rucka is continuing the adventures of Tara Chace in prose. And he's just let slip a taste of his latest Q&C novel, The Last Run. More »
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Today is a good day to watch the Klingon translation of A Christmas Carol, or just to eat some Starfleet cookies. And in other Trek news, J.J. Abrams' alternate timeline has spawned its own line of alternate-universe tie-in novels. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5415625&view=rss&microfeed=true It's the mash-up you never knew you wanted but now will be unable to wait for. Over on his website, Elric creator Michael Moorcock has announced that he'll be writing a Doctor Who novel for release late next year. Meanwhile, Eoin Colfer told Wired he'd like to write a Doctor Who too — although whether he meant a book or a TV episode, it's not clear. [Multiverse] More »
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In Fahrenheit 451 Ray Bradbury envisioned a future where society had abandoned literature in favor of watching their screens. According to writer Philip Roth, we're getting closer to that future, and in 25 years, hardly anyone will be reading novels. More »
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Louisa May Alcott's classic novel is next to fall victim to the supernatural novel re-writing trend. But this time it's werewolves! So let me guess: instead of scarlet fever Beth becomes a werewolf and they keep her in the basement. More »
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You've read the novels, you've seen the movies, but are you ready for Twilight: The Documentary? Here's hoping, because there's one on the way... but it's not about the origin of the books or the movies. It's about the setting. More »
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Iain M. Banks is a giant of modern-day science fiction, so it's dispiriting to read his slightly down-at-the-mouth interview in the Guardian. His book advances are getting smaller, but the good news is he'll be writing more books in response. More »
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He may just have released his first horror graphic novel with last week's Dark Entries from DC/Vertigo, but don't expect crime writer Ian Rankin to suddenly jump genres again and start writing science fiction... He's worried about the consonants, apparently. More »
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The second issue of Boom! Studios' Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? is released today, continuing the graphic translation of Philip K. Dick's classic novel. We spoke to editor Ian Brill about how it came about, and how it's done. More »
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Red Mars author Kim Stanley Robinson names his 10 favorite Mars novels as part of a special Mars issue in the IEEE Spectrum. He charts the evolution of our understanding of the red planet, and the literature of colonization. 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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He's Hollywood's biggest source of books to adapt. He's revered as a science-fiction visionary. And now it seems like Phliip K. Dick is increasingly popular as a fictional character, starring in his third novel. 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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Our dystopian present has wreaked havoc with sales of science fiction books, according to anecdotal evidence. But just how bad is it? More »
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Ignore the title; My Fair Clone has nothing to do with a test-tube Eliza Doolittle learning to act like aristocracy, but that doesn't stop it sounding just like our goofy SF romantic dream project. 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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They're ambitious, those Brits — the Guardian newspaper has been publishing a listing of 1000 books you must read, and now it includes every must-read science fiction novel. Let the canon-shredding commence! 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 »
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Depressed about the state of the publishing industry? Not as much as you should be. 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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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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November is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), when amateur and professional writers alike scramble to write a first draft of a novel in a mere 30 days. For science fiction writers, that’s an especially daunting task, which can involve not only telling a story and creating compelling characters, but also craft an entirely new world. We talked to NaNoWriMo founder Chris Baty, who told us how the process works and why science fiction writers should speed through their first drafts. More »
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This Halloween, we give thanks to writer H.P. Lovecraft for all the unspeakable horrors he has introduced into our lives. Lovecraft’s stories, especially his nihilist tales of the Great Old Ones, sleeping gods who will someday wake to bring death and terror to mankind, have inspired death metal ballads, tentacle-filled artwork, and the Alien films. We offer as our sacrifice a list of science fiction novels and stories inspired by Lovecraft, and pray that when dead Cthulhu wakes from his dreams, we’ll be eaten first. More »
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Science fiction writers have fantastical powers. They can peer into the future, invent strange new gadgets and alien races, and make us lose hours between their pages. And some writers can even speak to us from beyond the grave, publishing new works months — and even years — after they’ve died. Here are just some of the works that made their way to the presses after their authors passed the real final frontier. More »
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A 1926 Brazilian science fiction novel about a U.S. presidential election in which a black man and a white woman play major roles has taken on new prominence during the 2008 campaign, thanks to Barack Obama. Monteiro Lobato's O Presidente Negro takes place in the year 2228, in a dystopian future U.S. where eugenics has become commonplace in a bid to keep the races pure. Evelyn Astor, a feminist candidate, runs for president from the Sabina party. And meanwhile, the incumbent president, a white male, represents not the Republican Party but the Homo Party (for the Latin word for "man.") The Larry Craig jokes almost write themselves. [Slate] More »
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If you're looking for some thrilling science fiction reading this summer, you could do worse (maybe) than Lean 9001: The Battle For The Arctic Rose, a novel that's designed to teach you to implement the ISO 9001 and "lean" quality improvement standards. It takes place in the year 7278, and follows cut-throat competitors Mark Alexander with the Arctic Rose Company and Damar Iratus with the Krote Corporation as they "apply divergent approaches to achieving quality and customer satisfaction." A press release from the Society of Manufacturing Engineers promises: "Anyone involved with integrating quality management systems and lean will enjoy this story." [Reliable Plant] More »
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Four out of five Hugo-nominated novels are available for free, in electronic format — but only if you're a Hugo voter. To receive copies of Halting State by Charles Stross, Brasyl by Ian McDonald, Rollback by Robert J. Sawyer and The Last Colony by John Scalzi, you have to send an email to hugo2008@scalzi.com with proof that you're registered for Denvention, the 2008 WorldCon. Too bad only Hugo voters get to read these books electronically, since even non-attendees might want to weigh in about them online. Also too bad that Harper Collins chose not to include Michael Chabon's Yiddish Policemen's Union in the care package, although an excerpt is online here. Sadly, the omission may put Chabon at a bit of a disadvantage with the Hugo voters. [Whatever] More »
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We've heard rumors about Neal "Snow Crash" Stephenson's new novel, but nothing more concrete than that it would be called Anathem and it would be a space opera about math and aliens. That would mark a real departure for the novelist, who has dealt only with human histories and futures in his previous works like The Diamond Age, Snow Crash, and Cryptonomicon. Now Lev Grossman, Time magazine's nerd correspondent, has more details about the plot of Anathem. More »
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Maybe cyberpunk isn't quite dead, but it definitely peaked a while back. There are way fewer books and movies with cyberpunk themes coming out now than there were in the golden age of the 80s and mid-90s. And we've got the statistics to prove it. We counted up the cyberpunk books and movies for every year since 1980, and charted their rise and fall. Click through to see what we found. More »
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