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Tomorrow's the Republican presidential primary in South Carolina, and you'll probably be hearing a lot of talk about families and family values. But science fiction and fantasy readers know that families come in all shapes and configurations. More »
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When NPR revealed its list of finalists for its "Top 100 Science-Fiction and Fantasy Books" survey, we were struck by how diverse and wide-ranging that list was. Now the actual list of the 100 greatest books has been revealed... and it's quite a bit more conservative. 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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Want to help make the future of science fiction more diverse — and possibly win an e-book reader full of amazing writing by writers of color? Enter the Carl Brandon Society's drawing to support the Octavia Butler Memorial Scholarship fund. More »
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Science fiction's greatest authors have brilliant ideas, storytelling mojo... and plenty of stubbornness. Many of the field's greatest writers were buried in rejection slips, before they finally broke in. Here are 15 classic novels that publishers didn't want to touch. More »
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Can you name the 10 greatest science fiction novels by women authors published in the past decade? That's a meme that's been making the rounds, in response to a perceived increase in the marginalization of women in SF. More »
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Science fiction is the literature of our times, the fuel of our imaginations and the source of our favorite imaginary worlds. But what do we mean when we talk about "science fiction?" Here are some of the many definitions. More »
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Great science fiction and fantasy novels don't just expose us to other worlds and alternate timelines — they expand our minds and give us compass to steer by. Here are our favorite bits of advice and maxims from SF books. More »
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The Washington Post quizzes a bunch of famous and high-powered scientists about the books they read for fun, and the books that inspired them when they were younger. Their answers show how some science-fiction books have shaped their lives. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5575141&view=rss&microfeed=true Today, Octavia Butler, Roger Zelazny, Richard Matheson, and special effects maestro Douglas Trumbull (2001, Blade Runner) were inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame at Seattle's Science Fiction Museum. More »
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Freaks Of The Heartland artist Greg Ruth puts up a new image on his site every Monday, taking us inside his weird consciousness. Portraits of Dune's Leto Atreides II and David Lynch, plus surreal creatures, are flooding the internet. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5557514&view=rss&microfeed=true "I have trouble believing in a government efficient enough to keep track of us all in the way that the government in Orwell's novel was able to do. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5556972&view=rss&microfeed=true Jazz flautist Nicole Mitchell writes music and spoken word poetry based on the works of Octavia Butler. [Gapers Block] More »
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There's only one thing Hollywood loves than a movie based on a toy: remakes. Dozens of science-fiction classics are slated for do-overs. But instead of remaking films that were fine the first time, here are 20 books Hollywood should film. More »
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Frederic Fontenoy's photo series Metamorphose depicts a nude, distended form traipsing across beaches and forests. The subject may be human, but the camera makes him alien. Is this what Reed Richards would look like if he hadn't invented unstable molecules? More »
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Of all the alternate worlds we're dying to visit, the greatest is that mythical room containing every book that was never written. Here are the dozen unfinished novels by science fiction's greatest authors, that we wish we could read. More »
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Thank goodness the Huntington Library's Curator of Literary Manuscripts, Sue Hodson, recognized Octavia's Butler's brilliance when she first met her. Hodson pursued Butler doggedly, and finally Butler agreed to give her papers to the Huntington after her death. More »
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Octavia Butler's amazing time-travel novel Kindred will be a graphic novel from Beacon Press - and you can help. More »
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It's the third anniversary of Octavia Butler's death, and blogger ZeroAtTheBone is linking to some writing about her, as well as her own essays. My favorite is Butler's essay about a world of pure empathy. More »
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Are we finally going to get a posthuman mass culture? With movies like Surrogates and Avatar hitting theaters later this year, it may be now or never. More »
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In the Afro-futurist fiction of Walter Mosley and Octavia Butler, the heroes are often at the mercy of the system, writes blogger Christopher Bradley. That isn't so much the case for Cyberpunk's outsider heroes, he points out. More »
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The biggest challenge of the 21st century won't be global warming, or colonizing Mars. Rather, most reputable futurists agree, it'll be having sex with the vastly different alien species we'll make contact with. When we finally meet extraterrestrial sentients, it will take some ingenuity to have something resembling sexual congress with them. What are you doing to prepare for this challenge? More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=373889&view=rss&microfeed=true Does biology drive behavior? Yes, to some extent, argued science fiction author Octavia Butler in a 1996 interview. Sometimes a change in the brain, involving just a few cells, can change how you act, she said. Just look at the work of neurologist Oliver Sacks, or a disease that makes a wildebeest spend its last few days spinning in circles. But at the same time, we can work around our programming if we understand it. Both species in her Xenogenesis trilogy, humans and Oankali, have their in-built flaws, Butler added. [Biology In Science Fiction] More »
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Hilary Clinton is currently the only presidential candidate with a space plan, which can't be pleasing to the scientists and scifi writers who warn that the human race must escape from Earth if it's to have any future. It's probably not surprising that 1970s astronomer icon Carl "billions of stars" Sagan was an offworld booster; nor would it boggle your mind to know that SF visionary Octavia Butler's post-apocalypse duet Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents is about why colonizing space is one of the most urgent political tasks of our time. But space travel as a political issue goes back further than that — way further. More »
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What would weather be like if you lived in a planet-sized bag of oxygen? What would reproduction be like if there were a third sex who combined the genetic material of two other sexes by linking them at the neurological level and giving them braingasms? What would scientific progress be like in an anarchist-feminist society? One of the ingredients in many great science fiction novel is world-building, the practice of creating an entire unfamiliar (yet familiar) world whose strange permutations allow us to explore how unfathomable environments can dramatically reshape events that happen all the time in our own lives. Here are five cool world-building novels to suck your attention away from the misery of cooling weather and impending turkey day doom. More »
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