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From Co.Create's excellent article about the controversy over the Watchmen prequels, Alan Moore explains everything to you: More »
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The past is another country — but an alternate history is a whole new world. The best alternate histories can make you see the real history of our world in a whole new way, and make you realize that events that seem like they were inevitable... may not have been. More »
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If you really want to keep up with what's happening in the world of science fiction writing and publishing, you need to read Locus Magazine — it's an essential resource for anyone who cares about the state of the field. So it's great news that Locus has signed up with Weightless Books, a venture of Small Beer Press, to offer DRM-free electronic subscriptions for just $48 a year. Back issues, going back as far as January 2011, are also available for $5.50 each. Check it out! [Weightless Books, via SF Scope] More »
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In an interview with So I'm Fifty, Above World author Jenn Reese talks about her planning process, including figuring out what her "candy-bar" scenes are: More »
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Samuel Youd, who died yesterday at age 89, was better known under the name John Christopher, one of several pseudonyms. And under that name, he was best known for creating the fearsome Tripods, alien invaders who enslave the human race with the mind-controlling "cap." Christopher's Tripod trilogy is a wonderful adventure story, but it's also a direct precursor to our current flood of young-adult post-apocalyptic/dystopian novels. He also wrote the ground-breaking eco-apocalypse novel The Death of Grass. The Guardian has a fantastic tribute to an influential, fascinating author who will be greatly missed. More »
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Small Beer Press' latest volume, Three Messages and a Warning: Contemporary Mexican Short Stories of the Fantastic, contains 34 stories published in Mexico in the past decade — most of them from the past two years. Writing in the Seattle Times, Nisi Shawl praises this volume for presenting a fresher look at magical realism than people in the U.S. have seen lately: More »
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Edgar Rice Burroughs published his first story, "Under the Moons of Mars," a hundred years ago this month. And even forty years ago, nobody would have predicted that Burroughs' creations, like Tarzan and John Carter of Mars, would still be shaping the entertainment landscape. Why does Burroughs continue to cast such a long shadow over pop culture? More »
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Locked away because of her strange waking visions and her nightmares, Faye is seeing a disturbing vision of the world's impending destruction — even as the real world beyond her walls is actually falling apart, thanks to an oil crisis which has caused chaos and mass rioting. More »
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Your commute to work needs more post-apocalyptic heroic songs and interstellar voyaging. Tor.com has you covered, with a nifty free e-book collecting "Some of the Best from Tor.com." It includes stories by Michael Swanwick, Yoon-Ha Lee, Harry Turtledove, Paul Park, Nnedi Okorafor, and myself. You can pre-order the book now, and it'll be available for the Kindle (and other e-readers) on Feb. 14. [Tor.com] More »
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Sometimes it seems like science fiction, and especially fantasy, are genres that lend themselves exclusively to trilogies and long-running series. But some of the greatest writers in speculative fiction have only written standalone novels, not series or trilogies. More »
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Angry Robot Books just announced its young adult imprint, Strange Chemistry, last November — but they're already off to a thrilling start. The first three Strange Chemistry titles have been announced, and they're nothing like the usual rash of paranormal love triangles and Hunger Games-inspired dystopias we've been seeing lately. More »
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Yes, you read that right. Someone is putting out an anthology of tentacle porn (in written form, not comics), and all proceeds will go to benefit Oceana, a charity that works to protect the world's oceans. All of a sudden, hentai seems oddly... noble. The book is called Coming Together, Arm in Arm in Arm. More »
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Haven't checked out Richard Kadrey's ridiculously fun noir urban fantasy Sandman Slim yet? Now's your chance. It's available for 99 cents on both the Kindle and the Nook. More »
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If you love a dash of weirdness and mile-a-minute storytelling, then you've never stopped loving the novels of Brian Aldiss. But anybody who's slept on Aldiss' dizzying writing is going to get a new chance to appreciate the master, who's probably best known for writing the story that became Spielberg and Kubrick's A.I. More »
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A couple of days ago, the esteemed Charlie Jane Anders looked at the dearth of new, sustaining pop culture heroes and villains. That, with the exception of Harry Potter, we haven't seen a new character with the perceived permanence of a James Bond or a Captain Kirk or Spider-Man — and she blamed it on a lack of a pulp media. Ah, but she was looking in the wrong place. More »
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Science fiction and fantasy are genres where almost anything can happen — as long as the author can make it seem plausible, and as long as it's part of a good story. But that doesn't mean there are no rules. If anything, the fact that these genres are so wide open mean that there are tons of rules out there, some unspoken and some written in black and white. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5879434&view=rss&microfeed=true Congratulations to Genevieve Valentine, who won the 2012 William L. Crawford Fantasy Award for her novel Mechanique: A Tale of the Circus Tresaulti. This award celebrates the best debut fantasy novel published in the previous year, and the runners up were Erin Morgenstern for The Night Circus, Téa Obreht for The Tiger's Wife, Stina Leicht for Of Blood and Honey, and Ransom Riggs for Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. More »
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If in 2007, manga was like a foreign movie star who had arrived on American shores to make it big, the last four years have been like watching that star run out of roles, run out of money, sell their house, go into rehab, and end up barely limping along in infomercials. More »
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There's been a lot of talk lately about Amanda Hocking's amazing journey from self-publishing to a multi-million dollar book deal with St. Martin's Press. But Hocking's success story — selling a million e-books on the Kindle, getting a major publisher — remains a rarity, cautions a story over at MediaShift. And Hocking didn't get the major book deal until she'd already sold the movie rights to one of her books, and negotiated overseas deals in Hungary and other countries. Most self-published authors won't get on the publishing industry's radar, unless they do something to break out. More »
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Charles de Lint's latest novel, Eyes Like Leaves, is a rollicking epic quest fantasy in which a motley assortment of heroes and ordinary folk strive to save the Summerlord from the Icelord and keep the world from falling into Everwinter. But the most memorable part of it, almost certainly, is the care with which de Lint portrays the sources of magic — and the identity crises of shapeshifters. More »
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Last fall, longtime Del Rey editor-in-chief Betsy Mitchell announced her retirement. But she's got bigger plans than taking up a new hobby: Mitchell has joined Open Road Integrated Media as their strategic adviser for science fiction and fantasy. More »
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Science may be a source of fascinating, world-changing discoveries, but that doesn't stop people from bitching about it. Two of the most common complaints from the public about scientific work are actually complete misunderstandings of how science is done. The worst part is that these two complaints divert the public's attention away from two reasons they should be criticizing science articles but almost never do. More »
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Yet another sign that the book industry will have to catch up to movies and music, when it comes to electronic content — ChiZine Publications announced a new policy. Buy a trade paperback via their website, and you get an automatic digital download of that same title as an ebook. Convenient! More »
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Because there's never enough great fiction in the world, we're extremely excited that the incredible pop culture website HiLoBrow is launching its own publishing line, HiLoBooks, to bring us fascinating new serialized fiction and reintroduce the world to the scifi novels of the Radium Age. More »
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The last time horror fiction was a thing, during the 1990s, the market flooded with terrible trend-following books, and the inevitable contraction killed or prevented the careers of some talented horror-smiths. Now, Jo Fletcher with Jo Fletcher Books predicts a new horror comeback, among other trends, in an interview with SFX: More »
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In 2011, many up-and-comers in the fantasy and science fiction publishing world finally got the widespread recognition they deserved, and established writers tried their hands at new genres. Our picks for the year's best books come from writers all over the globe, and from publishers both large and small. Here are our twelve standout books from 2011. More »
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Rod Rees' new novel, The Demi-Monde: Winter, combines virtual reality, steampunk and harrowing dystopia. What would you do if you were trapped in a virtual hell, full of the worst war criminals the world has ever known? Find out in our exclusive book excerpt — and also, find out the terrible meaning of UnFunDaMentalism. More »
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Several years ago, I was getting burned out in my high-stress newspaper job, and I came across a fancy hardcover book listing science fiction publishers, agents and editors. I paged through it on my lunchbreak, until I found a part of the introduction which proclaimed: "Many writers now make a decent living just from writing science fiction short stories." More »
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Ryan Boudinot's Blueprints of the Afterlife is probably the strangest post-apocalyptic novel in ages, including a scale model of Manhattan built in the middle of Puget Sound. We talked to Boudinot about his bizarre story a while back, and now we're excited to give you an exclusive look at one chapter from the novel. More »
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James Gunn's Center for the Study of Science Fiction at Kansas University has always been a locus of awesomeness in the consideration of the genre we all love. Among other things, the Center hosts the John W. Campbell Memorial Award every year, celebrating "the best science-fiction novel of the year." More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5868681&view=rss&microfeed=true You know Paolo Bacigalupi's arrived when his next novel is already getting raves and nobody's even seen a galley yet. Over at Westword, Alan Prendergast talks about the excitement about Bacigalupi's forthcoming The Drowned Cities, which takes place in the Ship Breaker world but isn't a direct sequel. Chief among those banging the drum for the next Bacigalupi book: Time's Lev Grossman, who's also hyped for the next William Gibson book. (Sorry about the misunderstanding: It's not a novel, it's a non-fiction collection.) More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5868227&view=rss&microfeed=true This is the coolest thing we've seen all day: a new anthology called Beyond Binary: Genderqueer and Sexually Fluid Speculative Fiction is coming out in May, and editor Brit Mandelo just announced the table of contents. Not only does it include several of our favorite authors, but a few of the story titles are laugh-out-loud clever. Here's the TOC: More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5866362&view=rss&microfeed=true The New York Review of Science Fiction has been a major source of insights into science fiction writing and criticism since 1988, with Hugo nominations every year since 1989. (Among many other fine essays, they published Samuel Delany's essay on racism and science fiction.) Now the Review may be converting to an electronic-only publication, for involuntary reasons. According to an announcement from the editors a couple days ago, the Review's printers, Odyssey Press, were sold, and the printer subsequently "ran out of paper." More »
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In 1963, science fiction writer Bruce McAllister was 16, taking high school English courses where he was told about a mysterious thing called "symbolism" in literature. Trying to get a grip on what his teacher was talking about, the enterprising McAllister wrote to 150 of the most famous writers of the day asking them about symbolism in their work. Surprisingly, nearly half of them answered, including Ayn Rand, Ralph Ellison, Isaac Asimov, John Updike, and Ray Bradbury. More »
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Jonathan Strahan's Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year is always a brilliant collection of mind-blowing short stories. But Strahan's collections also always have the best covers. And Volume Six, which comes out in March, has our favorite cover out of all of them so far, by Sparth. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5865246&view=rss&microfeed=true Another sign that electronic publishing is providing a huge boost to short fiction: Orbit Books announced it's expanding its Orbit Short Fiction program, releasing stories simultaneously in the U.S. and the U.K. Says Orbit Vice President and Publisher Tim Holman: More »
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Fahrenheit 451 might be the most famous book about book-burning ever written, and its author, Ray Bradbury, has long insisted that it only be available as a print book, on paper. Until today. Bradbury has finally given in, and Fahrenheit 451 is available for the first time as an ebook. It is such a pleasure to Kindle. More »
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December opens up whole new universes for science fiction and fantasy fans! How can you prepare for the onslaught of awesomeness? Only by living in the future today, with the indispensible io9 calendar. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5863661&view=rss&microfeed=true Science fiction and fantasy are officially ruling young-adult books — so it's no surprise that lots of science fiction publishers have been expanding into the YA niche, with often terrific results. The latest addition: Angry Robot Books is launching a YA imprint, Strange Chemistry, headed up by Amanda Rutter. They'll launch next September, with five books by the end of 2012, and one book a month thereafter. Can't wait! [Tor.com] More »
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If you love both literary fiction and "genre" fiction, and want to be able to read inventive new takes on both things, then you'll welcome a new literary annual called Unstuck that aims to blur the lines. More »
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