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Science fiction and fantasy books are bigger than ever. A Dance With Dragons and Stephen King's time-travel saga rule the bestseller lists. Literary authors all flock to write about zombies, apocalypses and time travel. And by all indications, 2012 is going to be an even greater year for genre books. More »
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What do April's books have in store for you? Naomi Novik's superhero high school, Frederik Pohl's volcanic terrorism plot, and two disturbing looks at a near-future post-apocalyptic world. Plus superpowered parents and the African Harry Potter! More »
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Today's the day when we celebrate the life of visionary leader Martin Luther King, Jr. But the civil-rights legend is also an important figure in science fiction... as an influence, and an occasional character. More »
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Now that young-adult fiction is where most of great dystopian stories are being told, there are two awesome discussions going on. Kaitlin Ward asks what's the difference between dystopian and apocalyptic fiction. And Angie Smibert wonders where the utopias are. More »
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The Earth existed for four billion or so years before humans showed up and started recording history. Why limit ourselves to the what-ifs of the past few thousands years? In these alternate reality tales, continents and dinosaur empires rise and fall. More »
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Robert J. Sawyer's "Above it All" is a horror story that takes place on the Mir spaceship. What makes Sawyer's choice of venue odd is the year the story was written, 1996. What's so significant about this year? More »
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The main problem with a book club, of course, is getting the book. Even in this iPad/Kindle era, it still costs money to get the darn thing. But with Weekend Short Story Club, we're taking the free culture route. More »
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It may have taken longer than anyone expected to get the Large Hadron Collider cranked up and pummeling the secrets of creation (no doubt due to sabotage from the future) but the LHC has ruled science fiction books for years. More »
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The Internet may become sentient in Robert J. Sawyer's new novel Wake, but there's one thing it won't do any time soon, according to Sawyer: Allow you to publish your novel without going through traditional publishers. More »
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You can't be beautiful and immortal until you abandon your meatsack! Surrogates, opening Friday, shows a culture that's gone over to robot avatars. But here are ten other universes where you could abandon your flesh for a shiny, perfect robo-body. More »
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FlashForward's premise, about a mysterious blackout that grants everyone a glimpse of the future, is kind of hard to convey in advertising. So what do you do? Stick some furniture to the walls, and play "We're falling sideways!" More »
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Phyllis Gotlieb was a struggling poet, battling writers block in the 1950s, when her husband suggested she try her hand at science fiction. The results led to a series of novels about telepathic societies and star-cats, winning Canada's highest award. More »
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If the countless works of science fiction can agree on one thing, it's that the future isn't perfect. And, on the rare occasion when disputes can't be solved with an epic starship battle, it's time to bring in the lawyers. More »
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Virtual reality sounds like paradise: we'll upload our consciousnesses, ditch our smelly meat bodies, and be beautiful, immortal rockstars in a scarcity-free wonderland, forever. But technology never quite works out the way you hope it will, and science fiction writers have already pointed out four ways virtual reality could suck. More »
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We're bound to spawn computers smarter than us in the next ninety years or so. So we may as well start hoping they have our best interests at heart, says Wake author Robert J. Sawyer. More »
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Teaser trailers for David S. Goyer's highly anticipated Flash Forward TV show kicked off last night during Lost, with a short barrage of blipverts that confused and confounded us. What did you see? More »
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With many science-fiction shows facing cancellation, our best hope is that next fall's programming includes another Fringe or Lost, a thought-provoking hit. So it's good news that ABC just greenlit Robert J. Sawyer's Flash Forward. More »
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Author Robert J. Sawyer has been blogging from the set of Flash Forward, the new show based on his novel, and he says it's looking good to debut on ABC next fall. Minor spoilers... More »
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One of the year's breakout hits, True Blood, is based on Charlaine Harris' Sookie Stackhouse books. And now, suddenly authors like Robert J. Sawyer, M.J. Rose and John Updike are spawning TV pilots. More »
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Today's the day when we celebrate the life of visionary leader Martin Luther King, Jr. But the civil-rights legend is also an important figure in science fiction... as an influence, and an occasional character. More »
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How can you predict future technologies? You can't, according to five great science fiction authors quoted in the new CIO Magazine. But at least you can predict what types of problems will crop up. More »
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When the struggling writer is pitching a book to an agent, he or she had better have a book, right? Well, Finnish SF author Hannu Rajaniemi sold three of them to classy UK-based Orion imprint Gollacz based on a mere 24 pages. Could you also be 24 pages away from selling your book? Find out how Rajaniemi managed the feat. More »
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Robert Sawyer, the much-awarded scifi author of novels like Rollback and Hominids writes on his blog that, for some reason, scifi publishers are not interested in UFO stories. He says that he advised a friend writing about UFOs that he'd "probably have better luck with a mainstream publisher than a scifi one" because "rightly or wrongly, most SF readers and editors have decided that whatever UFOs have been reported have nothing to do with extraterrestrial life." Now that he mentions it, I have to agree. Whitley Strieber's UFO classic Communion came out on Avon (a division of Harper Collins). Most scifi with aliens does not deal with "unidentified flying objects" or Grays with mind control powers and big, blinky eyes. [via Robert J. Sawyer] More »
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Several of the most imaginative minds in science fiction (and science) gathered at this year's Readercon to discuss a fundamental question of our existence: Why does it seem like we're alone in the universe? Writers Jeff Hecht, Steven Popkes, Robert J. Sawyer, Ian Randal Strock, and Michael A. Burstein offered their recommendations for the best fictional explorations of this question, commonly known as the Fermi paradox. See their picks, and find out more about one of the greatest paradoxes in human existence. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5028035&view=rss&microfeed=true Sturgeon's Law was too generous, argues science fiction author Robert J. Sawyer. Writer Theodore Sturgeon said that 90 percent of science fiction was "crud" (or "crap," depending on where he's quoted.) But actually, the chances of choosing a good SF novel at random are way lower than that, Sawyer tells Bookmarks: Someone who gets interested in science fiction and picks up a book from the "vast SF rack... will be turned off, because the work will almost certainly be crap. . . . Yup, you could read a good SF novel a week each week of the year, no doubt. But if you read an SF novel a week picked at random from the rack, you'd never come back for a second year of such torture." [Bookmarks, via Utne Reader] More »
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