Anybody who wants to read some amazing works of short fiction — and get up to speed on the changing state of science fiction over the past few decades — should rejoice to learn that Gardner Dozois' indispensible Year's Best anthologies are coming out as e-books in October.

Why do so many of science fiction's greatest stories have to do with meeting — and possibly falling in love with — strangers and strange beings? Author Pat Cadigan, whose story "Angel" is in the new anthology Alien Contact, muses about the allure of Meeting the Other.

Two anthologies of the year's best science fiction and fantasy released their tables of contents — and a large number of the stories came from online magazines, plus anthologies of original fiction. Bad news for the print magazines?

Cugel the Clever is one of the great archetypal figures in SF literature, the vain trickster in Jack Vance's post-apocalyptic Dying Earth stories. Kage Baker wrote a new Cugel story for a Dying Earth anthology, and it's up at Tor.com.

In this month's books, Greg Bear serves up disaster in deep space, while a beautifully designed book sheds new light on steampunk. Plus medieval utopias, star-crossed loves, and a flaming zeppelin!

We've officially entered the lazy days of summer. So spice up your weekend with a vicarious apocalypse, or venture to near-future Turkey with Ian McDonald. Here are the coolest new books of July.

For many of us, it's still Independence Day weekend, and we're still grilling hamburgers and celebrating our country's freedoms. To commemorate the occasion, John T. Ottinger looks at a dozen science fiction books and stories that are uniquely American.

This month, spend some time in Victorian steampunk England, hunt down lost artifacts on Mars, or get to know Batman a little better. You could also grab a drink in post-apocalyptic Wales. All that and more, in July books.

A new writing workshop organized by the Magazine Of Fantasy & Science Fiction will provide three stories to the magazine per year, according to F&SF. And editor Gordon Van Gelder tells io9 it may actually boost unpublished authors' chances otherwise.