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The 2011 Hugo Award winners were just announced, and it's a good year for time-travel stories, including Connie Willis' Blackout/All Clear and Doctor Who's fifth season finale. Plus it's an excellent night for Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine. More »
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Ted Chiang's novella The Life Cycle of Software Objects takes a breathtakingly fresh approach to the development of artificial intelligence, and keeps you guessing with its constantly evolving plot. And now you can read the whole thing online. 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 full of wishful thinking about artificial intelligence: It'll spring up on its own. It'll become smarter than us in no time. Ted Chiang's new novella, The Life Cycle of Software Objects, will change how you think about A.I. More »
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For many aspiring science-fiction authors, the first frontier of publication is short fiction. A few stories published in the right markets can launch your career. But it helps if you're prolific. Here are 12 tips on writing more stories faster. More »
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Ted Chiang's Hugo-nominated story of robot self-examination, "Exhalation," is available as a free download in a variety of formats. Find out why the robot brains are slowing down, if you dare. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5182800&view=rss&microfeed=true The list of Hugo Award finalists, announced yesterday, is a bit less mystifying than the Nebula finalists, which came out a while back - especially in the novel category. All five of the novel finalists are books we enjoyed, and would be delighted to see win. Meanwhile, it's good to see Charles Coleman Finlay's "The Political Prisoner" and Mary Robinette Kowal's "Evil Robot Monkey" getting recognition. (There seems to be a bit of a monkey theme with the short-story finalists.) I also loved Ted Chiang's "Exhalation." And congrats to our pals Chris Garcia and Cheryl Morgan, for the fan-writer nods. Finally, props to Tor for taking three out of five slots in the "best editor, long form" category, and congrats also to Lou Anders. More »
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One of the biggest debates among people who like scifi — aside from the Star Wars vs. Star Trek thing — is where to draw the line between science and magic. Some adhere to the idea that magic is simply science that we don't yet understand, others feel that magic represents an essential mystery that can't be understood rationally. Of course the other big dividing line between magic and science has to do with genre: magic appears mostly in fantasy stories, and science (of course) in science fiction. And yet there is currently a trend in the scifi world toward creating stories that blur the line between science and magic: A lot of steampunk novels blend technology and sorcery (one of my favorite examples is in Elizabeth Bear's New Amsterdam, where one of the characters is a "forensic sorceress"). And shows like Lost and X-Files have frequently mingled the mystical and the rational. We talked to five authors whose fiction blurs the line between magic and science to find out what they thought of the difference between the two. Here's what they said. More »
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