Polymath historian-novelist Ada Palmer has just published Seven Surrenders, the long-awaited sequel to her astounding debut novel Too Like the Lightning, in which she continues to spin tales in an intricately devised, wonderfully original 25th century.
Roz Kaveney, Laurie Penny, John Scalzi, and Jo Walton: "Democracy was dead to begin with.
There was no doubt whatsoever about that. The election proclaimed it and the electoral college confirmed it and Trump himself signed off on the note, vaguely annoyed that Clinton had somehow still gotten 2.9 million votes more than he had. — Read the rest
The View from the Cheap Seats, Neil Gaiman's mammoth collection of nonfiction essays, introductions, and speeches, is a remarkable explanatory volume in which Gaiman explains not just why he loves the things he loves, but also what makes them great.
Theodor Herzl's seminal 1896 essay Der Judenstaat called for the creation of Jewish state as an answer to the ancient evil of antisemitism; its legacy, Zionism, underpinned the creation of Israel; in Judenstaat, Simone Zelitch's beautifully told, thoughtful and disturbing alternate history, the Jewish state is created in Saxony, not Palestine, and takes the place of East Germany. — Read the rest
Director Oscar Sharp and AI researcher Ross Goodwin trained a machine-learning system with a huge pile of classic science fiction screenplays and turned it loose to write a short film. What emerged was an enigmatic 9-minute movie called Sunspring, which has just won Sci-Fi London's 48-hour challenge.
The Campbell Award for best new writer is voted on and presented with the Hugo Awards — to be eligible, you must have made your first professional sale in the previous two years.
David Hartwell, a senior editor at Tor Books, cofounder of the New York Review of Science Fiction, legendary collector, raconteur, critic, anthologist, and fixture in so many fo science fiction's scenes and fandom, is in the hospital with a "massive brain bleed" and is not expected to live.
The winners from last night's Locus Awards Banquet in Seattle have been announced:
Locus magazine has published its annual recommended reading list, which signposts the best in science fiction and fantasy from the previous year.
Every year, Tor.com anthologizes some of the best short fiction from its website in a free ebook, and it's always one of the best sf anthologies of the year — this is no exception!
Two years ago, Tor Books, the largest sf publisher in the world (and publisher of my own books) went DRM-free; yesterday, Tor's founder and publisher Tom Doherty took to the stage to explain why he dropped DRM from his books. — Read the rest
Welcome to this year's Boing Boing Gift Guide, a piling-high of our most loved stuff from 2013 and beyond. There are books, gadgets, toys, music and much else besides: click the categories at the top to filter what you're most interested in—and offer your own suggestions and links!
Patrick Nielsen Hayden and David Hartwell have edited Twenty-First Century Science Fiction , a 250,000-word anthology of short fiction by writers who came to prominence since the turn of the century. The authors include "Vandana Singh, Charles Stross, Paolo Bacigalupi, Neal Asher, Rachel Swirsky, John Scalzi, M. — Read the rest
One year ago today
Gender-neutral toy department: Harrods has bucked the established practice of strongly gender-segregating its toy department, contracting with Shed Design to create a "gender-neutral" toy floor.
Five years ago today
Heinlein's dystopian juvenile novels: Jo Walton takes a look at the dystopian backdrops in Robert A Heinlein's juvenile novels like Starman Jones and Citizen of the Galaxy. — Read the rest
One year ago today
Humiliating giant head squirrel feeder: If you've decided to surrender to the squirrels that raid your bird-feeder and just set out squirrel chow instead, why not use one of Archie McPhee's humiliating giant-head-squirrel-feeders, which allow you to chuckle at your pests even as you capitulate to them? — Read the rest
Click here to play this episode. Gweek is Boing Boing's podcast about comic books, science fiction and fantasy, video games, board games, tools, gadgets, apps, and other neat stuff.
My co-hosts for this episode:
Glenn Fleishman. Glenn is a long-time tech reporter, a hacky perl programmer, and one of the writers of the Economist’s Babbage blog on technology and culture. — Read the rest
Holy cats, Jo Walton knows how to review a book in such a way as to get me drooling. (She's no slouch at writing 'em too). The book under discussion now is Francis Spufford's Red Plenty, available finally in the USA. — Read the rest
Congratulations to the winners of the 2011 Nebula Awards, especially to Jo Walton, who won for her magnificent novel, Among Others (see my review, here). Also congrats to Delia Sherman for her best YA book prize for The Freedom Maze (my review). — Read the rest
Locus Magazine has announced the winners of its annual Locus Award poll, a popular choice award for science fiction and fantasy. As always, it's a great guide to some of the best genre material from the preceding year. Here's the top novel lists, with links to some of my reviews:
— Read the rest
Science Fiction Novel
* Leviathan Wakes, James S.
On Tor.com, author and reviewer Jo Walton has an insightful look at why so many science fiction readers and writers are discussing David Graeber's Debt: The First 5,000 Years, a book that is already a darling of the Occupy movement:
— Read the rest
One of the problems with writing science fiction and fantasy is creating truly different societies.
