IO9 has published Tobias Buckell's tense, taut technothriller story "System Reset." It's a story about hacker/bounty hunters, taken from the pages of John Joseph Adams and Hugh Howey's new anthology The End is Nigh, the first of three volumes that deal with pre-apocalypses, apocalypses, and post-apocalypses, in order.

Pablo Defendini writes, "Caribbean-born sf author Tobias Buckell is crowdfunding The Apocalypse Ocean, the fourth installment in his Xenowealth series (Crystal Rain, Ragamuffin, and Sly Mongoose, which I pitch to prospective readers as 'Rastas fighting zombies—in space!'), using Kickstarter. I love these books, so I asked him if he wanted some artwork for the project. — Read the rest

Tobias Buckell is a very exciting new sf writer who combines the culture and atmosphere of his Caribbean upbringing with excellent adventure fiction. His first novel, Crystal Rain has just come out and he's posted the first third of the novel in chapters to his website:

Brown vines dried and crumbled along the village Refojee-Ten's edges.

The BBC has published a long and welcome feature on Afrofuturism, the term coined by former Boing Boing guestblogger Mark Dery to describe (in the words of Steve Barnes) "science fiction, fantasy and horror created by or featuring the children of the African diaspora (people of African origin living outside of the continent)."

The instructors for this summer's Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy writers' workshop are Dan Chaon, Lynda Barry, Nalo Hopkinson, Andrea Hairston, Cory Doctorow, C.C. Finlay and Rae Carson: the workshop runs from Jun 25-Aug 5 at UCSD in La Jolla, California.

Applications are open for both the Clarion Writing Workshop at UC San Diego and the Clarion west workshop in Seattle, a pair of legendary, six-week intensive instructional summer workshops for aspiring science fiction and fantasy writers.

I'm teaching, as are Andy Duncan, Eileen Gunn, Tobias Buckell, Connie Willis and Nalo Hopkinson.

The latest Humble Ebook Bundle has added four new titles: Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell's From Hell, the From Hell Companion (review), Too Cool to Be Forgotten (review); and my audiobook for Lawful Interception, the sequel to Little Brother and Homeland. — Read the rest

The fourth Humble Ebooks Bundle is up and running, and it's a name-your-own-price, DRM-free, comics-heavy doozy, including our own Ed Piskor's brilliant Wizzywig (review); graphic civil rights history March; the Lovecraft's Monsters anthology (with Neil Gaiman); George RR Martin's Sword and Sorcery anthology, Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell's From Hell; Terry Goodkind's Wizard's First Rule; Paolo Bacigalupi's The Alchemist; Tobias Buckell's The Executioness; and Yahtzee Crosshaw's Jam. — Read the rest

The Clarion Writers' Workshop at UC San Diego has announced its lineup of instructors for the 2014 session, and it's pretty spectacular: this year's writer-instructors are Gregory Frost, Geoff Ryman, Catherynne Valente, N.K. Jemisin, Ann VanderMeer, and Jeff VanderMeer.

Clarion is a six-week, intensive boot-camp for science fiction, fantasy and speculative fiction writers. — 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

I was delighted today to discover that my novel Pirate Cinema had been nominated for the Libertarian Futurist Society's annual Prometheus Award, amid a slate of absolutely wonderful books:

Arctic Rising, Tobias Buckell (Tor)
The Unincorporated Future, Dani & Eytan Kollin (Tor)
Pirate Cinema, Cory Doctorow (Tor)
Darkship Renegades, Sarah Hoyt (Baen)
Kill Decision, Daniel Suarez (Penguin)

I was proud as punch to win the award for my novel Little Brother, and I'm very excited to be back on the roster. — Read the rest

Tobias Buckell's "How I used Kickstarter to reboot a book series, and my career (and maybe my life?)" is a fantastic, detailed postmortem on his experiment with continuing his commercially flagging science fiction series by raising money directly from his fans on Kickstarter. — Read the rest

Jeff Vandermeer sez,

Shared Worlds is a unique summer SF/F writing camp for teens, based out of Wofford College in South Carolina. The participants build worlds in the first week and write stories set in those worlds in week two. We've just announced our guest list for 2012, as well as set up donation and registration pages, and we're offering a free PDF download of the Shared Worlds 2011 teen writing book, beautifully designed by Las Vegas pop-artist Jeremy Zerfoss to include numerous illustrations of fantastical creatures.

Anticipation, the 67th World Science Fiction Convention (to be held in Montreal this year) is almost upon us, and the programming committee has put together a kick-ass program, and they've put it online. Here's my program items — hope to see you there! — Read the rest

Jeff Vandermeer writes in with more news about Shared Worlds, the summer science fiction and fantasy writing camp for kids:

Shared Worlds asked Elizabeth Hand, Nalo Hopkinson, China Meville, Michael Moorcock and others: "What's your pick for the top real-life fantasy or science fiction city?"

Matt sez, "'Shared Worlds' is a great summer writing workshop for creative kids with an interest in fantasy and science fiction."

Shared Worlds, an innovative two week workshop in fantasy and science fiction worldbuilding is currently seeking applications for attendance from students grade eight to twelve who have an interest in creative writing and fantasy worldbuilding.

There's a scant few weeks left to get your applications in to the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop at UCSD, a six-week intensive boot-camp for would-be writers. Clarion students write and critique every day, and receive one-on-one and group instruction from six instructors. — Read the rest

The Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Workshop at the University of California at San Diego has announced its 2009 instructor lineup: Holly Black, Larissa Lai, Robert Crais, and Kim Stanley Robinson with Elizabeth Hand and Paul Park. Clarion is the oldest science fiction writing workshop, a legendary boot-camp for writers (I'm a proud graduate, instructor, and director of the charitable Clarion Foundation). — Read the rest