Tonight at 7PM, I'll be appearing on a panel at the Last Bookstore in downtown LA, with the title "Truth to Power: Genre Fiction in Post-Fact America," alongside of Gretchen McNeil, Jennifer Brody, Christina Cigala, Bobby Goldstein, CB Lee, Michael Paul Gonzalez, Kate Maruyama and Samuel Sattin. Read the rest
The "Turkey City Lexicon" is a widely used -- if controversial -- set of critiquing terms for use in science fiction writing workshops, created by Lewis Shiner and Bruce Sterling for use in the Turkey City Writing Workshop; Sterling describes SF workshops as being "like a bad rock band" in that a workshop "can be set up in any vacant garage by any group of spotty enthusiasts with nothing better to occupy their time. No one has a copyright on talent, desire, or enthusiasm." Read the rest
Here's the eighth and final part of my reading (MP3) (party seven, part six, part five, part four, part three, part two, part one) of The Man Who Sold the Moon, my award-winning novella first published in 2015's Hieroglyph: Stories and Visions for a Better Future, edited by Ed Finn and Kathryn Cramer. It's my Burning Man/maker/first days of a better nation story and was a kind of practice run for my 2017 novel Walkaway.
The 2017 Hugo nominees were announced yesterday; attendees at this year's World Science Fiction Convention in San Jose, California will choose from among them to pick this year's Hugo Award winners. Read the rest
Ira Nayman writes, "I'm the Managing Editor of Amazing Stories, which was the first true science fiction magazine (Hugo Gernsback published the first issue in April, 1926; yes, the Hugo Awards were named after him). In its time, it published such luminaries of the genre as Jules Verne, H. G. Wells, E. E. 'Doc' Smith and Arthur C. Clark, to name a few. Read the rest
Tokyo designer Hiroto Ikeuchi creates amazing wearable cyberpunk assemblages out of scrap electronics and other odds and sods. Read the rest
Here's part seven of my reading (MP3) (part six, part five, part four, part three, part two, part one) of The Man Who Sold the Moon, my award-winning novella first published in 2015's Hieroglyph: Stories and Visions for a Better Future, edited by Ed Finn and Kathryn Cramer. It's my Burning Man/maker/first days of a better nation story and was a kind of practice run for my 2017 novel Walkaway.
I love Yuri Shwedoff's subdued, atmospheric renderings of vestigial technology and the people who still see it, still wear it. The lansdcape wears it, too, and it evokes for me a deeper relationship with technology rather than the darker one often implied by postapocalyptic art. Here it's not disused. If anything it's less alien. It just fits somewhere else in the human imagination. Read the rest
Before Max Headroom shilled for Coke and collaborated with the Art of Noise (below), he starred in this fantastic and prescient 1985 UK TV movie about a dystopic future. This brilliant bit of cyberpunk science fiction feels even more relevant today than it did back then.
Previously: "Max Headroom, the full story"
(Thanks, UPSO!)
In 2010, Steve Almond started work on a Tea Party-inspired novel called Bucky Dunn Is Running, about a racist demagogue businessman who comes within a whisker of the Republican nomination for their presidential candidate; he'd aimed to have it done for the 2016 election season, but then Trump happened, and his satire seemingly caught up with him. Read the rest
Science fiction writer and ecologist Kim Stanley Robinson (previously) writes that we need to "empty half the Earth of its humans" to save the planet -- but not by the Green Left's usual (and potentially genocidal) tactic of reducing our population by 50%. Read the rest
This week, a self-driving Uber killed a pedestrian in Arizona, the first pedestrian fatality involving an autonomous vehicle; in his analysis of the event, Charlie Stross notes that Arizona's laws treat corporations that kill people with considerably more forbearance than humans who do so, and proposes that in the near future, every self-driving car will be owned by a special-purpose corporation that insulates its owner from liability. Read the rest
Master Replicas Group will soon sell a limited edition Hal 9000 interface that integrates an Amazon Fire tablet and Echo. Sadly, Alexa doesn't sound anything like Douglas Rain.
Hal 9000 Replica (via Uncrate)
Here's part six of my reading (MP3) (part five, part four, part three, part two, part one) of The Man Who Sold the Moon, my award-winning novella first published in 2015's Hieroglyph: Stories and Visions for a Better Future, edited by Ed Finn and Kathryn Cramer. It's my Burning Man/maker/first days of a better nation story and was a kind of practice run for my 2017 novel Walkaway.
If you attended either of the past two World Science Fiction Conventions or are registered for the next one in San Jose, California, you're eligible to nominate for the Hugo Awards, which you can do here -- you've only got until midnight tomorrow! Read the rest
