Books & Comics

Campbell Award winning writer Mur Lafferty is here today! Talk to her!

In August, the io9 book club read Mur Lafferty’s hilarious fantasy novel The Shambling Guide to New York City. Since then, she’s won the coveted Campbell Award for best new author. Now, Lafferty is here today from 12:30-1:30 PDT to chat with you! Just jump into comments and ask questions, and Lafferty will get to…

The evilest month of the year begins thanks to DC’s villains

With the Trinity War over, DC’s bad guys are stealing the spotlight (possibly literally) in a month-long event that begins this week. Meanwhile, The Star Wars finally arrives, the X-Men have their time-traveling-est adventure yet, and Jonathan Hickman’s “sacrilicious” new series arrives, all in this week’s comics! New Issues Dark Horse: • The Star Wars…

This wistful astronaut story will seriously mess you up

Now that the Hugo Awards have recognized the greatness of Clarkesworld Magazine, it’s time to celebrate — with a fantastic story by James Patrick Kelly. “The Promise of Space” is a tear-jerking story about a woman visiting her astronaut husband in the hospital — and talking to the A.I. that now speaks for him. Top…

Lovecraft sketch shows the author’s vision for Mountains of Madness

Still trying to wrap your head around H.P. Lovecraft’s mysterious Elder Things and collection monsters who lived below the ice of the Antarctic? Well, now you can see exactly what these mysterious beasts looked like from the author’s point of view, thanks to a few pages of recently discovered doodles right out of Lovecraft’s notes.…

RIP Frederik Pohl, the man who transformed science fiction

One of the leading lights of the science fiction world, editor and author Frederik Pohl, passed away this weekend after a career that defined the genre for decades. His granddaughter Emily Pohl Weary confirmed the news: Pohl was known for his mind-bending, often satirical novels (many co-authored with longtime collaborator C.M. Kornbluth), his editing acumen,…

The Glamour! The Drama! The Full Results of the 2013 Hugo Awards!

The Hugo Awards just happened at San Antonio’s LoneStarCon 3, and it was a night of dramatic reveals. The winners: Game of Thrones! John Scalzi! Tor’s Patrick Nielsen Hayden! Ken Liu! Pat Cadigan! Stanley Schmidt, twice! Brandon Sanderson, twice. And Saga! Full details below. Top image: Kevin Standlee. Paul Cornell MCed the Hugo Awards this…

Want to follow the Hugo Awards? You can watch them live via UStream (unless it gets taken down again), or read the official liveblog. Plus @WWEnd and @LightspeedMag will Livetweet. Plus check back here for the complete list of winners later this evening!

Don’t miss this engrossing novel about the science of dragons

With A Natural History of Dragons, Marie Brennan has done something that I didn’t think was possible. She’s written an adventure about dragons in an alternate Victorian world, while also realistically capturing what it’s like to be a young woman who wants to buck convention and devote her life to science. Illustration by Todd Lockwood…

The One Trick Dumbphones Are Still the Best At

We all love our smartphones. Who could ever go back to a time before having an all-knowning internet brick on hand at all times? But there is one trick dumbphones were better at: flipping. I don’t know about you, but I miss it to this day. Lolnein sums it up expertly. A killer feature if…

The creator of Vader and Son takes us to the Jedi Academy

Hard as it may be to believe, not every kid in the Star Wars universe wants to grow up to be a Jedi. Roan, the protagonist of Jeffrey Brown’s Jedi Academy, just wants to be a starfighter pilot. But after he’s rejected from pilot school, he finds himself unexpectedly admitted to Jedi Academy, and starts…

The line between fiction and fic has never been blurrier

Hugh Howey’s Silo saga has taken the bestseller lists by storm — but before Wool was a worldwide sensation, it was a humble series on Amazon, gaining popularity one online fan at a time. Now, Howey’s stories have spawned a new kind of fanfic community that could change the publishing world. Photo: Steve Crisp/Reuters Pundits…

Marvel execs rejected the Spider-Man musical as “entirely wrong,” after they saw an early draft that featured the supervillain Arachne, according toa new tell-all book by the long-suffering playwright who worked on the book.

Fantasy authors Erin M. Evans and Troy Denning talk The Sundering

Epic fantasy novel series The Sundering features six authors, the return of numerous beloved characters, wars, gods, and cataclysmic events that will reshape the Forgotten Realms. We talked with two of those authors about finding their place within such a huge story, and what makes a character stick. The Sundering is a six-novel series that…

io9 Book Club is in session! Let’s talk about The Shambling Guide

Welcome to the monthly meeting of the io9 Book Club. In August, we read Mur Lafferty’s The Shambling Guide to New York City. Jump into comments to get started talking about it! For those unfamiliar with the io9 book club, here’s how it works: You read the book. We create a special book club post…

Open the final door to IDW’s Locke & Key series in This Week’s Comics!

Yes, the final installment of Locke & Key begins tomorrow, but don’t be sad: There’s still plenty of American Vampire, adorable demons, the arrival of Captain America’s most insane foe, and the triumphant return of the greatest couple in rock, all in this week’s comics! New Issues Dark Horse: • Station-to-Station: An inter-dimensional monster with…

The best social science book title ever

Feeling a little bitter about having to read and/or write social science books that seem to hide their basic points in unnecessarily fancy rhetoric? Then you need some advice from Michael Billig, who has figured out how to succeed as an academic by writing really badly. Billig doesn’t want you to think he writes badly,…

A Flashlight Reveals This Picture Book’s Adorable Secrets

It’s pretty hard to tear kids away from their iPads and other electronic distractions these days, particularly when the alternative is a static picture book. But illustrator Rebecca Sutherland has come up with a clever way to make Hide & Eeek a little more interactive than just flipping the pages. Each illustration has secret invisible…

It’s Neil Gaiman’s sexy wizard scene in the new Riverside audiobook!

If you love Ellen Kushner‘s Riverside novels, which began with the classic Swordspoint, then prepare for ecstasy. The third novel, The Fall of Kings, is out today in audiobook from Neil Gaiman Presents. And it features Kushner reading along with Gaiman. We’ve got an excerpt. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00EILCR9E?tag=gizmodo08c-20 Kushner is narrating all her Riverside novels for Neil…

Read the first chapter from Ramez Naam’s new nanotech thriller, Crux

Last year, Ramez Naam thrilled us with his biotech revolution novel Nexus, about a form of nanotechnology that allows people to reprogram their brains — and even communicate with another person’s brain remotely. Now Naam is back with the blistering hot sequel, Crux. We’ve got an excerpt. https://gizmodo.com/a-novel-about-why-buddhists-could-eventually-rule-the-w-5980213 Here’s the synopsis of Crux: Six months…

The 15 Worst Batman/Superman Stories Ever Told

When Batman and Superman team up to fight evil, they are generally known as the World’s Finest. And yet just because they’re called that doesn’t mean that all their adventures are necessarily good — some are quite wretched, in fact. Here’s 15 tales from the original World’s Finest comics that never need to be retold.…