What the next generation of SF magazines should learn from Zynga
Science fiction and fantasy magazines are caught in a bind: print magazines struggle, while electronic mags need a revenue model. Cat Rambo, fiction editor with Fantasy Magazine and author of Eyes Like Sky and Coal and Moonlight, has a theory. Electronic publishing continues to encroach on print publishing. Sales of e-books are on the rise…
15 classic science fiction and fantasy novels that publishers rejected
Science fiction’s greatest authors have brilliant ideas, storytelling mojo… and plenty of stubbornness. Many of the field’s greatest writers were buried in rejection slips, before they finally broke in. Here are 15 classic novels that publishers didn’t want to touch. When we were doing our list of 10 science fiction classics that the publishers originally…
Exopolitics: Foreign affairs with alien races
Scifi artist and novelist Jonathon Keats’ new book, Virtual Words, is an eloquent exploration of words and phrases that we’re using to describe our future-science world. In this excerpt, he explains the word “exopolitics.” At the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library, an archivist named Herb Pankratz specializes in queries about the thirty-fourth president’s exopolitics. Pankratz…
Bones of the Gigantomachy
How does one make the skeleton of Hercules? Take a bunch of mastodon bones and mix well. In her excellent book The First Fossil Hunters, author Adrienne Mayor explains, in fascinating detail, how Classical myths of giants, dragons, titans, heroes, and other ill-formed monstrous beings often stemmed from a misunderstanding of the fossil record. After…