Books

Everyone Hates Sookie In ​True Blood’s Season Premiere Sneak Peek

This weekend True Blood comes back for the last time ever. So where did we leave the good people of Bon Temps? Three clips reveal the new world order for the small town with most ridiculous concentration of supernatural activity. So get a glimpse of the beginning of the end now. So first up, everyone…

The Most WTF Scenes From True Blood, A Show For Adults

This is it, the very last season of True Blood. And in order to give this series a fond farewell, we thought we’d highlight the things that made it stand out above all the rest: the really, really weird (and awesome) scenes that could only exist in True Blood. So here they are, the greatest…

Invisible Beasts Explores the Evolutionary Biology of Imaginary Animals

For Sharona Muir, the bestiary is a literary genre of its own. Her novel Invisible Beasts is part anthology and part field-guide, but mostly it’s the story of a young woman who sees animals nobody else can. Her experiences unfold in the form of a scientific catalog of animals. These descriptions are sensitive and elegant.…

Diana Gabaldon’s latest Outlander novel outsold Hillary Clinton’s memoir last week. What’s more surprising is that Written in My Own Heart’s Blood, the eighth installment in the time-travel romance series, beat out Hard Choices in hardcover copies sold, when nonfiction, on the whole, far outsells fiction in print.

What Series Do You Binge-Read?

Video streaming-enabled binge-watching gets all the attention — but binge-reading was making us lose sleep long before we ever had the ability to click through a season or two of our favorite shows. Tell us in the comments about the last book that not only could you not put down, but that also sent you…

Every Game Of Thrones Scene Broken Down By Book, Chapter And Episode

Have you ever wondered exactly how far the show has taken the various storylines of A Song of Ice and Fire books? Redditor Jonnyi94 broke it all down in this amazing chart, which reveals a great deal about how the show has evolved over the years. Click here to see the graph in its hi-res…

Here’s What Victorian London Looks Like Invaded By 600 Book Worlds

Art collective Dorothy has added to its collection of fiction-based maps (previous editions include a movies map in Los Angeles and a TV map in Washington) with a book map loosely constructed around Victorian London. So, in case you were wondering, Anne of Avonlea is at the intersection of Basil of Baker Street and The…

In Cibola Burn, a Space Colony is Torn Apart by Racism from Earth

Cibola Burn is James S.A. Corey’s fourth outing in the Expanse series. Its intense action is set in motion by one compelling truth: humanity may be able to escape from our home system, but we have a lot of baggage that we carry with us. Shortly after the first Expanse novel Leviathan Wakes was published,…

Apple Is Happy to Take Your Money if Amazon Won’t

Fresh off of settling a lawsuit that accused it of collusion with publishers, Apple is ready to take the money you were planning to give to Amazon but can’t. Since Amazon is in a fight with Hachette—the world’s largest bookstore and one of the world’s largest publishers respectively—and refuses to let customers pre-order any books…

Take An Exclusive Peek At The Most Anticipated Scifi Imprint In Years

SAGA, the new science fiction and fantasy imprint from Simon & Schuster, debuts next spring with an exciting slate of books—including the first novel from Hugo, Nebula, and many other awards-winning writer Ken Liu. Here’s our exclusive reveal of the covers for SAGA’s first set of books. City of Savages by Lee Kelly It’s been…

What Are The Best Examples of Real People Making Fictional Cameos?

The boundary between fact and fiction can be surprisingly permeable, with life sometimes imitating art and art sometimes returning the favor. Here are some of the real people who made that boundary even more fluid, by showing up in fictional settings. Image: JL8 by Yale Stewart, via commenter Bat21 In response to author Paul Cornell’s…

Game Of Thrones Director Explains The Finale’s Missing Character

Hardcore, book-reading Game of Thrones fans expected a certain someone to make their first appearance in last night’s finale, but that certain someone didn’t. Now episode director Alex Graves has explained why. Warning: Spoilers both for last night’s finale and future events! For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about and yet…

How I Turned Neil Gaiman Into A Fictional Character For My New Novel

For his new novel The Severed Streets, the second installment of his Shadow Police series, acclaimed writer Paul Cornell decided to include author Neil Gaiman as a significant character. In this essay, Cornell shares why and how he went about making his fictional Gaiman. I’d just been in a head on car crash, which my…

The Secret To Making Sense Of Last Night’s Game Of Thrones Finale

Even George R.R. Martin might have needed to rewind a couple times to figure out some of the characters’ motivations in the Game of Thrones season finale. There were out-of-left-field plot twists and self-destructive choices, some of which weren’t in the books. But here’s one secret to making sense of the whole shebang. It’s not…

Archives Reveal What Octavia Butler’s Next Books Would Have Been Like

8 years ago, famed science fiction author Octavia Butler died suddenly of a stroke, leaving her latest trilogy unfinished and her fans bereft. But now, scholars are sifting through the archives she bequeathed to the Huntington Library — and one has discovered plans for the books she never finished. Gerry Canavan, a literary scholar at…

Author James S.A. Corey Is Here To Talk To You About Leviathan Wakes!

In May, the io9 book club read James S.A. Corey’s Leviathan Wakes. Today, from 1 p.m. – 2 p.m. (PDT) Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck, the two authors who collaborate as James S.A. Corey, will be here to answer your questions about Leviathan Wakes, interstellar detective stories, and anything else! Top image: The authors as…

HBO Explains Why They Failed To Make An American Gods TV Show

I guess getting a book-accurate TV series of Neil Gaiman’s American Gods novel from the same TV channel that was already making an excellent adaptation of Game of Thrones was too much to ask for. But HBO finally explained why they gave up on the much-anticipated show. In a word, the script. As Michael Lombardo,…

George RR Martin Moves From Killing Fictional Characters To Real People

No longer satisfied with murdering the characters in his beloved A Song of Ice and Fire books, George R.R. Martin has now set his sights on murdering a Facebook employee named David Goldblatt after he donated $20,000 to the Wild Spirit Wolf Sanctuary to be killed off in an upcoming GRRM novel. Goldblatt, a product…

Pixar Didn’t Just Change the World of Film — It Transformed Business

What’s the secret to Pixar’s string of amazing films, from Wall-E to Toy Story? In the new book Creativity, Inc., Ed Catmull and Amy Wallace delve into just how Pixar made hit after hit, revealing how the film industry changed as they did. The first thing to know about Creativity Inc., is that it’s not…

The Only Footage We Have Of Arthur Conan Doyle Talking About Sherlock

This 1927 interview with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is the only known interview with the Sherlock Holmes and Lost World author committed to film. Here, Doyle talks about why he created the world’s greatest detective, the response from Sherlock Holmes fans, and his belief in the supernatural. The interview encapsulates the contrasts in Doyle’s life.…