Books

Brace Yourself: Madeline Ashby Is Writing About The Singularity!

We’re shaken up from the weirdness in vN, Madeline Ashby’s novel about artificial consciousness and self-replicating machines. And now, she’s written a novel about The Singularity, when artificial intelligence surpasses our own and everything changes. We’ve got a cover reveal, and some details, below. First up, here’s the cover of Ashby’s new novel Company Town,…

What Book Shocked You and Your Friends With a Secret Sex Scene?

When you were reading a book, as a kid, did you ever stumble across a little more than you were expecting? Did your friends let you in on the secret? Genre books often come with a secret sex scene. Which books surprised you? When I was in school, the Clan of the Cave Bear series…

Everything You Need to Know to Rebuild Civilization from Scratch

Lewis Dartnell is an astrobiologist in England who wants to help you save the world after civilization collapses. To that end, he’s written a book called The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Our World from Scratch. It’s the one post-apocalyptic guide you’ll ever need. We’ve got an excerpt. In this chapter, Dartnell describes how we can…

io9 Book Club Reminder: Meeting 5/6 to Discuss Life After Life

This month, the io9 Book Club is reading Kate Atkinson’s Life After Life. We’ll be meeting May 6 to talk about it. Join us! We’re hoping Atkinson will join us later that week to talk about the book. What is this io9 Book Club all about? We meet once a month to discuss a book…

In The Redemption Engine, We Visit an Anarcho-Capitalist Fantasy City

In his latest novel, The Redemption Engine, James Sutter’s “misotheist” hero Salim Ghadafar visits a catacomb-riddled city to solve a mystery involving missing souls. He talked with us about the novel, and atheist characters in worlds full of gods. James L. Sutter is the managing editor for Paizo Publishing and a co-creator of the Pathfinder…

How to Write a Great Science Fiction Novel in 7 Easy Steps

Max Barry’s book Lexicon was voted fourth best science fiction novel of the year by Goodreads, and now he’s put together a (mostly serious) list of steps you’ll want to take to become a writer of great science fiction. STEP 1: HAVE AN IDEA Great sci-fi begins with an idea. Unfortunately, as people will tell…

George R.R. Martin Responds To That Controversial Game of Thrones Scene

Last night, the television adaptation of Game of Thrones changed an already disturbing scene from the books into an even upsetting moment on screen. And now, book author George R.R. Martin is weighing in. Read his response. Warning: Spoilers ahead! In a post on his personal blog about an upcoming event GRRM stepped into his…

Raw Uncut Science Fiction, Live On Stage! If you’re in Portland, OR, you have no excuse not to go to the Jack London Bar and check out Pulp Gulp, a live reading of great science fiction stories adapted to short plays. Including David D. Levine’s award-winning “Tk’Tk’Tk.”

Can A Cautionary Tale About Science Still Be Pro-Science?

Transcendence was just the latest piece of pop culture to depict wrongheaded scientists playing God, and a lot of people complained about its anti-science message. But that made us wonder: Does a cautionary tale about science have to be anti-science? After all, Frankenstein is often described as the first science fiction novel, and it depicts…

President Obama Totally Commits To Where The Wild Things Are Reading

President Obama goes full monster face while reading Where The Wild Things Are to a group of children during the annual White House Egg Roll. Wonderful. Spotted via the Washington Post twitter feed: Photographs from Jim Lo Scalzo/European Pressphoto Agency.

A Taxonomy Of Creepy Dead Kids In Horror Fiction

M.R. Carey’s new novel The Girl With All The Gifts comes to the United States in June — but it’s already gotten massive acclaim in the U.K., and it’s one of our favorite books this year. In a special essay, Carey explains why there are so many creepy dead children in horror, and what they…

Did Game Of Thrones Finally Go Too Far?

You might have thought the question of Game of Thrones going too far would have been moot a long time ago. This is the show that gave us “sexposition” and Joffrey brutalizing sex workers, after all. But a lot of people seem to feel as though one moment in last night’s episode was, finally, too…

9 of the Coolest Prefab Houses in History

Prefab is a buzzy topic in architecture and design circles right now, but it’s hardly a new concept. The idea of building houses in factories and shipping them to their destinations is at least a century old. Now, Taschen has published the history of these homes in a lovely coffee table book. Prefab Houses isn’t…

Lewis Carroll Hated Fame So Much, He Sometimes Regretted Writing Alice

Charles Dodgson, the author and mathematician better known as Lewis Carroll, wrote about a young girl lost in surreal dreamscapes. But Dodgson had trouble navigating treacherous landscape of his own: literary fame. The author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass wrote in 1891 letter to one Mrs. Symonds, explaining his particular discomfort…

George R.R. Martin Explains How The Game Of Thrones Got Started

We can’t know who will end up sitting on the Iron Throne at the end of George R.R. Martin’s book and television saga — but now, Martin is showing us more of how the first King got to sit on that pointy seat of power. Martin has released a samplefrom The World of Ice and…

What’s The Most Disastrous First Encounter Between Two Civilizations?

First contact can be a delicate business. When humans encounter aliens (or fairies, or other creatures) for the first time, it can easily go very, very wrong. Any first meeting between two peoples can turn bloody at a moment’s notice. But what’s the most horrific first contact scenario in science fiction and fantasy? Please include…

100 Years Of Solitude Author Gabriel Garcia Marquez Was Irreplaceable

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who died today aged 87, did not invent the genre of magical realism — but he helped to popularize it and advance it with novels like One Hundred Years of Solitude and Autumn of the Patriarch. Speculative fiction still hasn’t risen fully to the challenge of Marquez’s work. Marquez first rose to…

The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin is becoming an e-book at last! Celebrate by reading an excerpt over at Slate.

We Can Now Read About Ginny Weasley’s Post-Hogwarts Career

The epilogue to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows told us a little bit about Ginny Weasley’s life after Hogwarts, but it didn’t tell us whether this Gryffindor alum took a job. Now, The Daily Prophet dispatches show what Ginny has been up to in the wizarding world. Over at her site Pottermore (which requires…

A 400 Year Old Utopia That Includes Polygamy And Eugenics

City of the Sun by Tommaso Campanella is one of the earliest utopian novels — and one of the rarest, since only 20 copies exist. One of those has just come into the library at UC Riverside, where you can read it if you have California ID. (And read Latin.) Completed in 1602 during Campanella’s…