Books

Great science fiction authors tell us which novels they wish they’d written themselves

We look to the great SF authors and get inspiration from their work — along with a healthy dose of envy, sometimes. It’s impossible to read the works of authors like Vernor Vinge and Maureen McHugh without wishing we could have pulled something like that off. But which works do the great SF authors wish…

Books & Comics Charlie Jane Anders

Game of Thrones Wedding Invites Promise a Day They’ll Never Forget

Let your guests know that you plan on getting married, getting pregnant, and then scarfing down a horse heart with your own Game of Thrones wedding invitations. Created by Nimbi Designs these GOT invites are seriously stylish and crazy gorgeous. It’s perfect for any fan who wants to cast an aura of fear, respect and…

Television Meredith Woerner

You’ve really never seen the Land of Oz like this before

We’ll be seeing a lot of strange versions of L. Frank Baum’s Wizard of Oz this year, including Sam Raimi’s Oz: The Great and Powerful, and possibly the long-delayed Dorothy of Oz movie with the voice of Patrick Stewart. But these might just be the strangest visions of Oz you’ll see for quite some time.…

Books & Comics Charlie Jane Anders

Five Books Every Aspiring Designer Must Read

Maybe you’re an engineer, or maybe you work with a designer. Or maybe you think that design is about using Photoshop. Maybe you just care about design. If any of these are true, then there’s a lot you can learn by reading and understanding these books. They’ll help you understand how to solve problems for…

Tech News David McKinney - The Tech Block

Physicist aims to publish a science fiction novel to raise $2 million for new laser weapons

A physicist is asking for help publishing his wild new science fiction book series — and possibly also creating a new superweapon that would change the face of war forever. Australian-born physicist Adam Weigold is trying to raise $20,000 on Kickstarter to pay for editing and marketing for his novel Dragon Empire, which is about…

Books & Comics Charlie Jane Anders

Quite Possibly The Weirdest Book Covers Since the Invention of Paper

It feels kind of mean to laugh at the covers of self-published and indie books — but some of the DIY covers out there do lend themselves to a kind of delightful head-scratching. There’s a tumblr devoted to mocking Lousy Book Covers, and not surprisingly it’s becoming insanely popular. (And Shumate also runs a site…

Books & Comics Charlie Jane Anders

Read an exclusive short story from one of the year’s most acclaimed collections

Manuel Gonzales’ bizarre, fantastical story collection The Miniature Wife is getting rave reviews from the likes of Charles Yu and Hannah Tinti. It was named one of last week’s best books by Publisher’s Weekly, which also gave it a starred review. And people are comparing Gonzales, executive director of the Austin Bat Cave, to David…

Books & Comics Manuel Gonzales

The Ultimate Recipe for a Dark Hero’s Dark Journey into Darkness

This summer, everybody is going into a very dark place. Superman is growing an underwater beard and getting angsty, Iron Man is getting his soul crushed, and Star Trek wants you to know that it’s going into darkness so badly, they put that in the title. So if you’re planning to film an epic story…

Movies Charlie Jane Anders

A Memory of Light delivers a better ending than Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series probably deserves

Let’s start with a spoiler-free review, shall we? A Memory of Light is an incredibly fitting end to Robert Jordan’s sprawling, immersive and often aggravating Wheel of Time saga. It’s both epic and weirdly perfunctory, as Brandon Sanderson — who of course took over for Robert Jordan when he died in 2007 — manages to…

Books & Comics Rob Bricken

San Antonio’s Launching the First Completely Bookless Public Library

Books, who needs ’em? Libraries? Not anymore they don’t. The first public, bookless library is coming to San Antonio soon and, possibly, to a (dystopic?) future near you. The new book-free library, called “BiblioTech,” is intended to open in the fall and is part of a an entire bookless public library system planned for the…

Books & Comics Eric Limer

The Webcomic Guide to the Apocalypse: Plague

We’re going to be seeing a glut of apocalyptic movies this year, even though audiences are starting to get weary of watching the world end. While Hollywood looks for new ways to blow up the Earth, I’ll be taking a look back at how the apocalypse looked when science fiction was new. In a series…

Books & Comics Lauren Davis

Impale Your Books With a Katana Sword So They Never Topple

Samurais are a resourceful bunch, roaming the country looking for freelance work. So it’s no surprise they’ve come up with a really simple way to keep books on a shelf from falling over: just stab them all through the heart with a sword. Or at least we’re assuming that’s how this Katana Bookend from Mustard…

Books & Comics Andrew Liszewski

The Shocking Truth About Rejection Letters

When you send in your beloved short story to a fiction magazine and get a rejection letter back, try not to take it personally. Because, as Beth Wodzinski at Shimmer Magazine reveals, it was probably written by a badger. As Wodzinski explains, she’s trying to drag the badger-based rejection letter industry into the 21st century…

Books & Comics Charlie Jane Anders

Ask Gail Carriger anything you want about Soulless and the Parasol Protectorate series

In December, the io9 book club read Soulless, the first novel in Gail Carriger’s bestselling Parasol Protectorate series. On Monday, January 14, Carriger will be joining us to answer any of your questions — about the book, about the series, or just about writing in general. She’ll be here from 4-5 PM Pacific Time on…

Books & Comics Annalee Newitz

Read a very punny excerpt from Piers Anthony’s new Xanth novel, Luck of the Draw

If you’re like a lot of fantasy and SF lovers, you grew up reading Piers Anthony’s goofy, punny Xanth series, about a bunch of hapless citizens of a magical world called Xanth. (People from our world are known as Mundanes.) Every person from Xanth is born with a special magical power, which might be super-powerful,…

Books & Comics Annalee Newitz

The new Captain Underpants book proves that time travel can still be a blast

Time travel is one of the funnest concepts in science fiction — you can meet yourself, you can have Joan of Arc wreak havoc in a shopping mall, you can shred on the guitar in the 1950s. But all too often, people get hung up on trying to be clever, or fancy, or deep. Leave…

io9 Charlie Jane Anders

Worldbuilding is the main reason so many of us fall in love with fantasy

Worldbuilding isn’t just one of the cool features of fantasy novels, or a secondary source of entertainment — it’s the chief feature that draws people to well-built fantasy worlds, and draws so many people into the works of J.R.R. Tolkien and George R.R. Martin. That’s what Throne of the Crescent Moon author Saladin Ahmed argues,…

io9 Charlie Jane Anders

Sequence an award-winning science fiction writer’s genome, while Neil Gaiman sings to you

Author Jay Lake, the winner the Campbell Award and numerous other honors, is undergoing his fourth round of chemotherapy right now — and you can help him fight his cancer. Some of your favorite science fiction and fantasy authors have donated “acts of whimsy,” to raise money to sequence Jay Lake’s genome and possibly suggest…

io9 Charlie Jane Anders

10 Landmarks in Science Fiction History That Could Happen in Your Lifetime

The Golden Age of science fiction is long over. But some of the genre’s greatest moments haven’t arrived yet. There are major landmarks in the history of science fiction that are just on the horizon — and some of them could arrive in your lifetime. Technology may have caught up to science fiction in some…

io9 Charlie Jane Anders

How Science Fiction Book Covers Moved From Cheese to High Art… and Back Again

Over in The Atlantic, there’s a great quick-and-dirty history of the science fiction book cover, courtesy of the folks at SF bookstore Singularity & Co. Starting with the pulpy artwork of artists like Frank R. Paul and others, the covers progressed into some fairly cartoony images of aliens and rocketships in the 1950s, before embracing…

io9 Charlie Jane Anders

Great science fiction authors tell us which novels they wish they’d written themselves

Game of Thrones Wedding Invites Promise a Day They’ll Never Forget

You’ve really never seen the Land of Oz like this before

Five Books Every Aspiring Designer Must Read

Physicist aims to publish a science fiction novel to raise $2 million for new laser weapons

Quite Possibly The Weirdest Book Covers Since the Invention of Paper

Read an exclusive short story from one of the year’s most acclaimed collections

The Ultimate Recipe for a Dark Hero’s Dark Journey into Darkness

A Memory of Light delivers a better ending than Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series probably deserves

San Antonio’s Launching the First Completely Bookless Public Library

The Webcomic Guide to the Apocalypse: Plague

Impale Your Books With a Katana Sword So They Never Topple

The Shocking Truth About Rejection Letters

Ask Gail Carriger anything you want about Soulless and the Parasol Protectorate series

Read a very punny excerpt from Piers Anthony’s new Xanth novel, Luck of the Draw

The new Captain Underpants book proves that time travel can still be a blast

Worldbuilding is the main reason so many of us fall in love with fantasy

Sequence an award-winning science fiction writer’s genome, while Neil Gaiman sings to you

10 Landmarks in Science Fiction History That Could Happen in Your Lifetime

How Science Fiction Book Covers Moved From Cheese to High Art… and Back Again

Up to $1,550 Off on pCloud: Pay Once, Protect Data Forever for World Backup Day

National Film and Sound Archive of Australia Adds ‘Succulent Chinese Meal’ Guy

Feds Sniffing Around Polymarket After Suspicious Bets

DJI Osmo 360 Review: The Best 360 Camera for the DJI-Pilled

Don’t Get Too Attached to Any AI App

‘Paradise’ Writer Teases What’s Coming in Season 3 After That Huge Twist

Trump’s New White House App Is Mildly Concerning and Weird for a Lot of Reasons

Bloodsucking Ticks Can Survive Inside Your Home Longer Than You Might Think

Aqara Smart Lock U400 Review: Hands-free Unlocking at Its Best

MSI Prestige 14 Flip AI+ Review: A Solid 2-in-1 Laptop With Some Glaring Flaws

Sonos Play Review: Call It a Comeback

Sonos Era 100 SL Review: The Cheapest Way Into Wired Sonos Sound

Asus ROG’s Massive Swift OLED Gaming Monitor Epitomizes Excess in the Best Way

The Ikea Varmblixt Smart Lamp Fills a Donut Hole in My Life

Nothing Headphone A vs. Headphone 1: Which Pair of ANC Wireless Headphones Wins?

Asus ROG’s Cetra Open Wireless Gaming Earbuds Might Be Better Than Wearing a Headset

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