Why the Wall Street Journal is Wrong about Young Adult Books
It feels like every blogger and YA writer online has already commented on the Wall Street Journal article that sparked a Twitter upheaval (#YAsaves). If you need a run-down of it, Bookshelves of Doom (in a post appropriately titled “Another Day, Another Ill-informed Article About YA“) has a summary. My favorite part was this: …the…
Organ Theft and the Insanity of Geniuses: A History of Mad Scientists in the Industrial Age
Victor von Frankenstein was the iconic mad scientist of the 19th century, but he had competition for that role. Here is the bizarre and uncanny history of the greatest mad scientists of the industrial age. You can read the first part of this essay, on pre-19th century mad scientists, here. https://gizmodo.com/alchemists-astronomers-and-wild-men-a-history-of-the-5805477 The first major mad…
What does the first review of A Dance With Dragons say?
Publisher’s Weekly has published the first (and slightly spoilerific) review of A Dance with Dragons. The general vibe of the review is positive, but it suggests that the novel has the same ‘feel’ as A Feast for Crows, despite more important events due to the book’s focus on more popular and plot-centric characters like Tyrion,…
A horrifying Samuel Beckett short story…in 3D?
Grasping onto a torch I peer into a world of naked bodies. One grimaces at me and bangs his head against a wall. Others hardly stir: instead, they stare at the ground in despair. I am gazing at the virtual world of Unmakeablelove, a 3D interactive simulation based on Samuel Beckett’s short prose work The…
Outcasts, Artists, and Dreamers: They All End Up In Bordertown
Bordertown disappeared thirteen years ago and some people have since stopped believing it was ever there at all. They make up stories and act as if The World and the Elflands have never touched. They pretend that the gritty bohemia of Bordertown, or B-Town, never existed, was only ever rumors and gossip. There were never…
Behind the Fiction: The science of Robopocalypse
Daniel Wilson’s much-anticipated novel Robopocalypse hits bookstores this week. It’s the hyper-realistic story of a robot uprising, and is already being made into a Steven Spielberg film slated for 2013 release. Author Wilson gives us a brief excerpt from the opening of the novel here, then explains the scientific research that went into creating a…
Alchemists, Astronomers, and Wild Men: A History of the Mad Scientist, Part One
The mad scientist is one of the standard archetypes of modern popular culture. Widespread in the pulps of the 1920s and 1930s, its modern inception dates back to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818). But the roots of the mad scientist go much farther back than Shelley, as we’ll see. Painting of Prometheus by Elsie Russell The…
10 Fantasy Sagas That Are Wronger Than Twilight
Soon enough we’ll get to see how legendary director Bill Condon brings to life the incredibly messed-up conclusion to Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight saga. Chances are, we’re in for one of the all-time great “did I just see that?” scenes. (For details of just what we’re in for, click here. Beware spoilers.) https://gizmodo.com/best-and-worst-childbirth-scenes-in-science-fiction-and-5633419 But hard as…