Books

A campaign to replace the N-word in Huckleberry Finn with the word “robot”

Chances are you’ve heard about an Alabama publisher’s NewSouth Books plans to release an edition of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn that replaces Twain’s many uses of the N-word with the word “slave.” To protest NewSouth’s revision, Gabriel Diani and Etta Devine started a satirical Kickstarter project devoted to publishing an edition of Huck…

io9 Cyriaque Lamar

First screens from Game of Thrones PC game

Looks like there’s a dance with dragons happening in your town, in this awesome screen from the Game of Thrones: Genesis tie-in game. According to the early buzz, this will be a strategy-based game, in which the raw cunning of a Tyrion Lannister can outweigh the might of a dozen armies. Let’s hope the game…

io9 Charlie Jane Anders

Soar into danger, with the stunning artwork of Christopher Moore

A ship plunges boldly into the swirling eye of an event horizon, criss-crossed by a searing beam of purple light. What happens next? It’s the sort of tantalizing image that leaves you dreaming — and desperate to read the book that the image adorns. Chances are you’ve already drooled over Christopher Moore’s absolutely stunning science-fiction…

io9 Charlie Jane Anders

Michel Gondry is adapting Philip K. Dick’s Ubik

Philip K. Dick’s insanely complicated, mind-bending novel Ubik is being adapted by Michel Gondry. It’s a match made in creepy alternate universe heaven. Clotted milk and stale cigarettes for everyone! The news comes from French site Allocine which we’ve loosely translated for you here: To celebrate the launch of The Factory Movie Lovers [an exhibit]…

io9 Meredith Woerner

Action-packed featurette actually makes I Am Number Four look bad-ass

We’ve been calling I Am Number Four “Twilight with aliens” for some time. But this latest little FX and stunt featurette finally showcases the stuff that gets us excited. Extraterrestrial weaponry, katanas, superpowered flips, and ALIENS ON JET SKIS! The movie, based on the novel by Pittacus Lore (the pen name for James Frey and…

io9 Meredith Woerner

J.K. Rowling’s Secret of Writing Fantasy for Mainstream Readers

Sometimes we’re apt to see fantasy and science fiction as eternally under siege and in danger of being driven out by a harsh, unforgiving market. But many SF/fantasy authors are doing incredibly well, and plenty of others are holding steady. Over at the Clarion Foundation blog, literary agent Russell Galen with Scovil Galen Ghoush Literary…

Books & Comics Charlie Jane Anders

Why Fritz Leiber is the least-known science fiction author you need to know

I’ll admit it: I’m obsessed with Fritz Leiber’s novel Our Lady of Darkness. It’s pretty much the best book I’ve ever read about my hometown, San Francisco – but it’s also just a great work of urban fantasy that seamlessly blends sexually liberated 1970s California with ancient forces of darkness drawn from pulp fiction. Lieber’s…

io9 Annalee Newitz

All-Star Superman’s Christina Hendricks reveals the comics she craves… and her Wonder Woman future

We spoke to Mrs. Mal Reynolds herself — Christina Hendricks, about comics and other-worldly heroes. What sort of comics has the Mad Men star picked up since taking on the role of Lois Lane in the animated version of All-Star Superman? We also chatted with Hendricks and her husband Geoffrey Arend (Devil, Super Troopers) about…

io9 Meredith Woerner

Scenes from an Urban Fantasy Roadtrip

Kim Harrison, author of the Rachel Morgan novels, created a fantastical road trip for the latest book, Pale Demon. And to research her story, she actually traveled across the country. Here’s her story of a fantasy roadtrip gone wrong… in a good way. Ask an author what their favorite perk of the job is, and…

Books & Comics Kim Harrison

The movie version of Ian McDonald’s futuristic Bollywood epic is “on the fast track”

Ian McDonald’s River of Gods imagines a future, high-tech version of India — so it’s not surprising that Indian movie-makers are interested in putting it on film. Jai Khanna, an executive with Los Angeles production company Brillstein Partners, tells Bollyspice that a River of Gods movie is “on the fast track.” According to Bollyspice: It…

Movies Charlie Jane Anders

Why don’t we see more stories about how technology can set us free?

We’ve all seen proof that technology can bring people together and change the world. People are crediting Facebook with helping to organize the Egyptian protests that led to the resignation of Hosni Mubarak. It turns out that our faith in technology’s ability to empower people wasn’t misplaced after all. So where are all the stories…

io9 Charlie Jane Anders

What if The Great Gatsby was a surreal Nintendo game circa 1989?

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is chock full o’ symbolism, but what if you actually had to battle the laser eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg? The folks over at Great Gatsby Game “found” a strange NES cartridge at a yard sale and were surprised to find that the game transformed Fitzgerald’s prose into…

io9 Cyriaque Lamar

Artist’s 3D Typography Gives New Life to Forgotten Books

The written word can indeed be considered art, with the author’s descriptions creating vivid scenes in the mind of the reader. But only rarely do the pages themselves actually become artwork, as they have at the hands of Isaac Salazar. Working with the pages of “discarded and unloved” books he creates rather striking and ingenious…

Books & Comics Jack Loftus

World War Z author Max Brooks explains zombie outbreaks, and why hippies won’t survive them

There’s a great interview with World War Z author Max Brooks in the student newspaper of UNC Asheville, where Brooks is going to be giving a talk and teaching a creative writing class. Brooks talks about how he wrote his Zombie Survival Guide for fun, and never intended to publish it, and how he spent…

io9 Charlie Jane Anders

The Rise of the eBooks Continues

Not a good day for books (in the physical sense): first Borders files for bankruptcy. Then the NY Times factors eBooks into their bestseller list. Paperbacks and hardcovers must be feeling like the fat, ugly stepsisters right now. [WSJ and SAI]

Books & Comics Adrian Covert

Carbon dating shows the world’s most mysterious document may be older than previously thought.

The Voynich Manuscript first came to (modern) light in 1912. It is named after Wilfrid Voynich, a rare book dealer who plucked the forgotten tome from a dusty shelf in a Jesuit college near Rome, and made it famous. Illustrations of planets, plants, and ‘bathing’ women decorate its pages. It is also covered with dense…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell

Over a century ago, the giant cuttlefish put up a spectacular fight

This is an illustration of a giant cuttlefish battling brave sailors, depicted in a popular science book from 1872, called The Ocean World, by Louis Figuier. And that’s not the least of the weirdness that lurks in Figuier’s book. See more insanely cool illustrations from many decades ago at Old Book Illustrations. Thanks, Bec!

io9 Annalee Newitz

First video of the dwarf and hobbit cast of Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit, together at last

All 13 dwarves (and 1 hobbit) lined up for a press conference for Peter Jackson’s adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit. So here they are for the first time, and on video, together: the stars of The Hobbit. Weta held a press conference for the new Hobbit movie, and brought all of the dwarfs (and…

io9 Meredith Woerner

Want to know what life will be like for female military leaders of the future? Read Lois McMaster Bujold.

We have so few examples of female military leaders on Earth that only science fiction offers a glimpse of what it will be like when women are leaders during wartime. And that’s one of the many reasons you’ll get sucked into Lois McMaster Bujold’s classic novels Shards of Honor and Barrayar (now collected into one…

io9 Annalee Newitz

Science fiction heroes who tried to abuse patent law

If you’re smart, the first thing that comes to mind when you think about visiting other universes or traveling through time is “file a ton of patents.” After all, just because someone else invented something, doesn’t mean you can’t patent it, if you get there first. Reverse-engineering is still a kind of engineering, right? Read…

io9 Charlie Jane Anders

A campaign to replace the N-word in Huckleberry Finn with the word “robot”

First screens from Game of Thrones PC game

Soar into danger, with the stunning artwork of Christopher Moore

Michel Gondry is adapting Philip K. Dick’s Ubik

Action-packed featurette actually makes I Am Number Four look bad-ass

J.K. Rowling’s Secret of Writing Fantasy for Mainstream Readers

Why Fritz Leiber is the least-known science fiction author you need to know

All-Star Superman’s Christina Hendricks reveals the comics she craves… and her Wonder Woman future

Scenes from an Urban Fantasy Roadtrip

The movie version of Ian McDonald’s futuristic Bollywood epic is “on the fast track”

Why don’t we see more stories about how technology can set us free?

What if The Great Gatsby was a surreal Nintendo game circa 1989?

Artist’s 3D Typography Gives New Life to Forgotten Books

World War Z author Max Brooks explains zombie outbreaks, and why hippies won’t survive them

The Rise of the eBooks Continues

Carbon dating shows the world’s most mysterious document may be older than previously thought.

Over a century ago, the giant cuttlefish put up a spectacular fight

First video of the dwarf and hobbit cast of Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit, together at last

Want to know what life will be like for female military leaders of the future? Read Lois McMaster Bujold.

Science fiction heroes who tried to abuse patent law

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