Books

Paging David Fincher: True crime’s hot streak continues with the news that Fox has just snapped up the rights to journalist Richard Lloyd Parry’s genuinely eerie 2010 best-seller People Who Eat Darkness, about a young British woman whose expat adventures in Tokyo met a horrifically grim end in 2000.

David G. Hartwell Kept Restoring Our Faith In Science Fiction

It’s actually impossible to sum up the huge contribution to genre publishing of David G. Hartwell, who died today according to Locus. He discovered countless great authors and industry professionals, and he edited Frank Herbert’s Children of Dune and Gene Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun. Hartwell is simply irreplaceable. Many people recognized Hartwell as…

Every Writer Who Freaks Out About Negative Reviews Needs To Read This Now

Mean book reviews are a fact of life nowadays. And if you spend any time in a workshop, you’re going to hear some pretty harsh feedback. But Cecilia Tan, the erotic speculative fiction mastermind behind the Magic University books, has some brilliant advice on her blog. Not only does Tan offer some great ideas about…

Wild West Novels Have Suddenly Gotten A Whole New Exciting Lease on Life

Lately, the Western novel has been getting really fun again. Most of us probably think of Louis L’Amour’s, or maybe Joe Lansdale’s classic Weird West stories. But there’s a slew of new Westerns, featuring diverse characters and bracing new storylines. We talked to four authors about the new wave of Westerns. In Gemma Files’ Hexslinger…

A Whole New Source for Awesome Science Fiction and Fantasy Books

Her Universe, the geek fashion company aimed at girls, just announced it was getting into publishing science fiction and fantasy books back in October. But they already have six titles coming in 2016. First up: Weirdest by Heather Nuhfer, who’s written Wonder Woman, Scooby-Doo and My Little Pony comics. Her Universe founder Ashley Eckstein, best…

How Aaron Swartz Caught the FBI’s Attention

In May 2006, Aaron Swartz wrote a blog post titled “The Book That Changed My Life.” The book in question, Understanding Power, is a series of transcribed discussions with the MIT linguist Noam Chomsky in which Chomsky analyzes and explains the ways in which political power is wielded, acquired, and guarded. “Reading the book, I…

JPL Rocket Scientist Shows Why He’s the Right Kind of Crazy

When NASA’s Curiosity rover landed on Mars in August 2012, millions of people across the globe tuned in to watch. It was the culmination of nine long years of effort — and it went off without a hitch. In particular, we marveled at the ingenious method designed by the engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory…

10 Heroes Whose Parents Were Somehow Not Dead or Evil

All of our favorite characters are orphans. Or else, they had horrendously abusive childhoods. Basically, giving characters childhood trauma is an all-purpose motivation—why else would someone be a vigilante/wizard/etc. unless something had gone wrong in their lives? But here are 10 people who had normal families that weren’t already dead—but they went on to become…

The Last-Minute Decision That Saved a Mission to Mars

In August 2012, millions of Earthlings watched live as a hovering sky crane dropped the Curiosity rover onto the surface of Mars, 140 million miles away. Rocket scientist Adam Steltzner was on the front lines for that mission, and takes us behind the scenes in his new book, The Right Kind of Crazy: A True…

Come To My Book Tour, and I Will Explain the Secrets of the Universe*

Unless you’ve been visiting one of the outer planets, you might know that I’ve got a book coming out in a week and a half. It’s called All the Birds in the Sky, and it’s the story of a witch and a mad scientist who feel all alone in the world, until they find each…

The War on Terror Gets REALLY Ugly, in Syfy’s Hunters

In Syfy’s next brand new show, Hunters, an FBI agent joins a special government division that fights against the worst kind of terrorists of all: aliens. And they may have taken his wife captive. This new trailer, shown today at the Television Critics Association, really hits the “War on Terror” themes hard. We’re excited for…

Swords, Scowls and Substandard CG in This Extended Beowulf Trailer

When ITV boasted it was birthing a new Beowulf TV series, we blessed our luck. But now a trailer traces the trajectory of this translation to television. And you can judge whether these jesters have done justice to the poem, or created junk. Beowulf bows on Jan. 23 on the bonny Esquire network, but beware.…

10 Things That Star Trek Got Right (That Have Never Been Copied)

This year is the 50th anniversary of Star Trek, and even after five decades there has never been another series like Gene Roddenberry’s brainchild. We’ve had plenty of spaceship shows since 1966, but some things about Trek remained unique. Here are 10 Star Trek achievements that nobody else managed to pull off. 1) Scripts by…

A Brilliant YouTube Channel Called Action Movie Kid Is Being Turned Into A Movie

A young boy’s imagination, a father’s skill with special effects, a YouTube channel, a book deal and now a major Hollywood motion picture. The tale of Action Movie Kid is pretty incredible. The story begins in 2014 when visual effects artist Daniel Hashimoto posted a video to YouTube enhancing his young son’s penchant for action…

How James Patterson Helped Reinvent Publishing

James Patterson hasn’t always written science fantasy or fantasy, apart from his recent young-adult series. But he’s radically changed the whole publishing industry, and especially the way that genre fiction is handled, over the past two decades. The New York Times has a fascinating look at “Patterson, Inc.” As the Times notes, since 2006, one…

”Reality Is Unknowable to Us’: The Dreamlike Fiction of Leena Krohn

Most U.S. readers probably haven’t heard of Leena Krohn, but among connoisseurs of weird fiction like Jeff VanderMeer, she’s a beloved icon. She’s also the winner of the Finlandia Prize, the most prestigious literary honor in her native Finland. And it’s a great time to discover her bizarre stories. In the New Yorker, there’s a…

How could The Winds of Winter get published just three months after George R.R. Martin finishes it? Over at Tor.com, there’s a great breakdown of why book production generally takes a year, and how they might streamline it for A Song of Ice and Fire. Top image:2016 Song of Ice and Fire calendar, art by…

How Kurt Vonnegut’s Famous Older Brother Inspired Him To Write Science Fiction

When Kurt Vonnegut was working as a PR flak at General Electric, his older brother Bernard was a famous scientist. And Kurt was there when Bernard demonstrated his incredible new invention: a way to seed clouds with dry ice and silver iodide and make it rain. Could this be used as a weapon? At the…

It Turns Out the Next Game of Thrones Book Isn’t Late at All

I know a lot of people were bummed out when author George R.R. Martin finally confessed that the much-anticipated fifth in his A Song of Ice and Fire series wouldn’t be out before the sixth season of Game of Thrones. But it turns out the long-delayed book may actually be right on time. The Washington…

J.K. Rowling Celebrated the End of Harry Potter by (Very Lightly) Trashing Her Hotel Room

Many a rock star has trashed a hotel room to celebrate a triumphant performance. It turns out rock stars of the children’s literature world do the same, they just tend to be a lot more polite about it. Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling tweeted the below picture, confessing that when she was done writing the…