Books

Here’s Your Chance To Discover The Best of Russian Science Fiction

Most of us are familiar with the Strugatsky Brothers and one or two other Russian writers—but most of the science fiction produced in Russia during the 20th century remains a mystery. That’s about to change. Cornell University Professor Anindita Banerjee and University of Richmond Professor Yvonne Howell are putting out a whole book of Russian…

Why You Will Never Be Safe from Spoilers on the Internet

A couple years ago, I wanted to find out the name of the actor who played my favorite character on House of Cards, so I googled the character. Big mistake. The very first Google search result was the character’s House of Cards Wikia page—including date of death. I didn’t even have to click on the…

Here’s Your First Look at the Next Fantastic Novel From M.R. Carey!

M.R. Carey’s novel The Girl With all the Gifts blew our minds, in a very good way. It was Joss Whedon’s new favorite book, too. So it’s absolutely fantastic news that Carey has a new novel coming in early April 2016! Here’s your first look at Fellside, exclusively at io9! Here are the first two…

Maze Runner Writer James Dashner Is Ending His New Saga—And We’ve Got An Exclusive Look

The Maze Runner by James Dashner has become a huge publishing sensation, and now it’s making waves at the movies. But Dashner has already moved on to his next series, the Mortality Doctrine trilogy. Here’s an exclusive excerpt from the final novel, The Game of Lives. In The Game of Lives, the virtual reality VirtNet…

What’s The Wildest Thing You’ve Discovered So Far In This Year’s NaNoWriMo?

We’re almost one-third of the way into National Novel Writing Month, which means that the plot is thickening and the action is getting intense for your story and characters. How is it going so far? And what’s the wildest thing you’ve found out from this crazy process? The main idea behind NaNoWriMo is to get…

Dammit, Starz’ Miriam Black TV show adaptation seems to be dead. Author Chuck Wendig just gave notice that Starz had chosen not to bring his foul-mouthed, self-destructive, mystical death-seer to series. Although Wendig does have some good news—the last four books in the Blackbirds series will arrive in rapid succession, beginning March 2017. Contact the…

You Can Help Write The First Fully Crowdsourced Science Fiction Novel (Or Just Watch It Grow)

There have been a lot of brave and strange experiments in science fiction writing and publishing over the years—but one of the strangest is going on right now. CNet’s Eric Mack is “crowdsourcing” a science fiction novel—and you can be part of it. Basically, the novel, called Human Capital, is being written in a Google…

David Mitchell Breaks It Down About Book Snobbery: “The Book Doesn’t Care If It’s Science Fiction”

David Mitchell just won a World Fantasy Award for The Bone Clocks, and he’s one of the most exciting voices in speculative fiction right now. But he’s usually classified as a literary author—and talking to the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast, he explains why that’s largely meaningless. Says Mitchell: It’s convenient to have a…

John Joseph Adams Has Cloned Himself And Is Now Editing Twice As Much Stuff

John Joseph Adams already edits Lightspeed Magazine (which runs a story once a month at io9), Nightmare Magazine and a huge number of anthologies. Now he’s launching his own book line, with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, called John Joseph Adams Books/HMH. [Full disclosure: I have been featured in some of Adams’ anthologies.] Adams already worked with…

The Most Ludicrous James Bond Supervillain Schemes Of All Time

James Bond is known for his insane gadgets, but also for his totally unglued villains. When it comes to Rube Goldberg schemes, James Bond’s enemies reign supreme. To prove it, we’ve got a clip where Blofeld hypnotizes a woman to love chickens. It’s just one of the most insane James Bond villain plots of all…

All the Science Fiction and Fantasy Books You Can’t Afford To Miss in November!

The holidays are coming up, and there’s no better gift than piles of books. And luckily, there are tons of fantastic science fiction and fantasy books coming this month. Including Stephen King! Ethan Hawke! Plus time travel, space colonies, and tons more! Here are the books you can’t afford to miss in November. The Bazaar…

The Dumbest Thing The Star Wars Expanded Universe Did To Princess Leia

Star Wars’ old Expanded Universe is no more. Under the Disney regime, it has been relegated to the “Legends” banner, and the new official canon includes just the movies and TV shows, along with a whole new set of books, comics, etc. But somehow, one of the absolute worst EU books still has an enduring…

A True Crime Author Explains Why We’re Drawn to People Who Survive Against All Odds

In 1987, two women were pulled from a wrecked car in Los Angeles. The older passenger was dead; the younger, barely clinging to life. Investigators soon became suspicious: Why didn’t their injuries appear to be related to the wreck? And why did their clothes smell so strongly of gasoline? The true-crime tale detailed in Anthony…

io9 Book Club Is In Session: Let’s Talk About If Then by Matthew De Abaitua!

Welcome to the monthly meeting of the io9 Book Club. This month, we’ve read If Then by Matthew De Abaitua. Jump into comments to get started talking about it! What is this io9 Book Club all about? We meet once a month to discuss a book we’ve all read together, and then we have an…

The Golden Compass Resurrected as a British TV Series

You can’t keep a best-selling young adult fantasy novel trilogy down! The BBC has announced it’s making an eight-part miniseries based on Philip Pullman’s best-selling, critically acclaimed His Dark Materials book series. In 2007, of course, New Line made a big-budget film adaptation of the trilogy’s first volume, The Golden Compass (which is known in…

How Ta-Nehisi Coates Inspired a Book About the Hunt for Vulcan

The hunt for a hypothetical planet called Vulcan near Mercury fascinated author Tom Levenson for years. It took some tough talk from Ta-Nehisi Coates to get him to finally write a book about it. It was just a day or two, but sometime between the twelfth and eighteenth of November 1915, Albert Einstein lost his…

Amazon’s First Real Store Is Opening Tomorrow

Amazon, a company that made its name undercutting brick-and-mortar retailers usingcheap laborand UPS, is opening the doors to its first real book store in Seattle at 9.30AM tomorrow morning. The store, located in University Village, seems mostly to be a vanity project for Amazon in its hometown. There’s going to be about 5,000 books in…

Boston’s Most Controversial Buildings Prove That Concrete Can Be Beautiful

Boston, city of charming Colonial-era brick rowhouses lining narrow cobblestone streets. Not exactly the place you’d expect to incubate a modern design revolution. And yet, when Brutalism first came to the US, the hard-edge architectural movement took its firmest hold here. The new book Heroic: Concrete Architecture and the New Boston by Mark Pasnik, Chris…

Here’s Your Exclusive Excerpt From One of This Fall’s Most Exciting Space Novels, Planetfall

Emma Newman’s novel Planetfall is getting a ton of buzz, with people comparing it to Ursula K. Le Guin. And now you can see for yourself why, with our exclusive excerpt. In Planetfall, Renata “Ren” Ghali lives on an alien planet, in a seemingly perfect colony, underneath the mysterious structure called God’s City. But long-buried…

Learn to Take Drone Photographs That Are Breathtaking Art

Photographer Eric Cheng has captured some of the most dramatic natural phenomena on Earth with drones. And now he has a new book, Aerial Photography and Videography Using Drones, about learning the the art of drone photography. In this gallery from the book, he gives us the backstory on some of his most memorable shots.…