Amazon just announced a virtual land grab of genre titles that it’s putting into development: Larry Niven’s scifi classic Ringworld; Neal Stephenson’s cult classic Snow Crash; and Greg Rucka’s acclaimed comic Lazarus. In a perfect world, we could be seeing all three made into drama series.
Science fiction and fantasy specialist Del Rey Books is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year, and to celebrate, the imprint is reissuing paperbacks of classic titles featuring smashing new cover art. We’re pleased to debut the first three right here on io9.
Excellent news for fans of Neal Stephenson’s excellent sci-fi novel: It’s being turned into a movie, courtesy of the creative team that brought Apollo 13 to life .
Over at Reddit, there’s a terrific discussion among real scientists, talking about the books they love—and the things that drive them nuts. Peeves include fake “chaos theory” magic, “You only use 10 percent of your brain,” futures without advanced computers, and the genetics in Neal Stephenson’s Seveneves.
This has been a tough year. Pop culture let us down in many ways, even as our political system and our social institutions revealed a deeper seam of ugliness. But speculative fiction still offers us hope: not just optimism about human ingenuity, but actual reasons to look forward and keep our heads up.
This has been a really great year for science fiction, fantasy and horror books, taking us to fabulous worlds and opening our minds to new ideas and brilliant new characters. Here’s our list of the most amazing books we read this year.
MIT’s Technology Review has a bit of a secret: just about every year, they put together a science fiction edition titled Twelve Tomorrows. It’s one of the best collections of short science fiction out there, and you can now preorder the upcoming issue.
Science fiction and fantasy offer a rich legacy of great books—but that abundant pile of reading material can also be daunting. So sometimes, it’s easier to fake it. We asked some of our favorite writers, and they told us the 10 books that everyone pretends to have read. And why you should actually read them.
“As the 21st century unfolds, science fiction increasingly comes to seem like a realist rather than a speculative genre,” says one essay/book review in the L.A. Review of Books. It’s just one of a few great pieces up at the LARB site right now, about the choice of futures we face: Mad Max versus Star Trek.
Want to know more about the mysterious Magic Leap and its plan to make virtual objects appear in the real world? Watch this fireside chat with three of the company’s leaders, including Snow Crash author Neal Stephenson. [MIT Tech Review]
Neal Stephenson, author of the acclaimed novels Snow Crash, Cryptonomicon, and Anathem, is here to talk about his latest, Seveneves, and chat with us about his visions of the future.
Famed scifi author Neal Stephenson’s new novel Seveneves is out today, and one of the most exciting things about it is that it’s packed with realistic representations of space megastructures where humans live. We talked to Stephenson about his ideas, and have some exclusive art from Weta showing what they look like.
The following excerpt is chapter one from Neal Stephenson’s new novel, Seveneves. Stephenson is also the author of the novels Snow Crash, Cryptonomicon, and Anathem.
We all know that economists love science fiction — especially Isaac Asimov fan Paul Krugman. But science fiction and fantasy can also help teach ordinary people about the Dismal Science. Here are 22 great science fiction and fantasy stories that can help you make sense of economics.
With so many prominent scientists warning about the dangers of rogue artificial intelligence, and so many ethical concerns coming down the pike in A.I. research and computer science generally, how can computer experts educate themselves? By reading science fiction books.
Magic Leap's mysterious augmented reality tech promises to "bring magic back into the world." And now Neal Stephenson, who imagined the virtual Metaverse in his 1992 novel Snow Crash, has joined the company. He tells io9 why this technology may "demand a new way of thinking."
Sabering, or sabrage, is a champagne-opening art popularized at the time of Napoleon's military campaigns. In this video, Neal Stephenson, the author who gave us Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon, shows that doing it properly requires not blunt force, but elegance, precision and a knowledge of physics.
Cimarronin is about silver, sword-fighting and slavery in 17th-century Mexico. The comic grew out of an all-star collaboration between scifi writers Neal Stephenson and Mark Teppo, science writer Charles C. Mann (1491), and artist Robert Sammelin. We've got a sumptuous preview.
Tomorrow sees the publication of Hieroglyph, a book of optimistic science fiction spearheaded by Neal Stephenson's famous call to arms . And we've got an exclusive excerpt from Madeline Ashby's weird, bracing short story, in which she imagines a world without border fences.
