Tag Archives: Writing

A Coffee Table Book that Traces the Earliest History of Science Fiction [Book Review]

Science fiction scholar Mike Ashley provides a textual accompaniment to the British Library’s exhibition Out of This World Science Fiction: but not as you know it with his large full-color coffee table book that traces various themes within science fic… Continue reading

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Puns, Puzzles, and Easter eggs in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale [Books]

Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale is justly admired as one of the great dystopian novels, but just how deep does it go? Daniel Abraham, author of The Dragon’s Path and many other novels, and co-author of Leviathan Wakes, explores the clues in Atwoo… Continue reading

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Kelly Link blows your mind all over again [Afternoon Reading]

Kelly Link’s latest short story sneaks up on you — at first you think it's just a concentrated dose of weirdness, a jarring head-trip like being suspended by your ankles over the ocean. But then her strange world-building starts to make sense, an… Continue reading

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Another book with science fiction themes wins a Pulitzer Prize [Books]

A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan just won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, after beating out Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom for the prestigious National Book Critics Circle prize earlier this month.
Goon Squad is a collection of loosely connecte… Continue reading

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Why did the BBC’s tribute to books ignore genre fiction? [Books]

Britain’s BBC 2 had a whole evening of book-related programming in celebration of World Book Night, including the promisingly titled The Books We Really Read: A Culture Show Special. So why did the featured books not include genre fiction?
That’s what … Continue reading

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Masters of science and science fiction pick the genre’s greatest forgotten classics [Writing]

New Scientist asked ten scientists and fiction writers, including William Gibson, Kim Stanley Robinson and Margaret Atwood, to name their favorite “lost scifi classics.” And to celebrate, New Scientist’s having a fiction contest, judged by Neil Gaiman…. Continue reading

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10 great science fiction novels that have been banned [Top 10]

In honor of Banned Books Week, Geekosystem’s Susana Polo looks at 10 great science fiction novels that have been banned, or at least threatened with removal from libraries and schools. Including some major classics of the genre!
These titles are among … Continue reading

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Seeing the truth of the world via science fiction [Philosophy]

Science fiction takes us out of our own time and place, and confronts us with alien objects as well as incomprehensible future artifacts. By doing this, argues Daniel Rourke, SF brings us closer to seeing things as they really are.
Mid-way through H.G…. Continue reading

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David Mitchell’s new novel may turn out to be science fiction after all [Books]

After David Mitchell’s brilliant Cloud Atlas included science fiction in its genre mash-up, we were sad to hear his new book was straight-up litfic. But turns out it’s the first volume of a trilogy… that will turn very science fictional.
Mitchell was… Continue reading

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