Editor’s note: Joel is reading his way through the finalists for the 2012 Nebula Award for best sci-fi/fantasy novel. Read his introduction here. Geeks have been known to get into heated debates about what constitutes “real” science-fiction. Call Star Wars sci-fi in the wrong room, and you are opening yourself up to a pedantic lecture […]
Any science fiction and fantasy reader can rattle off a list of the Golden Age masters: Bradbury, Asimov, Heinlein, Herbert, Tolkien, LeGuin. But what are the new classics? The recent works we’ll still be talking about in 50 years? Below, you’ll find our picks: 15 unmissable sci-fi and fantasy milestones from the past 15 years.
One Author, Nine Planets, and Half a Library There used to be a poster hanging in one of my long-ago English classrooms that read: “In order to write a single book, one must turn over half a library.” I’ve long forgetten the attribution, so forgive me, but I’ve thought of that phrase over and over […]
Domed cities have been a thing in science fiction since the very beginning, a salient metaphor made almost inescapable by its obviousness: inside, outside; same, same, not the same. The domed city is such a striking image, an enclosure of humanity out there on the Martian plains, or on a ravaged, post-apocalyptic Earth, or glinting in space in […]
We just finished rescuing Matt Damon from Mars and we’re already looking forward to our return trip: following a year of rumors, Spike TV has given a straight-to-series greenlight to the long-simmering adaptation of Kim Stanley Robinson’s bestselling, award-laden Mars trilogy. A 10-episode season of Red Mars is projected to air in January 2017. This is fantastic news, and signals that […]