Mars in Pulp Fiction

11 Dystopian Novels to Read Now

The list, care of the Huffington Post.

The History of the Dystopian Novel

Ink Tank gives a brief overview, here.

From the piece...

Dystopia has been a recurrent theme of popular and literary fiction since way back in the eighteenth century. Evolving not simply as a response to fictional utopian concerns, but also as a response to the prevalent or ominous ideals and politics of the writer’s time, the dystopian novel tends to use its make-believe guise as a front to critique the ideologies under which they’ve been forged.

When it seeks to explore political and social shortcomings, then, these books don’t tend to be shy about their revolutionary aims. Nasty visions of totalitarian regimes and post-apocalyptic disaster scenarios litter the genre’s history, and it’s got strong links to other literary scenes, too, like travel writing, satire and, not least, science fiction. 

Some Great Vintage Sci-Fi Covers

Enjoy!

100 Best Science Fiction Stories Written by Women

The list (with links to many of the stories), care of It Doesn't Have to Be Right.

Penguin's Science Fiction Covers

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HP Lovecraft - the Writer Out of Time

He had one of the bleakest worldviews ever committed to paper, was racist – and could be a terrible writer. So why is HP Lovecraft more popular than ever?

From a piece in the Guardian...

 Lovecraft's work is not obviously child-friendly. "I am so beastly tired of mankind and the world," he once wrote, "that nothing can interest me unless it contains a couple of murders on each page, or deals with the horrors unnameable and unaccountable that leer down from the external universes." So why a baby book? "When we first printed Baby's First Mythos a decade ago," says Erica Henderson, "it was meant as more of a novelty for adults. But parents came back to us years later and said they were teaching their children with it. I think people like it when horror is subverted."

Why does she think he is so popular? "Lovecraft made a world where humans are alone, floating on a rock in a terrifying larger universe that we cannot possibly comprehend because our time in it has been so short and we are so insignificant compared to the horrors from the Cthulhu Mythos. So much of modern horror is based on that idea. We wouldn't have Ghostbusters if it weren't for Lovecraft – and that's the best argument I can think of for his work."

Psychedelic Vintage Norwegian Sci-Fi Book Covers

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10 Novels More Action Packs That Summer Blockbusters

The list, care of io9.

Ender's Game

The First Draft of George Lucas's Star Wars Coming Soon as a Graphic Novel

Dark Horse will release an 8-issue comic series soon based on the first draft of George Lucas's seminal "Star Wars."

From a piece in Wired...

Alan Moore, Interviewed

Comics Beat chats with him about his giant forthcoming volume on H.P. Lovecraft.

From the piece...

PÓM: OK, seeing as we’re talking about Providence… Is it a biography of Lovecraft, or what is it? Or a fantasised biography, or what is it exactly?

AM: I don’t want to talk too much about it, because, well, sometimes I have had problems in the past with – I’ll talk enthusiastically about whatever project I’m on, which won’t be coming out for at least another year, and the next thing, I’ll see some projects that are perhaps similar, and get out there. But what Providence is, is an attempt to write – at least, my attempt to write what I would consider to be a piece of ultimate Lovecraft fiction, in that it will be fiction, it will be a continuation of Neonomicon, it will in a sense be a prequel to that book, but it will also – slightly – be a sequel as well. It will be dealing with the world of Lovecraft’s American-based fiction, which tends to sort of rule out stories like The Mountains of Madness which, although, yes, it does have a strong Miskatonic element in it, is largely based in Antarctica.

But we’re going more for Lovecraft’s New England fiction, and a couple of the New York stories. We are kind of connecting these up intro what I think is an ingenious whole, even though I say so myself as shouldn’t, and it’s – and what we’re also doing, as well as answering all the problems, all the questions raised by Neonomicon – even if the readers hadn’t noticed that those questions had been raised – we’re going to be detailing this hopefully fresh view of Lovecraft’s universe, or at least its American component, and we’re also going to be working not only from Lovecraft’s published fiction, and his poems, and his letters, but also from his biography. I think that there’s a way that there could be a sort of parallel world biographical strand in this, that is never the less researched so thoroughly that it could have happened. It could have happened. I mean, the research on this has been – this is the most demanding research I’ve done easily since From Hell.

The Sci-Fi Novel That Got it Right

Stand on Zanzibar, by John Brunner, published in 1969, made a pretty solid guess at what 2010 would look like.

From the piece...

(3) Prices have increased sixfold between 1960 and 2010 because of inflation. (The actual increase in U.S. prices during that period was sevenfold, but Brunner was close.)

(4) The most powerful U.S. rival is no longer the Soviet Union, but China. However, much of the competition between the U.S. and Asia is played out in economics, trade, and technology instead of overt warfare.

(5) Europeans have formed a union of nations to improve their economic prospects and influence on world affairs. In international issues, Britain tends to side with the U.S., but other countries in Europe are often critical of U.S. initiatives.

The Making of Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey"

5 Essential Frank Herbert Novels that Aren't about Dune

The list, care of io9.

Ursula Le Guin - Interviewed

The Millions sits down with the science fiction writer, here.

From the piece...

The Millions: What did you learn about writing from your father and mother?  Your mother started writing around the time you started writing.

Ursula K. Le Guin: She got published first though. I suppose what I learned from my father is that writing is something people do. It’s a perfectly normal human activity. You do it everyday. You have a place where you do it and when you’re doing it, it is respected…The family doesn’t bother you.
Now, of course this doesn’t work the same way when you’re not a professor and are a young housewife. But I think it gave me a security a lot of young writers don’t have, the sense that I’m doing something absolutely worthwhile. And the sense that I can and I will make the space in my life to do it. And this can be a huge problem, particularly for women writers. They really want to write, they really have the urge, but they aren’t sure that they have a right to do it. And I was given the right by seeing my father, who I respected and who everyone respected and who was a great guy, just doing it. So that’s a huge gift.

From my mother [it was] more complicated. She, being of her generation, didn’t start writing until she got all her kids out of the house and settled. She felt it wasn’t right to combine writing [with] being a housewife and mother. I had some problems with that in my teens. I wondered if I could do it. My best friend in high school, who was John Steinbeck’s niece, said, “Of course you could do it if you want to. Why not have kids and books?” She was right. So there again, I got support. My parents were supportive, but they didn’t hover at all.

Fighting Sexism - One Sci Cover Cover at a Time

Science fiction and fantasy novels routinely portray scantily clad woman on their covers - a device that draws the heterosexual male eye but may turn away women readers. Lynsea Garrison finds one fantasy author aiming to zap gender stereotypes for BBC News.

From the piece...

Since he started in January 2012, Hines' poses have become the most popular posts on his blog. So he launched a new series in December to raise money to fight Aicardi syndrome, a genetic disorder that mostly affects girls. 

The series has drawn more than 100,000 people to Hines' website and raised $15,405 (£9,623) for the cause.

The project is one of the latest expressions of a growing conversation about the portrayal of women in science fiction and fantasy cover art.

  

Tracy Hurley co-founded Prismatic Art Collection, a directory of artists who draw more diverse depictions of men and women in fantasy art, particularly for role playing games like Dungeons and Dragons.

"Women are so often portrayed assuming that a stereotypical hetero male is going to be the person looking at the cover," says Hurley.

"Male characters [are] powerful and strong, and women's sexuality will be emphasised. And why is that a problem? It's constraining for both men and women."

50 Essential Science Fiction Books

The list, care of AbeBooks.

Anti-Science Fiction

If pseuodoscience proponents can be criticized for distorting complex science for their own ends, then the same argument could be applied to science fiction writers.

From a piece in the Guardian...

Isn't that what alt.med and pseudo-science do all the time?

They take a vague, science sounding idea, and bolt it onto their product in order to give it some validation. Or they ignore the science altogether. Or they cast science as the bogeyman.
Fiction writers do this all the time.

Think of all the technobabble spouted on Star Trek to help the characters overcome their latest plot hurdle. For every Heisenberg compensator, there's a dozen polarity reversals and a sprinkling of field dampening plasma vents.

At least they make some effort I suppose. Back To The Future has a scientist in a white coat and mad hair say Flux Capacitor and One Point Twenty One Gigawatts whilst falling off a toilet. But it works. In fact, it works much better than the technobabble. And if it works, writers will do it.

Top 10 Rules of Space Opera

The list, care of io9.

From said list...

3. A scrappy group of humans should be part of a rebellion that's hidden on a cool-looking moon or tricked-out asteroid.
Rebel groups never hide in apartments. They always have amazing underground hideaways or hidden airborne platforms on an exotic place with bizarro weather. Eventually the Big Bads and the Rebels will blow the fuck out of each other but not until after we've seen at least ten freaky locals near the rebel hideout and like six cool underground moon bases, which we'll reach via a series of briefly-seen but outrageously weird images of upsidown cities hovering over purple clouds.

4. There must be an enormous mothership (which must be referred to as a mothership or maybe a base ship), and it must be attacked by a bunch of tiny fighter ships.
Don't forget the tense crosstalk between the fighters, including but not limited to use of nicknames, use of made-up "futuristic" curse words, and use of breathing noises intended to sound like somebody using an oxygen tank. One of the fighters should engage in a reckless act, like singlehandedly taking down the mothership or flying really low above it to get intelligence.