SciFi/Fantasy novels

Does anyone know what this book is about? Thanks. - LANjackal from Bookmarklet

"The novel tells the story of what happens when Mars is colonized by a corporation that then goes bankrupt. “Such things have happened before—busted corporations stranded a lot of 17th-, 18th- and 19th-century colonists in remote parts of the world,” Baker said. “The colonists on Mars are stuck up there with no money to come home, and their situation is not exactly desperate but certainly squalid. One woman makes ends meet by keeping a bar and bartering for goods" - LANjackal from Bookmarklet

No, not necessarily, unless it depends on time travel at some point (like the Cross Time Engineer series). Most alternate history books are just historical fiction. Like the books where the south won the civil war in the US. - Alex Scoble

What it is, though, is "speculative fiction" which integrates magical realism, science fiction etc. (although to me all fiction is speculative, really...) - Joelle Nebbe (iphigenie)

"Newsgroups like comp.graphics.animation and rec.arts.animation have long been home to discussions of the technical aspects and technique of computer animation by industry insiders and fans alike. Where rec.arts.comics covers the superhero realm and an abundance of discussion of hero specific movies." - LANjackal from Bookmarklet

"To participate, you just have to log in with Google, Yahoo!, Facebook or OpenID, then find a story and write a prequel or a sequel in 1024 characters. Your piece doesn't have to stand alone, it could just flesh out a character or place, or start a new scene for someone else to finish. I'm looking forward to reading some of the stuff coming out of Ficly, and speculating that maybe the evolution of print-on-demand services will play well with it. It would be too cool to have a long story you helped write shipped to your door in book form." - LANjackal from Bookmarklet

"Normally in science fiction, faster than light has a speed that has nothing to do with Einstein and everything to do with self-referentiality and the way other science fiction has done it—faster than light ships go at the speed of sailing ships, taking months to go between stars. They are wormholes or Jump or something letting them go faster than light, but it takes months of the crew’s real time. And when they get there, they can’t land on planets, any more than sailing ships can (outside of Dunsany) sail on land, they need space stations to be their ports, and they need dedicated career sailors and officers." - LANjackal from Bookmarklet

In the new Scribd store, authors or publishers will be able to set their own price for their work and keep 80 percent of the revenue. They can also decide whether to encode their documents with security software that will prevent their texts from being downloaded or freely copied. - LANjackal from Bookmarklet

Interesting. I missed this until now; will have to read the article. - Elizabeth

Netflix. - LANjackal

Okay, first of all, the future can pretty much be summed up in three basic concepts: constant yelling punctuated by frequent explosions, killer robots, and then more yelling, punctuated by the occasional guffaw-inducing cliché. - LANjackal from Bookmarklet

awwww.... shite movie then?! :( - Denis

Me too. Love em. Great for those times when you just want to disengage the brain and escape. - Kevin Riggins

No shame. Not all, but most of them are very well crafted. A rich scifi universe. - John Samuelson from BuddyFeed

I'm interested in Moon & District 9 for the human elements and Transformers & G.I. Joe for the action and eye candy :) - LANjackal

I really liked the trailer for District 9. For the rest, I don't know yet. - Brome

_Dust_ by Elizabeth Bear. I'm reading a romance trilogy my Mum pawned off on me right now and then I have Anne Bishop's _Sebastian_ next in queue. - Kirasha

It wasn't bad. I'm a fan of her Promethean series and Dust is *very* different, more Science Fantasy than Fantasy or Science Fiction, I think. I found it a little difficult to get into at first, but eventually it picked up. She uses different usages for some words to give the feel of another time and place, which is a bit confusing at the start. It stopped being an issue for me in the second or third chapter. Overall I liked it, though I don't think it would go in my favorites. - Kirasha

When the reality is close to the fiction ? - MillyNeT

"At Crydee, a frontier outpost in the tranquil Kingdom of the Isles, an orphan boy, Pug, is apprenticed to a master magician - and the destinies of two worlds are changed forever. Suddenly the peace of the Kingdom is destroyed as mysterious alien invaders swarm through the land. Pug is swept up into conflict but for him and his warrior friend, Tomas, an Odyssey into the unknown has only just begun.Pug's destiny is to lead him through a rift in the fabric of space and time to the mastery of the unimaginable powers of a strange new magic ..." - J. Abdul-Qahhar from Bookmarklet

In my top 3 fave fantasy series. - John Samuelson from BuddyFeed

One of the best in the genre certainly. I also just bought his Serpentwar Saga #1 Shadow of a Dark Queen - pretty good so far. - Kisholi

Blood Music is an early work that won awards. If you like EON, it was the first in a trilogy followed by Eternity and Legacy. - Ronald Kennedy

I really liked the short story version of Blood Music, but I found the novelization sort of "meh". If you like short SF, Tangents is a pretty good anthology of Bear stories, including Blood Music. - Laurence Gonsalves

Review posted: best kind of science fiction -- deals with major questions while also providing the reader with a strong "first contact" story. - Jill O'Neill

sweet - mike "glemak" dunn

Just started reading Anathem. Slow start, as his books have been having, I'm sure it'll all be worth it, though. :) - felix

This is great stuff..,inspiration for my sequel to "A Glint in Time" - Frank Derfler from Bookmarklet

Oh yeah, there are the makings of MANY good stories here! - Frank Derfler from Bookmarklet