"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
Is Alternate History SF? This has been the problem with being a Harry Turtledove fan, his books in the book stores are spread out between sci-fi/fantasy/fiction/history sections. (Harry Turtledove should have his own section in book stores.
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
I'm planning on going to T4 this weekend, but everybody is panning the movie. Anybody seen it already and have any advice? Worth the $10 ticket, or wait for netflix?
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
Is Alternate History SF? - Generally as far as finding things in the bookshop goes, alternate history is treated as SF if it’s published by SF writers, and as mainstream if by mainstream writers. This isn’t very helpful. - http://www.tor.com/index...
what's the last genre book you picked up? Mine was The Sun, The Moon and the Stars by Brust. But it was just to give to my wife, who sadly ended up not reading it. Sigh.
_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
Was not a huge fan of The Sun, The Moon, and the Stars, myself. It was "okay". I just finished Asaro's The Charmed Sphere -- interesting world, bland characters, iffy plot. Still plan on trying the rest of the series, though.
- Alix Whitmire ☂
How was Dust? I liked the Casey novels and Bear's short stories, but not her fantasy novels.
- Rantalica Rant
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
"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
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
Film Rights & Options Available for IVORY JOINS THE REAPING WORLD WIND or WHO CAUSED THE BEST END OF EARTH EVER? ISBN 0-7414-4283-3 press release link http://www.prweb.com/release...