SF/F/H Link Post for 2014-03-03
Interviews & Profiles
- The 16 Best Answers Sarah Michelle Gellar Gave During Her Reddit AMA
- Brandon Sanderson gears up for release of latest novel, Words of Radiance.
- Everett Maroon talks about re-conceptualizing disability as a superpower, gender diversity, and queer history in the new YA time-travel novel, The Unintentional Time Traveler.
- Futurist Michio Kaku says we’ll use Lasers to Beam Our Minds Into Space Someday Soon.
- Jet author Russell Blake on the Publishing Climate.
- My Bookish Ways interviews Richard Montanari, author of The Stolen Ones.
- My Bookish Ways interviews William Shaw, author of She’s Leaving Home.
- When asked about the possibility of a Doctor Who remake, Steven Moffat told the BBC, “If anyone were to ask me [to remake it], I’d say it’s an absolutely insane idea. You couldn’t have more than one Doctor Who in the world. It would just be dreadful.”
- USA Today interviews Anointed author Maggie Mae Gallagher for its new Happy Ever After column.
- Who Needs Books? A Q&A with the ‘Bookless Library’ Head Librarian Ashley Eklof
News
- WorldCon 2014 announces Jonathan Ross to host Hugo Awards. Controversy follows. Jonathan Ross Withdraws from Hugos.
Events & Event News
- Wizard World Sacramento Comic Con 2014 will be held in Sacramento, March 7 – 9. Featured guests include Bruce Campbell, William Shatner, and Billy Dee Williams. Comic book artist and creators include Neal Adams, Chris Claremont, Michael Golden, Stan Lee, Paolo Rivera, and Arthur Suydam, plus many more.
- Wild Wild West Con 2014 will host a western-style steampunk theme park that includes music, panels, rides, and games March 7 – 9 in Tucson, Arizona.
Crowd Funding
- Kingdom Bots – Obliterate your enemies in this tactical war game of epic robot battle.
- Steampunked Time Machine – The Mad Scientist’s Card Game – Be the first to assemble a steam powered Time Machine by whatever means necessary. Steal, break and thwart your way to victory!
Articles
- Review: The Globe and Mail describes Jeff VanderMeer’s Annihilation as “a beguiling blend of science fiction, horror and genuine wonder.”
- 5 Sci-Fi Movies That Deserved to Win Best Picture (Since Gravity Won’t)
- 5 Things Megan Crewe Learned While Writing the Fallen World Trilogy
- 10 Facts Only ‘Lord Of The Rings’ Super Fans Know
- 12 Most Electric Reasons I Love Kindle
- 12 Television Shows We Wish Were Returning instead of Heroes, none of which are Firefly.
- 40 for 40: One Man names the Science Fiction and Fantasy Novels that Changed His Life
- 2014 New Releases: More LGBTQ YA Fiction
- Cheryl Klein writes about diversity and the challenges and complexities of publishing diverse titles, while Beth Revis explains why diversity matters, especially in the YA world.
- Computer Written Fiction: Through the evolution of knowledge engineering, computer written fiction could be a stepping stone in technology that has yet to be defined.
- Cosmos gets spectacular remake in A Spacetime Odyssey: Tube Talk predicts that, “the new series ought to become an instant classic.”
- Damien Walter asks Are we already living in the technological singularity? Science fiction’s most radical vision of the future, with humanity redundant, is becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.
- Diversity in YALSA’s Best Fiction for Young Adults: Updated for 2014
- “Ender’s Mindf*ck” is an interesting article similar to John Kessel’s earlier “Creating the Innocent Killer” in substance if not in style.
- The Fangirl Project counts down the top eleven times Joss Whedon made us cry with sadness.
- Forget Pixar, This ‘E.T.’ Theory Will Really Blow Your Mind.
- Former astronaut Leroy Chiao gives Gravity kudos for capturing the feel of a spacewalk, as well as for increasing awareness about current space programs.
- The future of robotics: Not quite magical yet, but more than just dirty jobs
- Get seduced by new paranormals and sci-fi romance
- The Guardian names its picks for The 10 best fictional evil children.
- Laurel Snyder’s post over at Medium discusses boys and girls and reading and gender: Boys will be boys and girls will be accommodating.
- My Bookish Ways has released its list of March 2014 New Releases (SF, Fantasy, and Horror).
- The New York Times has a great article about whether or not we need “negative” book reviews
- On the CBC Diversity tumblr, Aaron Hartzler wrote a really great post about religion in YA. More than worth the read and consideration in light of diversity.
- The Empire Strikes Back: Over the course of the last two months, something akin to a food fight has broken out in the publishing cafeteria. It started when author Hugh Howey offered his perspective on a survey on author compensation conducted by Dana Beth Weinberg for Digital Book World. […] Right now, publishers are walking away from what is arguably the single largest experiment in the history of publishing. Rather than engage productively with independent authors, publishers and their intermediaries have been trying to convince themselves that things really haven’t changed that much.
- Strong Female Characters Aren’t Always Armored
- Ten Fantasy and Science-Fiction Novels Worth Reading in March 2014
- Video games are art – and it’s time they got their own Oscars. Games like “The Last of Us” are strong enough to merit Academy Awards, argues Nick Robinson. But with so many contenders, which 2013 Video games deserve Oscars?
- Why is Indie Music So Much Cooler than Indie Books?
- Will we ever have love affairs with video game characters? In the Oscar-nominated movie Her a man falls in love with an operating system. Could we see similar romances in games?
Art
- Clockwork Empire: Dresden Codak cartoonist Aaron Diaz has done it again. First, he proposed an animated version of Tolkien’s The Silmarillion, now he’s proposing a version of The Legend of Zelda in which Princess Zelda is the protagonist in practice, as well as name.
- Just when you think you’ve seen every possible incarnation of a character like Link, someone comes along and puts a fresh spin on him that hits you right in the feels.
More Fun Stuff
- Behold, The awesome Harry Potter ending J.K. Rowling didn’t even know she had.
- Infographic: Sci-Fi Tech Throughout Film History: An Illustrated Timeline
- Infographic: Timeline of the BattleStar Galactica Universe
- Jean-Claude Van Damme Returns (In CG Form) To Perform The Most Epic Of Splits… In Space
It is a shame that the over-reaction brigade ran Ross off. I think he would have been a good Hugo host.