"The winners of 2011 Locus Awards were announced this afternoon in Seattle, Washington. Congratulations to all the nominees and winners. We are, of course, especially excited that Tor Books won for “Best Publisher.” All our thanks go out to this wonderful community of readers, authors, and artists."

"How can you help? We're looking for readers' all-time favorite secondary worlds, from Middle Earth to Ring World, from Dune to Lankhmar and beyond...

We're taking nominations now. Just fill out the form below and submit it. That simple. If you feel like waxing poetic about your favorite second world, we might ask you if we can use what you write when it's time to go to press. Regardless, we'll keep you updated about which worlds get picked, and about the book as it gets closer to publication."

"Wickus escaped and I remained in my seat, but I will never forget how powerful that emotion was, how I sat there gulping air for the next ten minutes as I tried to regain some kind of equilibrium. This film had put me through something brutal, something I hadn’t been prepared for.

This film was absolutely right to do that.

The direct allegory running through the story is easy to recognize: District 9 is a reference to District 6, an area in South Africa where 60,000 colored Africans were evicted from their homes in during apartheid in the 1970s. The atrocious behavior of MNU’s employees and their thirst for better firepower is a commentary on the private military contractors being used by governments today, specifically Xe Services (formerly known as Blackwater Worldwide). Choosing to zero in on these two topics seems logical: the film was set and shot in South Africa and the potential problems associated with military contractors are a modern concern."

"Yes, make it part of the narrative. But even then, you’re often still explaining something which doesn’t really need explaining. Does it matter how the hyperspace drive works if all it needs to do is to get the protagonist from A to B? Too much exposition in science fiction stories has nothing to do with the story – it’s the author showing off their setting. For many readers, this is required. It’s immersion."

awesome

"Extrasolar planets are not named and are referred to only by their assigned scientific designation. The reason given by the IAU to not name the planets is that it is considered impractical as planets are expected to be common. I advance some reasons as to why this logic is flawed, and suggest names for the 403 extrasolar planet candidates known as of Oct 2009. The names follow a scheme of association with the constellation that the host star pertains to, and therefore are mostly drawn from Roman-Greek mythology. Other mythologies may also be used given that a suitable association is established."

"Corridors make science-fiction believable, because they're so utilitarian by nature - really they're just a conduit to get from one (often overblown) set to another. So if any thought or love is put into one, if the production designer is smart enough to realise that corridors are the foundation on which larger sets are 'sold' to viewers, movie magic is close at hand."

"Penguicon 7.0 will be May 1 through 3, 2009, at the Crowne Plaza hotel in Romulus, Michigan."

"In fact, if romances are fantasies of love, and mysteries are fantasies of justice, I would now describe much SF as fantasies of political agency. All three genres also may embody themes of personal psychological empowerment, of course, though often very different in the details, as contrasted by the way the heroines “win” in romances, the way detectives “win” in mysteries, and the way, say, young male characters “win” in adventure tales. But now that I’ve noticed the politics in SF, they seem to be everywhere, like packs of little yapping dogs trying to savage your ankles. Not universally, thank heavens—there are wonderful lyrical books such as The Last Unicorn or other idiosyncratic tales that escape the trend. But certainly in the majority of books, to give the characters significance in the readers’ eyes means to give them political actions, with “military” read here as a sub-set of political."

via Ectoplasmosis. BE SURE TO SEE RIGHTMOST PICTURE, SIXTH ROW

"It reminds you of something you've never seen before." Film showing at Michigan Theater 18 & 19 March 2008

"Charlie calls this not the end of history, but the dawn of history. The idea being that history to this point is an incomplete, imperfect process full of guesswork and implication. We're now at a point where we can record everything."

A vast, international conspiracy to post good science fiction on the Interwebs. For free.

Write science fiction? Consider posting professional-quality work, for free, on your own website Mondat 23 April. In celebration of freedom and diligence.

The basic difference between writing (on the one hand) and the enormous bulk of most science fiction....

The Carpenters do Klaatu. No, really.

Rethinking the notion of "advanced" space-faring civilizations