Annie Bot by Sierra Greer is “a tightly focused first-person account of a robot designed to be the perfect companion, who struggles to become free,” said chair of judges, the academic Andrew M Butler. Read more
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…a delightfully broad satire of many things: pulp sci-fi, literary fiction, writers’ groups, MFA programs, nerds™, Brooklyn thirtysomethings, and, most of all, the possibilities and pathologies of fandom culture. It is about the joy and necessity of artistic creation, the self-consuming doubt of struggling writers, the simultaneously symbiotic and parasitic relationship between art and fandom, and the musings of one extremely odd dude. It’s a hoot. Read more
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Murderbot is an Apple TV+ show that premieres Friday, dropping the first two episodes of its 10 episode season. It’s about a robot played by Alexander Skarsgård rented by a team of planetary scientists to work security on their expedition. Unbeknownst to them, it’s more than a robot – it’s gained sentience, and wants nothing more than to be left alone so it can watch the thousands of episodes of TV shows it’s downloaded. Read more Watch trailer
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From the Academy Award-winning writer/director of “Parasite,” Bong Joon Ho, comes his next groundbreaking cinematic experience, “Mickey 17.” The unlikely hero, Mickey Barnes (Robert Pattinson) has found himself in the extraordinary circumstance of working for an employer who demands the ultimate commitment to the job… to die, for a living. Watch trailer
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Swyler achieves a seemingly impossible amount of sophisticated worldbuilding using an economy of vibrant, graceful prose. The story transports and transforms, alchemizing a combination of mystery, romance, and science fiction into an impactful exploration of the importance of connection, the evolutionary nature of identity, and the inevitability of revolution. Affecting relationships and a sinuous, kaleidoscopic third-person narrative further define and develop the exquisitely rendered characters. Read more
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Teacup follows a disparate group of people in rural Georgia who must come together in the face of a mysterious threat in order to survive. Inspired by the novel Stinger by Robert McCammon. Watch trailer
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The winners of the 2024 Hugo Awards—one of science fiction and fantasy’s most prestigious awards, decided by the popular vote of WorldCon members—were presented this weekend at the 82nd WorldCon in Glasgow, Scotland. Read more
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Scottish writer Martin MacInnes has taken home this year’s Arthur C Clarke award for what judges described as an “intense trip” of a novel, moving from the depths of the ocean to outer space. Read more
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Author Ted Chiang has won a lifetime achievement prize for short stories, the PEN/Malamud Award, marking only the second time a science fiction writer has been honored since the award was established in 1988. Read more
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As a sci-fi author, Vinge won Hugo Awards for his novels A Fire Upon the Deep (1993), A Deepness in the Sky (2000), and Rainbows End (2007). He also won Hugos for the novellas Fast Times at Fairmont High (2002) and The Cookie Monster (2004). As Mike Glyer’s File 770 blog notes, Vinge’s novella True Names (1981) is frequency cited as the first presentation of an in-depth look at the concept of “cyberspace.”
Vinge first coined the term “singularity” as related to technology in 1983, borrowed from the concept of a singularity in spacetime in physics. When discussing the creation of intelligences far greater than our own in an 1983 op-ed in OMNI magazine, Vinge wrote, “When this happens, human history will have reached a kind of singularity, an intellectual transition as impenetrable as the knotted space-time at the center of a black hole, and the world will pass far beyond our understanding.” Read more
