7 Reasons Why Scifi Book Series Outstay Their Welcomes
posted on May 15, 2008 - View this thread

In 1974 - or 1976, depending who you ask - Armistead Maupin began writing "an extended love letter to a magical San Francisco” in the form of a serialized, fictional drama published originally in the Pacific Sun, the San Francisco Chronicle and the San Francisco Examiner, originally called "The Serial" which then became collectively known as Tales of The City. It is a suprisingly beautiful, deep, emotional, cosmopolitan and lasting tale about life in San Francisco in the turbulent, heady days of the 1970s and 1980s. Widely credited with and cherished for helping spread a little of the openess, tolerance and acceptance that San Francisco is now famous for. It then became a series of books - Tales of the City, More Tales of the City, Further Tales of the City, Babycakes, Significant Others, Sure of You - and lastly, the spin-off tale of Michael Tolliver Lives. Almost exactly twenty years after first publishing, it then became an excellent miniseries from the United Kingdom's Channel 4, which aired in the United States on PBS, but not without protest or limitations.
posted on May 4, 2008 - View this thread

Dan Dare, pilot of the future, scourge of the Venusian Mekon menace, and modernist architectural inspiration?
posted on Apr 28, 2008 - View this thread

Free Speculative Fiction Online is a database of free science fiction and fantasy stories online by published authors (no fan-fiction or stories by unpublished writers). Among the authors that FSFO links to are Paul Di Filippo (14 stories), James Tiptree, Jr. (4 stories), Connie Willis (3 stories), Eleanor Arnason (3 stories), Bruce Sterling (5 stories), Robert Heinlein (7 stories), Ursula K. LeGuin (3 stories), Jonathan Lethem (5 stories), Michael Moorcock (6 stories), Chine Miéville (2 stories), Samuel R. Delany (3 stories), Robert Sheckley (8 stories), MeFite Charles Stross (33 stories) and hundreds of other authors. If you don't know where to start, there's a list of recommended stories.
posted on Apr 5, 2008 - View this thread

Edinburgh author Iain M. Banks, creator of the post capitalist space faring society The Culture and it's oddly named ships, has long been the UKs top science fiction writer, but has never had more than a toehold in the US (in part through lack of availability, in part due to lack of promotion and in part due to some pretty awful covers. That could change: Matter, his latest, has been heavily promoted in the US and sports a cover nearly identical to the UK edition. This week Orbit are releasing US editions of the two earliest Culture novels, with the third following in July, which could mean a complete release of all the novels in the US in order.
posted on Mar 23, 2008 - View this thread

Sci-Fi Shakespearean standoff: Magneto vs Pickard vs that guy from Serentity.
posted on Mar 9, 2008 - View this thread

Building a landmark. Nearly 135 years after first rolling up Clay Street, San Francisco's famous cable cars are still using an elegant, yet antiquated system of understreet cables and two types of unpowered cars to move delighted tourists and patient locals across the city every day. But most riders don't realize that five specialized craftsmen in a shop in an industrial part of town make up the the last cable car factory in the world, still building cars by hand, from plans reverse-engineered from a car disassembled in 1982. [via]
posted on Feb 25, 2008 - View this thread

Talking Squids in Outer Space : The Pinnacle of Science Fiction
posted on Feb 4, 2008 - View this thread

The Star Wars illustrations and posters of Noriyoshi Ohrai.
posted on Jan 12, 2008 - View this thread

Geoff Ryman on mundane science fiction. [previously, via]
posted on Sep 22, 2007 - View this thread

Paramount does Neil: Gaiman's book (illustrated by Charles Vess) is being made into a film called Stardust. You can watch the trailer or read the first chapter online. The film is directed by Matthew Vaughn, who doesn't exactly have a strong fantasy background. Cross your fingers, Gaimanites.
posted on May 16, 2007 - View this thread

Nova Swing by M John Harrison has won the 2007 Arthur C Clarke Award. Named after the famous author and announced on the opening night of the Sci Fi London film festival the award is one of the most prestigious in science fiction. Everything you could possibly wish to know about this year's shortlist.
posted on May 2, 2007 - View this thread

How To Talk To Girls At Parties by Neil Gaiman. Full text and reading by the author: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4.
posted on Apr 18, 2007 - View this thread

30 years of thrillpower! British weekly comic 2000ad celebrates it's 30th aniversary. Previously discussed here, current Tharg Matt Smith interviewed, special birthday Prog. Splundig vur thrigg!
posted on Feb 26, 2007 - View this thread

The Fountain "No matter how good CGI looks at first, it dates quickly...So I set the ridiculous goal of making a film that would reinvent space without using CGI." Director Aronofsky tapped into the microphotography work of Parks and Parks to bring a new look to special effects in science fiction cinema.
posted on Feb 13, 2007 - View this thread

Flurb! Issue 2 of the Webzine of Astonishing Tales -- edited by Rudy Rucker, featuring 'demented and counter-cultural' stories from luminaries of the cyberypunkery like Charles Stross, John Shirley, Mark Laidlaw (who also wrote the story for Half Life 2), Richard Kadrey, one of MeFi's favorite snark-targets, Cory Doctorow and others besides -- is out. [found via the RU SIRIUS podcast] [Previously: Issue #1]
posted on Feb 12, 2007 - View this thread

Sir Does Not Allow Me to Watch ‘Project Runway’ Maybe going to class to learn to express one’s inner kink is not such a good idea. (NSFW, but no pictures)
posted on Jan 3, 2007 - View this thread

Think you get a lot done? Isaac Asimov (pronounced like "has, him, of" without the h's) , who would have turned 87 today, wrote or edited over 500 books, including science-fiction novels, introductions to organic chemistry (a field in which he held a professorship at B.U.) , indispensable anthologies of early science fiction, jokebooks, guides to Shakespeare, and collections of lively essays on science that have introduced thousands of people to the pleasures of thinking hard about the universe. He also found the time to write a few essays and write postcards to his fans. His story "Runaround" , from his 1950 collection I, Robot, is the only piece of fiction I know centered on the properties of a differential equation. His Foundation Trilogy was given a special Hugo award in 1966 as the best science fiction series of all time; a movie version, to be written by Jeff Vintar and directed by Shekhar Kapur, is currently in development. Previous AsimovFilter: here, here, here. Feel like a slacker yet? Stop reading MetaFilter and get to work!
posted on Jan 2, 2007 - View this thread

SF writers only use six words. A collection of six word epics from the cream of contemporary SF writers. Can Mefi do better? I reckon!
posted on Oct 24, 2006 - View this thread

Planning a jump to Barnard's Star? Making the Kessel Run in 11 parsecs? You'll need maps. Also available in a solid state format from Bathsheba Sculpture. (Previously)
posted on Sep 16, 2006 - View this thread

In the Chinks of the Genre Machine: it is slipstream week at Strange Horizons. Seventeen years after Bruce Sterling coined the term it has spawned two anthologies, ParaSpheres and Feeling Very Strange. (The later inspired by this blog entry.)
posted on Sep 6, 2006 - View this thread

Here are four stories by the great Ted Chiang.
posted on Sep 2, 2006 - View this thread

Hopefully this will put an end to the interminable AskMe questions: Adam Cadre has written a complete retrospective and review of William Sleator’s young adult science fiction.
posted on Aug 15, 2006 - View this thread

2 years ago I FPP'd FlavorPill, a company that sends out permission-based emails for books (Boldtype), music (Earplug), and fashion (the JC Report). They've since added ArtKrush (it's art, stupid! - nsfw) and Activate (world events) to their aresenal. In addition to the topic-specific mailing lists, they offer city-specific lists for London, New York, SF, LA, and Chicago. Sample issues are archived on the site.
posted on Aug 11, 2006 - View this thread

Helix is a new Science Fiction magazine on the Internet. Run by managing editor Lawrence Watt-Evans and senior editor William Sanders, Helix is free, with no advertisements or registration. They do accept donations. This follows Watt-Evans's success last year with his Spriggan Experiment, in which he substituted reader donations for the traditional advance from a publisher. The result of that experiment, The Spriggan Mirror will be available from Wild-side Press in September 2006.
posted on Jun 15, 2006 - View this thread

The first Transhuman Conference On the Law of Transhuman Persons: Whether or not you believe humans are set to evolve into gods, or AI is destined to achieve self-awareness the idea of the Transhuman is a thought provoking concept. Philosophers have debated the nature of the self, of the human for millennia. Is it time to start drafting new laws to govern all possible sentient beings on this planet? or is it all just a science of fiction? a comfortable humanist illusion?
posted on Dec 13, 2005 - View this thread

' "Predictive programming works by means of the propagation of the illusion of an infallibly accurate vision of how the world is going to look in the future". Through the circulation of science "fiction" literature, the ignorant masses are provided with semiotic intimations of coming events. Within such literary works are narrative paradigms that are politically and socially expedient to the power elite. Thus, when the future unfolds as planned, it assumes the paradigmatic character of the "fiction" that foretold it...........' The Illuminati: an all encompassing conspiracy stranger than any fiction
posted on Dec 11, 2005 - View this thread

Dr Who - The Second Key. Original Dr Who strips made with photographed dolls and speech balloons.
posted on Nov 18, 2005 - View this thread

Go Rangers This is the tale of a young man who lost an eye to a suicide bomber in Iraq and THEN joined the U.S. Army Rangers. I don't think that he was busy calling his Mom.
posted on Oct 28, 2005 - View this thread

It was a dark and stormy night on some distant planet. Thog's Masterclass collects only the finest, most well-honed clunky sentences and mixed metaphors the science fiction community produces. Eat yer heart out, Bulwer-Lytton. [via the website at the end of the universe]
posted on Oct 10, 2005 - View this thread

Frank and Beverly Herbert interview from 1969 on the first Dune books. In a recent AskMe thread, many respondents cited Dune as a favorite science fiction novel. An almost complete (missing one page) 1969 interview with the author and his wife has surfaced. Enjoy. [Tip of the hat to Monkeyfilter]
posted on Jul 13, 2005 - View this thread

Alien planet "The drama takes place on Darwin IV, a fictional planet 6.5 light-years from Earth, with two suns and 60 percent gravity. Having identified Darwin as a world that could support life, Earth sends a pilot mission consisting of the mothership and three probes." Discovery channel feature, Flash heavy site, via Pharyngula.
posted on May 9, 2005 - View this thread

"Trinkle did not possess a legal mind. He was a mental grasshopper, an intellectual kangaroo, a mind wallaby."
The Lionel Fanthorpe text library. Random snippets from the extensive writing career of one of the greatest human beings who has ever lived. Anglican priest, comprehensive school headmaster, TV personality, biker, Fortean. Just reading his biography page makes me feel tired.
posted on Apr 12, 2005 - View this thread

Pictures of a not so pleasant day of sailing on the bay...
posted on Apr 5, 2005 - View this thread

Behind the Dark Door [Google cached copy] might prove a valuable resource to science fiction aficionados, or interesting to fans of quality television drama. It provides insight into the mind of Nigel Kneale, writer of The Quatermass Experiment. Last Saturday's gripping and technically impressive update was based largely on his original scripts, and was the BBC's first live TV drama in more than twenty years. Another chance the pimp David Tennant, The Quatermass Experiment 2005 was much more satisfying than the BBC's other science fiction drama with which Tennant has been linked.
posted on Apr 4, 2005 - View this thread

Rather unusually, the Sci-Fi channel have made the entire first episode of their new Battlestar Galactica show available online, uncut and without commercials, for free (Real format, not bad video quality). While the series is still being aired in the US and Australia, the first episode has now been shown in all markets and the Sci-Fi channel may be trying to figure out if making the ep available online could improve ratings.

Their decision may have been aided by the fact that the show was aired in the UK two months before the US, resulting in an awful lot of US fans downloading the show; normally it's the other way around.
posted on Feb 24, 2005 - View this thread

The Golden Gate Bridge Suicide Documentary is going to be an interesting project. Filmmaker Eric Steel applied for a permit to film the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco for a year, saying he was trying to "capture the grandeur" of the bridge. But what he actually ended up doing was capture 19 suicides and many attempts. He is now working on a feature-length documentary about these suicides, and has 100 hours of interviews with family members, psychiatrists, and some of the people who attempted suicide but didn't follow through. Now that he's revealed what his documentary is and what it will be about, a lot of people are pretty ticked off.
posted on Feb 2, 2005 - View this thread

2001: A Space Odyssey
"This site showcases the printed program for Stanley Kubrick's film, 2001: A Space Odyssey."
via Haddock
posted on Dec 11, 2004 - View this thread

There is nothing wrong in this whole wide world. Artist Chris Cobb convinced Adobe Bookshop in San Francisco to allow him to reclassify 20,000 books based solely on their color. The result is like something out of a dream. Here are some pictures, and here's an interview with him.
posted on Nov 16, 2004 - View this thread

Fecal Face is a San Francisco based arts community that promotes things that turn us on and primarily focused on the artists and happenings of SF. {as safe for work as any art collective's site's gonna be.}
posted on Nov 12, 2004 - View this thread

Stovokor! Captain pInluH and Commander Khrell are stuck in Portland, the sneaky Ferengi having sold them a 'faulty temporal device.' Life is hard on Earth, it seems. Did anyone get a set list? No matter. It's my beleif that we will not see these warriors astride golf carts. Look out, number 1: perhaps they are looking to pull a Titor on your burgeoning data empire!
posted on Oct 1, 2004 - View this thread

If you like Science Fiction, if you like Star Wars, Babylon 5, or the Green Lantern, then you've probably heard of E. E. "Doc" Smith Ph.D., the man credited with getting powdered sugar to stick to donuts and with creating several of the most influential tales to ever spring from the "pulps" of the 1940s. The grandfather of Space Opera his Lensmen books, while badly written and horribly dated, still create that sense of wonder that all SF junkies crave.
posted on Aug 3, 2004 - View this thread

Genie Corp: The Splice Of Life. Creature Comforts [via BoingBoing]
posted on Jul 24, 2004 - View this thread

The Original Tom Swift Series Public Domain Texts. Twenty-five of 'em for your perusal. In piles of formats, some including page scans, and with color cover images (mostly from here, where they also have larger images). Not that kind of Tom Swift, mind you.

I must admit, the domain name gave me pause. So far, no teleportation has transpired.
posted on Jul 1, 2004 - View this thread

AsimovLite. Three cringe-worthy Isaac Asimov short stories. Also: Asimov's "Lecherous Limericks", quotables and links to related essays.
posted on Jan 10, 2004 - View this thread

Violet Books catalogs Antiquarian Supernatural Literature, including literary ghost stories, Victorian science fiction, Yellow Nineties Decadence, H. Rider Haggard & haggardesque "Lost Race" novels, Marie Corelli & other occult romancers, Rafael Sabatini & Jeffery Farnol & all vintage swashbuckling historical romances, Yukon adventures, jungle tales, Sax Rohmer & all weird thrillers, classic detectives, vintage children's & young adult fantasies & series books, vintage westerns, and all things old, fictional, adventurous, and weird. Make sure to check for the titles that have dustjacket scans.
posted on Dec 15, 2003 - View this thread

Looking for that rare science fiction first edition? The Barry R. Levin Science Fiction & Fantasy Literature store just might have the volume you seek.
posted on Nov 24, 2003 - View this thread

Science fiction writers on Arnold Schwarzenegger's election as California gov. (more inside)
posted on Oct 11, 2003 - View this thread

This new film [25MB, QuickTime] documents the 3rd annual Bring Your Own Big Wheel race, in which a bunch of crazed fools raced headlong down San Francisco's Lombard Street (aka: the crookedest street in the world) on Big Wheels. Good drunk fun! Here are some pics for the bandwidth-challenged.
posted on Sep 30, 2003 - View this thread

Buddhism tames the amygdala Covered recently on Metafilter (here), new research at the University of California San Francisco Medical Centre ( into the "Happy Buddhist" phenomenon ) shows that Buddhist meditation techniques "can tame the amygdala, an area of the brain which is the hub of fear memory." [BBC] -Is this the Rx for a nation of Americans gripped by fear? Do Christianity, Islam or Judaism have effective techniques to tame the amygdala too?
posted on May 22, 2003 - View this thread