Category: News and Editorials
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Asian American Writers, Literary Fiction Armageddon, and more…
7 New Asian American Writers You Should Be Paying Attention To (Study Break) Literature produced by Asian Americans has seen a dramatic increase in popularity and numbers. Where Asian-American representation in previous literary years was peopled by a handful of writers, such as Amy Tan, Maxine Hong Kingston and Jhumpa Lahiri, this year offered a…
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YA Fiction, Eco-Lit, An Algorithm Writing its own Sci-fi…
Why So Many Adults Love Young-Adult Literature (The Atlantic) These books are about coming of age, and we’re still coming of age.“What all these YA novels share is a universal coming of age experience,” Jennifer Loja, president of Penguin Young Readers, wrote to me in an email. The bildungsroman—the original term for a coming-of-age story—dates…
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The Future in Sci-Fi, Asian Anglophone Fiction, and more…
Why is science fiction so afraid of the future? (The Verge) It’s not just Trek, either: over the past 20 years, mainstream science fiction creators have largely handicapped their work by situating their stories within known timelines. Reboots and prequels dominate the day, from Ridley Scott’s Prometheus and Alien: Covenant to a reported live-action Jetsons series (no, really). And when creators tell…
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Sci-Fi in Iraq, NaNoWriMo, Making a Living From Books, and more…
Why serious literary fiction like Ishiguro’s is vital in times like these (The Guardian) Eminent publishers predict a long-term decline for the entire industry, as younger people turn to other forms of entertainment. From a personal perspective, such worries feel well-founded: I organise the books events for the Brighton festival, and it’s been interesting to observe…
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Trans Sci-Fi, Imagining the Internet, and more…
Why Science-Fiction Writers Couldn’t Imagine the Internet (Slate) Quantum mechanics defies common sense—so much so that Einstein never really accepted it. But as experiments today, from entanglement to quantum teleportation, demonstrate, quantum mechanics does describe the universe at fundamental scales. That’s why science fiction—though it can inspire human imagination, as Stephen Hawking said in the…
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Nnedi Okorafor, Political Thrillers in the Trump Era, and more…
I write political thrillers. The Trump era keeps spoiling my books. (Vox) When truth is stranger than fiction, fiction becomes more than entertainment. In the age of Trump, and other moments of crisis, the stories we watch and read become far more vital than simple genre diversions. That’s a lot of pressure to put…
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An Author Arrested for Murder, Science Fiction in China, and more…
He was writing a book about a murderous author. Now he’s accused of four murders. (The Sacramento Bee) A Chinese crime writer working on a novel about a serial-killing author may have based the book’s storyline on his own life. Liu Yongbiao, an award-winning Chinese crime novelist, was arrested early Friday morning for allegedly bludgeoning four…
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Trump is Ruining Book Sales, Ava Duvernay Producing Afrofuturism Adaptation…
Detroit author self-publishes high suspense, urban romance novels set in the city (WXYZ Detroit) Sylvia’s own story reads a bit like a novel. It begins when she was a little girl, who had a penchant for lying. Her mom wouldn’t stand for it. “She would make me write down my lie and come back and…
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Game of Thrones in Post-Apocolyptic Africa, Fan Fiction and Bad TV…
Canadian climate fiction foreboding (Winnipeg Free Press) Cli-Fi is an anthology of speculative fiction stories about climate change, all written from a Canadian perspective and several with strong Indigenous themes. Editor Bruce Meyer explains that the anthology is the result of a challenge by Margaret Atwood in 2015 who, at a discussion around the Al Gore…
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Sci-Fi Feminist Icons, Fan Fiction, Nnedi Okorafor and more…
Science Fiction’s Under-Appreciated Feminist Icon (The Atlantic) Feminist science fiction has a notable history, but the genre has long been dominated by stories written by, and solely featuring, men. I can’t help but feel awkward reading one of the most celebrated short stories of the genre, Isaac Asimov’s 1941 tale “Nightfall,” which contains no women at…
Waking Writer 