Tag: Featured
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The Resurgence of Dystopian Literature, Understanding China through Fiction, and more…
Deferred gratification is dead? Tell that to fans of serialised novels (The Guardian) “Binge-watch” was Collins Dictionary’s word of the year in 2015. The popularity of serialised long-form television drama was quickly superseded by networks making entire series available whenever we chose, eliminating that enforced waiting period and losing something of its pleasure in the process.…
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‘Bizarro fiction,’ Writing Memoirs, Dismal Sci-fi, and more…
Bizarro fiction is the next trend in the literary world (Study Breaks) Although bizarro fiction has lurked within the bowels of literature’s murky underground for just over 15 years, the genre has seen recent success with the addition of director Don Coscarelli’s film adaptation of David Wong’s best-selling novel, “John Dies at the End,” to…
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Social Sci-Fi, Literary Fiction, Little Known Book Editors, and more…
Literary fiction conveys the human character (The Guardian) As someone whose tiny, grimy literary novels have attracted the interest of the film industry, the truth is the opposite of what Tim Lott (Why should we subsidise writers who’ve lost the plot?, 2 January) suggests; it’s the screenwriter who needs the literary novelist. Plot is easy to…
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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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The Hope of the Nation – Guest Post by Jesse Teller
On October 5th my fifth book Song will be released. The cast is led by a wizard named Rayph Ivoryfist. Many and varied are the shades of his personality, and wild and rampant are his powers. He is scary to write for many reasons. How do I challenge a character this powerful? How do I…
Waking Writer 