Which one better predicted our future? A graphic face-off between George Orwell’s 1984 future and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World future. Being familiar with both, and I find the latter unlikely as a whole, but parts of it each seem very true. Neither one should be dismissed, as those who want control will seek it through any means.
Category: fiction (Page 4 of 11)
Video interview with visionary sf writer Vernor Vinge. Nearly an hour long, touches on Ai, Singularity and other topics.
Over at Strange Horizons Martin Lewis reviews a book about 101 novels from a formative period of my sf readership. I’ll have to check it out. Don’t read this article on iOS, though, as it appears to hide all links and titles.
Nexus, a novel by Ramez Naam, currently sits on a stack of to-read books in my study. Screen rights have been acquired by Paramount. Another novel I am sure will be adopted or bought (if it hasn’t already happened), is Daniel Suarez’s thriller, Kill Decision, which is very cinematic.
Via Slate, news about an essay RLS wrote slagging the fiction of his day, possibly written around 1881.
For American sf fans, Adam Roberts is one of those unfortunate science fiction writers who happens to live in the UK. His books rarely get published in the US, and thus remain unfairly neglected over here. It’s too bad this Guardian blog entry talks about Roberts’ new novel without really talking about the novel.
Here’s a project I wish I’d known about sooner: Janine Southard’s Kickstarter project for her space opera novel, Queen & Commander. With two drafts already completed, the project kicked off in September 2012 and managed to get fully funded, resulting in a book scheduled for publication in April 2013, and two possible sequels in what she called the “Hive Queen Saga.”
From the Wall Street Journal, a review of several young adult novels. The first, Sally Gardner’s Maggot Moon, sounds enticing: “dystopia feels new again; it reclaims its power to shock.”
An all-too-brief article on the current trend in young adult fiction: dystopian nightmares.
Greg Beato at reason has an article on how government turned comic books into propaganda. The campaign against comic books and their subsequent regulation through the comic book code killed off a large number of titles, mostly on hype and scare tactics. The power of comic books was recognized by the government, who ran cartoons and comic strips in the midst of World War II.
