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The John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer has been renamed The Astounding Award for Best New Writer. The award, which is sponsored by Dell Magazines and administered by the World Science Fiction Society, was named for the editor of Astounding Science Fiction (later Analog Science Fiction and Fact). Current Analog editor Trevor Quachri said, Campbell’s provocative editorials and opinions on race, slavery, and other matters often reflected positions that went beyond just the mores of his time and are today at odds with modern values, including those held by the award’s many nominees, winners, and supporters. As we...

The science fiction and fantasy community has lost a beloved icon. We are extremely sad to report that author and SFWA Grand Master Gene Wolfe passed away on Sunday, April 14, 2019 after his long battle with heart disease. He was 87.Gene Wolfe was born in New York on May 7, 1931. He studied at Texas A&M for a few years before dropping out and fighting in the Korean War. After his return to the US he finished his degree at the University of Houston. He was an engineer, and worked as the editor of the professional journal Plant Engineering....

Award-winning Seattle science fiction author Vonda N. McIntyre died April 1, 2019, of pancreatic cancer. She was 70. McIntyre wrote novels, short stories and media tie-in books, edited a groundbreaking anthology of feminist SF, and founded the Clarion West Writing Workshop. She won the Hugo, Nebula and Locus awards for her 1979 novel Dreamsnake, and won the Nebula again for her 1996 novel The Moon and the Sun. Her short stories were also nominated for awards. In media fiction, she will probably be most remembered as the author who gave Ensign Sulu a first name (Hikaru) in her Star Trek...

This week, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif) tried to bolster her prospects for nabbing the Democratic nomination for president in the 2020 election by alleging she can see the future. "Back when I was in college in the 1980s I had a glimpse of the future where I saw the rise to fame of Snoop Dogg and Tupac," she claimed. "This was before anyone, including me, knew who these people were. Then came the 1990s and both shot to the top of the music world." "Now I see two paths diverging depending on who is elected our next president," Harris said....

It's not all about replicants, Terminators, and galaxies far, far away.

Gregory Benford, science fiction author and astrophysicist, is the 2019 winner of the Robert A. Heinlein Award. The award is bestowed for outstanding published works in science fiction and technical writings that inspire the human exploration of space. This award is in recognition of Benford’s body of work, including his 32 novels, over 218 short stories, and many non-fiction articles. Benford will receive the award on Friday, May 24 at opening ceremonies during Balticon 53, the 53rd Maryland Regional Science Fiction Convention. Balticon and the Robert A. Heinlein Award are both managed and sponsored by The Baltimore Science Fiction Society.

... In Kim Stanley Robinson’s novel New York 2140, Manhattan is flooded after unabated climate change causes the sea level to rise by 50ft (15.25m). The amphibian city is now a SuperVenice, a grid of canals populated by vaporettos. Robinson’s 2017 climate-fiction novel belongs to a growing cadre of works about drowned nations, wind farm utopias or scarred metropolises decades into the future. As diplomats draft the rulebook for the global response to the climate crisis and engineers race to produce better solar panels, writers have found their role, too: telling what Robinson calls “the story of the next century”....

From the blog of Jon Del Arroz, conservative Hispanic scifi author A year ago, my children were doxxed. I was facing immense pressure because an author, who happens to be the SFWA president, was running a campaign to smear and slander me, which began with her calling this blog “egregious stupidity” on a public forum when I’d never had contact with her in my life.

ALL Doctor Who Title Sequences (UPDATED) | Doctor Who

By JEET HEER June 8, 2014 The science-fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein once described himself as “a preacher with no church.” More accurately, he was a preacher with too many churches. Rare among the many intellectual gurus whose fame mushroomed in the 1960s, Heinlein was a beacon for hippies and hawks, libertarians and authoritarians, and many other contending faiths—but rarely at the same time. While America became increasingly liberal, he became increasingly right wing, and it hobbled his once-formidable imagination. His career, as a new biography inadvertently proves, is a case study in the literary perils of political extremism. MOST...

Average Face of Every Doctor Who Star Is a Reminder We're Very Glad Regeneration is a Complete Renewal On Doctor Who, the process of regeneration for a Time Lord is a profound, excruciating transformation. Every cell of their being explodes with celestial energy, transforming their entire being. It’s probably for the best though, considering that if every Time Lord kept a bit of their past self, they’d look like the nightmare above.

John Carpenter’s The Thing is a classic science fiction horror film that has scared audiences for decades. But the film was inspired by an earlier story published in the 1930s, “Who Goes There?” by noted editor John W. Campbell Jr., and it turns out that that there’s more to that story. A researcher recently discovered an unpublished, novel-length manuscript of the story, and a small press is using Kickstarter to publish it... Alec Nevala-Lee notes that Campbell was inspired in part by explorer Richard Byrd, and possibly H.P. Lovecraft’s classic horror story “At the Mountains of Madness.” In 1938, a...

Answer, by Fredric Brown, is a science fiction short story first published in 1954. Since the complete text appears on the Internet in several places, I'm assuming that it's in the public domain. Dwan Ev ceremoniously soldered the final connection with gold. The eyes of a dozen television cameras watched him and the subether bore throughout the universe a dozen pictures of what he was doing. He straightened and nodded to Dwar Reyn, then moved to a position beside the switch that would complete the contact when he threw it. The switch  that would connect, all at once, all of...

In a new clip from the upcoming movie "UFO," releasing digitally and on DVD Sept. 4, characters discuss how aliens could use physical constants to navigate across space. ...Gillian Anderson.... stars as a mathematics professor, ... Alex Sharp as a college student investigating UFO sightings near U.S. airports with his girlfriend ..., as an FBI agent ... pursues them. The film's science advisor...was Space.com columnist Paul Sutter. The fine structure constant relates to the strength of the electromagnetic force between elementary particles. Research has at times suggested that this constant might vary across the universe — so space travelers could...

2018 Hugo Award Winners

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Comic-Con, the annual gathering of over 130,000 fans, artists, collectors and geek culture savants, has already been changed by the #MeToo and Time’s Up era, with at least one notable figure stepping aside due to sexual misconduct allegations. But questions remain about its atmosphere and whether convention organizers will take any extra steps to address longstanding allegations of harassment issues during the event which kicks off Wednesday night in San Diego. The convention has always been a home for comic book and genre enthusiasts, and a refuge for like-minded fans to mingle, but it’s also been...

The comics industry seems to be doubling down on their policy of completely excluding anyone who is straight, white, male, or conservative. This year's Emerald City Comic Con released its schedule of events on its app recently. Anyone who is male, white and identifies as heterosexual found himself excluded from industry mixers and professional mixers.

Nicole Maines is to become the first-ever transgender superhero in TV series Supergirl. Maines, who is an activist and is transgender herself, has been cast as Nia Nal/Dreamer in the series and will be introduced in the fourth series. The series is based on the DC Comics character. Speaking at Comic-Con in San Diego, Maines said: “It seems only fitting that we have a trans superhero for trans kids to look up to.” Maines told Variety: “I want fans to take away an understanding of trans people. We can be anybody, we can be who we want, we can be...

....When the cast of Warner Bros.’ Harry Potter prequel was asked what they would do if they had magic in real life, costar Zoe Kravitz (who plays Leta Lestrange) shot back: “Impeach Trump!” That was met with plenty of cheers in the room....

MAGA 2020 & Beyond is the best alternative to all of the over-the-top anti-Trump press and social media out there. More than a dozen writers came together to envision a brighter future for America inspired by the election of Donald J. Trump.