Here is a picture of J.R.R. Tolkien looking at some flowers in a greenhouse. Apparently, he was the worst person to take walks with because he liked to stop and observe every tree he passed very carefully. We can only assume that he did this because he was waiting for them all to reveal their true Ent nature and speak to him. Ents do speak slowly, after all. They were probably between words while he was watching. (Photo from simplythebess’ Tumblr.)

[We promise your daily off-site links will take less time than an Entmoot]

Welcome back to the British Genre Fiction Focus, Tor.com’s weekly column dedicated to news and new releases from the United Kingdom’s thriving speculative fiction industry.

Already a familiar refrain, right?

Alas, this is the last time you’ll read it, because beginning this week, things are going to be different. Only a little, admittedly: news and new releases from the United Kingdom’s thriving speculative fiction industry will still be the focus of the Focus, of course, but going forward, we’re going to be splitting the two components of the column in its current form into posts of their own.

The news will still be a weekly treat each Wednesday. The new releases, however, will be a fortnightly proposition from this point on. It’s not yet set in stone, but let’s say every second Sunday. This means that the British Genre Fiction Focus will be rather more manageable for all involved. Plus, new books will have their own spotlight to shine in; their own space for discussion and such.

Got that?

Good. Then let’s get to the new and improved news. This week, it’s YA all the way! The last Waterstones Children’s Laureate has criticised the mainstream media for turning a blind eye to new releases for younger readers, whilst the latest Laureate outlines her plans for the future of literature for littles. In Cover Art Corner, we consider Katya’s War, and finally, an article from the Guardian examines gender segregation by way of the colours of the covers of the books our wee ones are taught to want.

[Read more.]

Perhaps sparked by recent news of 3D photocopiers and the like, I’ve been thinking about SF and new technologies. One of the things you often hear people say these days is that science fiction is in danger of being overtaken by the sheer pace of advancements in science and technology. People were saying similar things, too, when I wrote my Shoal trilogy. It’s an understandable refrain, particularly when the news is now filled with reports about downloadable blueprints for building guns with those same 3D printers. The feeling that you’re living in a world co-scripted by John Varley and John Brunner tends to grow when you take a quick scan through any number of online news sites and discover front-page features on exoplanets, life extension, and NASA research into Alcubierre drives. It might seem that in the face of such remarkable advances, science fiction might no longer be as relevant as it once was, reality having in many respects caught up with it. You might think that, but you would be wrong.

[Read more]

“Progress”
Written by Peter Allan Fields
Directed by Les Landau
Season 1, Episode 14
Production episode 40511-415
Original air date: May 9, 1993
Stardate: 46844.3

Station log: Quark is annoyed that Broik forgot to cancel an order of yamok sauce, since only Cardassians can stand the stuff. Nog, who is playing cards with Jake, overhears Quark berating his employee and views it as an opportunity, to Jake’s confusion.

With Federation assistance, Bajor is tapping the molten core of Jeraddo, one of Bajor’s moons. Kira and Dax do a final pass over the moon to make sure that there’s no life—the moon was evacuated, as the core-tapping will make the place uninhabitable—but they detect some humanoid life in a sector that shouldn’t have anyone there. While Dax continues the search, Kira beams down to find herself at a house where two Bajorans are threatening her with pitchforks. Yes, really. They’re both mute thanks to torture by Cardassians (which means they can be played by extras who don’t get paid as much), but a third person makes up for it. His name is Mullibok, he thinks Kira is pretty, he’s a farmer who grows magnificent katterpod beans, and he’s not leaving the moon. Kira insists that he has to go; Mullibok says they can talk about it over supper. Kira tells Dax she’s staying for a farewell supper and that she’ll catch a lift back from one of the thermologists.

[It’s dirt!]

Welcome back to the Short Fiction Spotlight, a space for conversation about recent and not-so-recent short stories. Last time around, we discussed Christopher Barzak’s new collection; this week, I’d like to get back to some recent magazines—namely, the July and August issues of Asimov’s, edited by Sheila Williams. The July issue included four novelettes and three short stories; August, however, included a novella, three novelettes, and only a single short story.

Of those, the pieces that stood out to me the most were “The Art of Homecoming” by Carrie Vaughn and “Today’s Friends” by David J. Schwartz from the July issue, as well as “The Ex-Corporal” by Leah Thomas from the August issue. While each issue also contained stories in universes familiar to readers of Asimov’s (a Rick Wilber piece in July and a Kristine Kathryn Rusch in August), the stand-alones were the offerings that caught my attention the most.

[Onward.]

“Trial”
Story by Paul Dini, Bruce W. Timm
Teleplay by Paul Dini
Directed by Dan Riba
Episode #068
Music by Harvey R. Cohen
Animation Services by Dong Yang Animation, Inc.
Original Airdate—May 16th, 1994

Plot: The inmates of Arkham Asylum force anti-Batman crusader Janet van Dorn to defend Batman against the charge that he created all of his enemies.

[Batman is put on trial by his enemies... and Bruce plays Indiana Jones while Talia has an emotional crisis of conscience]

Hey everyone on the internet! Watch The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug trailer now!

[Read more]

Semi-live, from New Orleans, it’s a Wheel of Time Re-read!

Today’s entry covers Chapter 17 of A Memory of Light, in which there are egregious acts of aggressive greenery, and everything else just pisses me off.

Previous re-read entries are here. The Wheel of Time Master Index is here, which has links to news, reviews, interviews, and all manner of information about the Wheel of Time in general. The index for all things specifically related to the final novel in the series, A Memory of Light, is here.

Also, for maximum coolness, the Wheel of Time Re-read is also now available as e-books, from your preferred e-book retailer!

This re-read post, and all posts henceforth, contain spoilers for the entire Wheel of Time series. If you haven’t read, read at your own risk.

And now, the post!

[I swear my name isn’t really Rachel Dratch]

We've given you a taste of Captain Romulus Buckle's snowbound dystopian world with this excerpt, and now we want to give you a copy of his first steampunk adventure, Romulus Buckle & the City of the Founders. Written by Richard Ellis Preston, Jr., and out from 47North on July 2, this book kicks off the Chronicles of the Pnemautic Zeppelin and looks like the perfect rollicking summer read.

Comment below to win one of our five advance galleys of the book! 

NO PURCHASE NECESSARY TO ENTER OR WIN. A purchase does not improve your chances of winning. Sweepstakes open to legal residents of fifty (50) United States and the District of Columbia, who are 18 or older. To enter, comment on this post beginning at 12:30 p.m. Eastern Time (ET) on June 11, 2013. Sweepstakes ends at 12:00 p.m. ET June 15, 2013. Void outside of the 50 US, and DC where prohibited by law. Please see full details and official rules here. Sponsor: Tor.com, 175 Fifth Ave., New York, NY 10010.

Science Fiction has always had a dark side. There has been a touch of the irrational and absurd in the genre from the very beginning. Consider Hugo Gernsback. In photographs he looks like he might have been your grandmother’s or great-grandmother’s high school vice principal, but he started off publishing old subversives like H. G. Wells and 19th century degenerates like Edgar Allan Poe. Gernsback was an optimist who preferred to spend his time predicting future inventions like Google glass (he once called a TV antenna box he’d strapped over his eyes during a Life Magazine photo shoot “TV Glasses”) and describing how radar works, rather than bothering with social or psychological questions.

But when Gernsback started Amazing Stories back in 1926 he inadvertently turned his attention to just these kinds of problems. It turned out that wireless radios, energy beams, and space travel weren’t merely fun ideas—these things came with a price. What it cost us was our sense of connectedness and meaning, and we’ve been trading away our tradition of connection—trading away what we think of as human nature—for gadgets, blinking lights, and a fleeting sensation of power and speed for a long time now.

[Read more.]

Because it’s a topic dear to my heart, today I’m returning to advocate in favour of more lesbianism. And as it happens, I’ve recently read a handful of novels that feature queer women in love—queer women in love where, within their science fictional or fantastic universes, this is an unremarkable, normal, ordinary part of the social and cultural background—and you know how much I enjoy that.

[Read more]

Scatter, Adapt, and Remember: How Humans Will Survive a Mass Extinction, published by Doubleday, is the newest nonfiction offering from Annalee Newitz—familiar voice from io9 and editor of previous nonfiction anthologies such as She’s Such a Geek!: Women Write About Science, Technology, and Other Nerdy Stuff. This project is a hybrid work, a popular-science style research project that begins with the hard facts of mass extinction events on our planet and concludes, in quite speculative territory, with the technological futures we may work toward to avoid being wiped out in the next extinction.

To quote the flap copy:

As a species, Homo sapiens is at a crossroads. Study of our planet’s turbulent past suggests that we are overdue for a catastrophic disaster, whether caused by nature or human interference. It’s a frightening prospect, as each of the earth’s past major disasters—from meteor strikes to bombardment by cosmic radiation—resulted in a mass extinction… But in Scatter, Adapt, and Remember, Annalee Newitz […] explains that although global disaster is all but inevitable, our chances of log-term species survival are better than ever.

Going on to call the book a “brilliantly speculative work of popular science,” that brief introduction to the project gives a good idea of what will follow: science, history, and the future—in one bright narrative thread.

[A review.]

IGN Entertainment’s production coordinator Alexis Cozombolidis wanted something awesome to display in her profile page at her job, so she commissioned Fan Art Exhibit, previously famed for inserting Alison Brie as Captain America into The Avengers, to turn her into Superwoman using the costume aesthetics from Man of Steel. What resulted is something that looks very much like a spoiler for the movie!

You can also see FAE’s depiction of all the Avengers as women here, or get yourself fashioned into a superhero!

Meanwhile, your morning roundup is wondering where Threepio will be and watching TSA agents mess with a wookiee.

[Read more]

According to his former (and self-described) widow-in-waiting, Iain Banks passed away “without pain” yesterday, just two months after publically announcing his own impending death in early April. At that time, he admitted it was extremely unlikely he’d live beyond a year, but we all hoped he’d have that long at least.

The bad news broke about 24 hours ago, and I still can’t get my head around how sudden it seemed. We knew what was coming, of course, but as I write, I’m realising that hasn’t made his passing any easier to deal with.

What has softened the blow, if only a little, is knowing that I’m not alone in feeling sick to my stomach with sorrow. Touching tributes have been rolling in ever since Adele’s message. They’ve come from a truly huge range of folks, all of whom profess to have been affected by the irreplaceable author and his thirty-odd awesome novels.

So today, rather than documenting the details of his untimely death, I want to take this opportunity to highlight a few of these outpourings of emotion. Who knows... maybe, just maybe, they’ll help you feel a bit better too.

[Read more]

Requiem, the fourth book in Ken Scholes’ Psalms of Isaak series, comes out on June 18. The new volume expands on the quest of the Crimson Empress as she conquers the Named Lands, and leads the characters into intrigue upon intrigue as they explore their world.

You can read an excerpt here, and check out Ken Scholes’ tour to see if he’s coming to a bookstore near you:

[Read more]

The Purge is set in a very near-future America where, under only cursorily explained circumstances, a new government has come to power on the promise of reducing crime and unemployment. And lo, they succeed! Unemployment is at 1%, crime practically a memory. Their solution suggests that they (or at least the movie’s writer-director, James DeMonaco) are Star Trek fans: once a year, for 12 hours, all crime is legal, including murder, the idea being that all of society’s collective aggressions are, per the title, purged.

[Read more]

It’s always fun to watch actors that you normally recognize from genre work do Shakespeare, and a special treat when the actors in question are American because... well, we don’t get many chances. While Patrick Stewart and David Tennant get to do Hamlet, and Tom Hiddleston wows us with Henry IV, American actors are usually lounging back with roles in terrible rom-coms that they’re clearly doing to make a paycheck. So it was awfully nice of Joss Whedon to decide he was going to film his own production of Much Ado About Nothing hot on the heels of The Avengers’ success.

[Thou and I are too wise to woo peaceably.]