Posted by Scifi Fan on Aug 28, 2009 Posted in Books, Fantasy
The clockwork vampires are invading!, the new novel “Kell’s Legend, written by Andy Remic and shortly to be published by Angry Robot Books features clockwork vampires invading the land of Falanor.
A small group of heroes set off to warn the king, Kell the ancient hero, his granddaughter Nienna and her friend Katrina. They are joined with Saark, the ex champion of the King, brought into disgrace after an affair with the queen.
Andy Remic looks set to pick up the epic fantasy battle throne from the late David Gemmell. The novel is set to be unleashed on the 1st September (UK/Australia) and you can see a specially made promotional video featuring the Legend that is Andy Remic in the mean time (excellent music by “th3 m1ss1ng”).
The BBC have reported that many of the science fiction ideas including invisibility cloaks, teleportation and even time travel may be closer to reality that you might think.
The news story follows a recently published book by the renowned theoretical physicist Dr Michio Kaku, who is the co-founder of string field theory (often referred to as the theory of everything).
Posted by Scifi Fan on Aug 24, 2009 Posted in Books
The online giant Amazon is joining forces with digital Titans Microsoft and Yahoo to sign up to the Open Book Alliance in a coalition to fight Google’s attempt to create the world’s biggest virtual library.
The Open Book Alliance opposes a recent legal settlement worth $125 million between book publishers and Google which compensates copyright holders whose works appear in the Google book search service. This deal is already being investigated by anti-trust regulators with some believing the deal breaches the US anti-trust act.
Posted by Scifi Fan on Aug 21, 2009 Posted in Books, Science Fiction
To mark the 30th Aniversary and the release of the sixth novel in the Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy trilogy, the Rough Guide are launching the “Rough Guide to the Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy”.
With over 16 million novels sold so far, with the journey from Radio to book to TV series to Film, The Hitchhikers Guide is a worldwide phenomenon that is set to go supernova with the release of the sixth novel And another thing which is being written by the very successful author Eoin Colfer.
The Guide to the Guide promises to be the ulimate guide to Douglas Adams legendary science fiction series featuring Arthur Dent, Ford Prefect and Marvin the paranoid android and is set for release on the 1st October. Written by the true Hitchhikers guide fan Marcus O’Dair who is also a journalist and radio broadcaster.
The BBC have released a few of the classic Doctor Who novels for free as e-books on the BBC website. Many of these novels are quite rare and even feature brand new original artwork and extensive additional notes written by the original authors.
Novels available at the moment include Human Nature written by Paul Cornell and featuring the Seventh Doctor., The Well Mannered War written by Gareth Roberts and featuring the Fourth Doctor and Nightshade written by Mark Gatiss and featuring the Seventh Doctor, amongst others.
A full list of these e-books, along with the full copies of the books themselves can be found here: BBC Doctor Who Novels.
According to new scientific research, an attack of Zombies could wipe out civilisation unless dealt with aggressively and fast.
These conclusions are the result of a mathematical excercise carried out by researchers at the University’s of Ottawa and Carleton and shows that in many respects a Zombie outbreak would resemble a lethal rapidly spreading infection.
Unless the outbreak was met with frequent counter-attacks of increasing force, humanity would be quickly overwhelmed.
Even more worrying is the researchers chose the classic slow shuffling Zombies as opponents as in “Dawn of the Dead” rather than the fast moving modern day Zombie you see in films like “I am Legend”
Posted by Scifi Fan on Aug 18, 2009 Posted in Books, Fantasy
The Nominations for the World Fantasy Awards 2009 have been announced, with authors including Neil Gaiman (for both the Graveyard book and the novella “Odd and the Frost Giants”), Kage Baker for “House of the Stag”, Jeffrey Ford for “The Shadow Year” and Daryl Gregory for “Pandemonium”.
The winners will be announced during the World Fantasy Convention 2009, held in San Jose (USA) between 29th October and 1st November.
Posted by Scifi Fan on Aug 11, 2009 Posted in Books, Science Fact
Terry Pratchett, one of the most successful authors on the planet, who was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s disease in December 2007 has made an emotional plea for the right to choose to die when his quality of life deteriorates to the point that he can no longer carry on.
Terry Pratchett spoke out after the House of Lords made a controversial judgment in the case of a woman with multiple sclerosis who was trying to find out if her husband would face prosecution should he help her travel to a clinic in Zurich to die. He has rejected the idea that allowing assisted suicide would mean legalizing euthanasia.
Posted by Scifi Fan on Aug 8, 2009 Posted in Blog
How long could you survive?
The march of the Angry Robot continues apace with 4 new authors signed up within the space of a month to the new Angry Robot Books publishers.
As if that wasn’t enough they are also attending the 67th annual Worldcon (World Science fiction society) which starts today in Quebec (Canada) and includes Neil Gaiman as guest of honor.
Even better, the outstanding novel Nekropolis by Tim Waggoner is out now, featuring the Zombie detective Matt Richter. In our opinion there are a distinct lack of Zombie detectives (or even Zombie main characters for that matter) and this book is highly recommended.
