News for 2010

The Book of the year competition is now closed, thank you to all who voted and took part and of course to each of the authors who have written such incredible works of fiction over the last 12 months.

The winner of the Book of the year will be announced soon on this site, so please watch out for it. I would also like to point out that a few people have attempted to spoil this for everyone (as so often is the case) and SFBook is being...

This video tells the story of robot evolution all packed into just 1 minute.

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The most innovative publishers around at the moment are without a doubt those at Angry Robot Books, and continuing on their tireless quest to provide us with the best in science fiction and fantasy they have announced that for one month only in March 2011 they will open their doors to all unrepresented authors anywhere.

Brand new digital non-profit publisher H&H Books has been created by the team of Scott Harrison and the Angry Robot editor Lee Harris. All the titles will not only be available through the normal ebook retailers but 100% of the revenue will go directly to specific charitable causes.

If that wasn't...

NASA has announced that it has scheduled a News Conference for Thursday 2nd December at 2pm EST (7pm GMT) to discuss an "astrobiology finding that will impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life".

The News Conference will be held at the NASA headquarters in Washington and will be...

It would appear that an Oxygen atmosphere is more common than some people have thought, scientists have already found Oxygen on Europa and Ganymede and now with the recent discovery that Saturn's icy moon Rhea contains an Oxygen and Carbon Dioxide atmosphere, it would appear that the gas is much more common than...

Lego Star Wars video, very funny but isn't going to gain any new Jar Jar Binks fans (if there are any).

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Science in the service of Autism, known as Autistica are the UK's largest charity raising funds for medical research that will improve diagnosis, advance new treatments and discover the causes of autism.

In an effort to raise funds for this very worth while cause, a number of very well known authors...

Yes, it's confirmed that the new BBC adaption of Douglas Adams Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency will be shown on BBC 4 this winter. Filming has begun in Bristol and will feature Stephen Mangan of "Green Wing" and "I'm Alan Partridge" fame as the intrepid detective.

The series has already been adapted for the...

There seems to be growing evidence of the possiblity of life existing outside of our planet every where you look at the moment, with water everywhere, earth size planets in goldilock zones and the distinct possibility of past or present life on Mars.

Now Astronomers are suggesting that there could be organic matter in the kuiper asteroid belt that lies beyond Jupiter. The Kuiper belt was originally considered to be made up of rock and...

Today marks NaNoWriMo month, or (inter)national Novel Writing Month, where thousands of people attempt to write a 175 page (50,000 word) novel in just 1 month (deadline midnight 30th November).

Created by American Author Chris Baty in July 1999, the competition is open to everyone who has ever thought of writing a novel. Due to...

This years winners of the World Fantasy Award have just been announced and the winner of the best novel goes to China Miéville for his incredible novel "The City & The City". The novel has already won the 2010 Hugo Award (tied with Paolo Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl), the 2010 British Science Fiction Award, the 2010 Arthur C Clarke Award and this years John W Campbell Award.

The seminal authors Sir Terry Pratchett, Brian Lumley and...

Way back in January 2009, we reported on a theory that the Universe is just a hologram, which explained that for the last seven years German scientists had been conducting an experiment (called the GEO600) to look for gravitational waves - ripples in space-time thrown off by super-dense astronomical...

An Irish independant film maker has gone public with what he says could be a time traveller appearing in extra footage from the DVD of the 1928 Charlie Chaplin film "The Circus".

The scene can be found in the extra's menu of the DVD and features a "woman" walking along and appearing to talk into an object she is holding up to her ear, the size and shape of a modern mobile phone. Don't forget this is footage filmed in 1928, before...

Happy Birthday to us Happy Birthday to us Happy Birthday SFBook, Happy Birthday to us. As you may have just guessed SFBook is 11 years old!, which in internet terms is positively ancient and only a year younger than the colossus Google.

Over the last 11 years SFBook has strived to offer the best reviews in...

Here at SFBook we are very careful about the horror books we read, you won't find many on the site and there isn't even a seperate section for the genre (yet). We do however know when a good horror book comes along, as the festival of Samhain draws near what better way to celebrate than a really good book, or 5.

So here for your viewing pleasure is the non horror readers guide to the best horror novels for halloween:

The Top...

A huge alien planet 44 light years from earth in the constellation Andromeda is baffling scientist with a very strange "hot spot" on it's side.

The planet in question, known as "Upsilon Andromedae b" (catchy eh!) is a large gas giant like our own Jupiter and is "tidally locked" meaning that it doesn't...

Some very clever people by the name of Cary Huang and Michael Huang have created a model showing the scale of the whole universe, from the "Quantum foam" of Einstein's space-time theory - the length of 1 plank, or the smallest possible length in the Universe, right up to the estimated size of the Universe itself.

It's...

One of Britain's finest science fiction authors, kind enough to be interviewed on sfbook twice, Peter F Hamilton will be appearing as a special guest at this years MCM Expo (London's Comic con) which runs from...

SFBook has finally got it's hands on an e-reader, more specifically the new version of Amazon's Kindle and as this is a review site I thought it a good idea to offer a review.

Firstly I confess that although I work in the IT sector, I am somewhat of a traditionalist when it comes to books. I love the whole...

For the third rime this year alone, a UFO has forced Baotou airport in China to close in order to prevent any aeroplanes crashing into the object. Three flights from Shanghai and Beijing were forced to circle the airport until the UFO dissapeared while two other flights were diverted to other...

Those prolific bloggers over at IO9 have mentioned that yesterday morning in Washington DC several former US military officers have confirmed in a press conference that they have personally witenessed UFO's tampering with nuclear missile control sites, rendering them inactive.

Below are the video excerpts that have been recorded on YouTube, if you factor in the recent appointment to extraterrestrials ambassador at the United Nations...

For any fan of Star Wars, or John Williams, there is an excellent 4 part cappella musical tribute on YouTube - created by Corey Vidal and Moosebutter:

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Star Wars fan Dave Smith has created an excellent Star Wars short film in 3D. The Solo Adventures was sponsored by Lucas Film and won this years Star Wars Fan movie challange.

The 2010 Hugo award winners have been announced at this years Aussiecon, with the eminent toast master Garth Nix. This year sees a Tie for Best novel, with China Miéville's The City and the City and Paolo Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl.

Other highlights include Doctor Who winning "Best Dramatic Presentation, Short form" and Frederik Pohl winning "best fan writer".

You can see a full list here:

The 2010 Ditmar awards have been announced at the Australian National Science Fiction Convention, NatCon-Dudcon III. The Winners include Angry Robot Books author Kaaron Warren for Slights (Best Novel), Paul Haines for Wives (Best Novella) and also Slice of Life (Best collected work).

You can see the full list here:

Best Novel - Slights - Kaaron Warren

Best Novella or Novelette - Wives - Paul Haines

Best Short...

??Is the World about to End?

There has been a story sweeping across America that claims that the recent BP Gulf disaster could have triggered a mass extinction event on a scale the world hasn't seen in 251 million years.

Around that time there was a mass extinction event, killing of 96% of all...

We would like all our valuable readers to know that Science Fiction and Fantasy has now merged with the established and most excellent website sfbook. Don't worry though, the website is still owned and run by the same person but we now have a nice short web address and will eventually merge the excellent content created by the previous owner of sfbook.

Science Fiction and Fantasy's new domain name is http://sfbook.com.

You...

Today is the 71st Anniversary of that magical tale The Wizard of Oz, and scott stanford has recently released his version of this classic tale.

The Darker Side of Oz is a deeper, more character driven and very dark interpretation of Baum's work and describes a more...

Those generous people over at channel 4 have created a free science fiction adventure game you can play online. Set in the year 2027, Britain is controlled by a Nanny State and curfews are in force throughout the country and civil liberties are ignored.

There are...

After years of pretty much ignoring the United Kingdom e-book market and then the half-hearted attempt with "allowing" UK shoppers to buy a Kindle in the UK, Amazon is now finally taking things seriously with 2 revamped versions of the Kindle for the UK market.

Offering a complete...

The inevitable march of the e-book continues apace with the news this week that in the US on Amazon.com, sales for e-books have outpaced those of hardback novels and the growth of e-book sales is increasing.

In a statement Amazon US said:

"over the past three months, for every 100 hardcover books Amazon.com has sold, it has sold 143 Kindle books."

At first glance this sounds pretty impressive but this is just marked...

South Africa's greatest export (in our opinion) Lauren Beukes, hit the literary scene last year with the an ultra-smart urban science fiction novel Moxyland which showed a grim vision of a near future Cape-town. Moxyland recieved critical acclaim when first launched by Angry Robot Books in July 2009 and has been nominated for a number of awards.

This year sees the launch of her second novel, again published by the hotest newly...

The 19th July 2010 marks the launch of the new website Titan Books by the distinguished publisher of Books specialises in high quality film, TV and music tie-ins, illustrated books, fiction and graphic novels.

The new site has been created by one of the UK's principal digital agencies - Zone (Penguin, Film Four and The...

This Tuesday (6th July) was the 63rd anniversary of the Roswell UFO incident and even those with no interest or knowledge of UFO's or aliens have heard of Roswell, 6th July 1947. The story goes that a UFO crashed in the desert around Roswell and that the American military recovered parts of the spaceship and also alien bodies, which they...

Back in May we mentioned that Tom Tom has signed up the evil Sith lord Darth Vader to voice their in car GPS systems. This month it's the turn of the 900 year old Jedi Master Yoda. Again the recording video is seriously funny stuff, check it out:

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Ira Nayman, the Canadian author and journalist has won first place in the 2010 Swift Satire Competition. The winning entry was a poem set in images called "Love Amid the Construction" and...

Angry Robot Books, formally an imprint of Harper Collins have signed their first new author since going independent.

Justin Gustainis has joined the robot horde with his range of urban fantasy novels to be published in spring 2011.

Angry Robot had this to say:

We are delighted to announce our latest...

Back in January 2009, David Cameron was speaking at one of his Cameron Direct meetings where he answered the public's questions, and the question was raised about aliens visiting the earth while he held a meeting at Tynemouth on Tyneside.

A member of the audience asked:

"In July last year...

One of my very favorite authors of all time and also one of the most popular authors ever with more than 55 million novels sold, Sir Terry Pratchett is teaming up with one of my most respected authors of all time, hard scifi writer Stephen Baxter - creator of Space, Evolution, flux and Arc (to name a few) - to create a science...

Nasa has warned that some parts of the world (including the UK) could face mass power blackouts, loss of communication, air travel and severe distruption to electrical items in 2013 as they predict a massive rise in solar flares when the sun awakes from it's (relative) slumber in a once in a lifetime...

Carbonate Mineral Rocks

New evidence has recently been revealed that strengthens the theory that life once existed on the red planet. Earlier this week it was reported by NASA that the Mars Exploration Robot "Spirit" has found martian rocks rich in carbonate minerals, which suggests there was much more water in Mars...

The Evidence of life on Titan (the largest of Saturns moons) has grown recently thanks to the Cassini spacecraft. Titan is a very different place than Earth, in size it's about 50% bigger than Earth's moon and is the second biggest moon in the solar system (Jupiter's moon Ganymede being the...

Sony has predicted that sales of e-books will overtake those of printed books within the next 5 years. This was announced by the President of Sony's "digital reading division" - Steve Haber who has gone on to say:

"Three years ago, I said within ten years but I realised that was wrong -...

This week marks the beginning of a very important event in the 21st century space race as 6 volunteers start a simulated voyage to Mars.

These 6 mock astronauts will live for 520 days in a vacuum sealed mock spaceship which has been built in a warehouse in one of Moscow's suburbs. While not as glamorous as the real thing, this is non the less a very important step in the eventual human mission to the red planet.

Organised by...

Neal Stephenson, the American author of Anathem, and the Cryptonomicon (amongst others) has begun to create a collaborative experiment in 21st century publishing with renowned author Greg Bear, Nicole Galland, Mark Teppo and others.

This experiment, titled "The Mongoliad" is a serialised story that is...

A truly historic achievement, for the first time in history Artificial life has been created by man. Researchers led by Dr Craig Venter of the J Craig Venter Institute (JCVI) in Maryland and California have managed to construct a bacterium's "genetic software" (called Mycoplasma mycoides JCVI-syn1.0) and transplanted it into a...

33 years ago (August 20, 1977), NASA launched Voyager 2 out into space, the probe was intended as both a time capsule and an attempt to contact Alien intelligence. To this end Voyager 2 carried a Golden Record that contained a voice message in 55 languages welcoming any Alien it may encounter in the vastness of...

Angry Robots break away from human masters!, you heard it right, those ever so angry robots have split from their human masters over at HarperCollins UK and are now independent Robots, backed by experts Osprey Publishing.

They will continue to plot and scheme from their Nottingham lair and will still...

Google has gone one step closer to it's monetizing plans for all those millions of books the company has so far digitized. "Google Editions" will be non-platform specific and will enable customers to download to a variety of devices.

It must be said that Google does have a vast library of literature at it's disposal, over 12...

There is a great post over at the photoshop tutorials website PSD TUTS which showcases 40 outstanding Scifi concept artworks.

Featuring some breath-taking images by some very talented artists, it's well worth a look:

Beyond Cylons and...

This years winner of the esteemed Phillip K Dick Award is for the novel "Bitter Angels" by the novelist "Sarah Zettel" who first burst onto the literary scene with the 1996 novel "Reclamation". Since then she has seen a number of novels published with 2 complete series (Isavalta and Camelot) along with a number of single volume...

Ringturn, the science fiction novel of off-world human colonisation by the talented writer John C Mawson has won the April 2010 People's Book Prize.

The People's Book Prize is a national competition that aims to discover talented authors and is voted for entirely by members of the public.

The...

It has been announced that the late Philip K Dick's memoirs are finally to be published in two full volumes. The Exegesis is essentially a collection of Philip's hand written notes which include his infamous visions, his ideas on religion and what the visions could have meant along with comments...

Darth Vader, the ex Jedi knight / Sith Lord and father of Luke and Leia Skywalker is amongst Star Wars characters who have signed up with the GPS manufacturer Tom Tom to provide their voice for the in car GPS systems. Other characters to take part include Han Solo, C3PO and Yoda.

You can see a video of Darth record his voice for the part here, and believe me it's hilarious:

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Commercial director Carl Erik Rinsch was originally planning on making his directorial debut with the ridley scott "Alien" prequel however as this fell through he took part in electronic giant Phillips' short-film experiment, which allowed five filmmakers to make their own movie using the same piece of dialogue.

Rinsch's short movie is called "The Gift" and is a futuristic story set in Moscow and seemlessly combines robotic and...

The winner of the Arthur C Clarke award for 2010 is... China Miéville for his book "The City & the City", breaking a record by becoming the first ever author to win the award 3 times!, having won the 2001 award for "Perdido Street Station" and the 2005 award for "Iron Council".

Miéville fought off some really strong competition, including heavyweights Kim Stanley Robinson for the rather special Galileo's Dream, Iain Banks for...

According to Nikodem Poplawski - physicist at the Indiana University in the US, our universe may actually sit inside a black hole that is in itself part of a larger universe. According to this new, quite outlandish and crazy sounding...

The nominations for the 2010 Hugo awards have been announced at Aussiecon 4, the 68th World Science Fiction Convention. The convention itself will take place between the 2nd and 6th of September 2010 at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre.

Guests of honour include Kim Stanley Robinson, the award winning artist Shaun Tan and dedicated fan Robin Johnson. Programs will include discussion panels, lectures, science...

The shortlist for the 2010 David Gemmell awards have been announced over the Easter period and there are some interesting choices - with Brandon Sanderson being nominated twice (for Warbreaker and The Gathering Storm), along with Pierre Pevel (for best fantasy novel and Best newcomer).

The complete...

Soul Stealers is the sequel to the 5 star winning novel Kell's Legend, written by Andy Remic and featuring a quote from our humble site on the cover.

Due out on the 29th April 2010, Andy Remic has created a short film to wet the appetite...

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Vampireology is the true history of vampires, and the 9th book in the "Ology" series, having sold over 16 million copies worldwide.

Originally written in 1900 by Archibold Brooks, the world's foremost protector. Archibold is brutally...

Entangled is the new epic fantasy novel from the bestselling fantasy author Graham Hancock who's previous novels include the non-fiction books "The Sign and the Seal", "Fingerprints of the Gods" and "Heaven's Mirror".

His books have so far sold over 5 million volumes in 27 languages and his reputation has been further...

Yes this is a flying hover car, not only does it work, it can take passengers too:

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Ok so I am struggling to find what this has to do with books, science fiction or even fantasy really but this video is just too funny to miss:

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With the recent release to the public of the MOD's files on UFO encounters, it appears they have now decided that they are no longer going to keep files on Unidentified Flying Objects, destroying any reports after 30 days and insist that UFOs are not a military threat.

This announcement on the one hand could be seen as cutting...

World book day is almost here, on the 4th April 2010 and there are many activities this year including 11 £1 book stories which will be read by the Authors or Actors online on the day while there is also a "Buy one Give one" promotion running now in conjunction with The Times, The Sun and News of the World.

Buy one Give One means you buy a paperback and get a second book free to donate to charity, vouchers are available in the...

In the run up to the launch of the next episode in the most excellent Nekropolis tale - Mean Streets (which is out next week) those ever so Angry Robots have allowed us mere mortals a free short story set in the same universe.

Titled "The Midnight Watch", the short story is set after the events in Nekropolis and features...

It has been revealed that the first episode in the new series of Doctor Who which features the 11th Doctor (played by Matt Smith) will be a full 60 minutes long and has been called "The Eleventh Hour".

In news of the series, the Doctor and his new companion (Amy Pond, played by Karen Gillan) will explore 16th century Venice, France around 1890 and best of all a far future UK, now floating in outer space. The Daleks are set to make a...

A new Fan made Lord of the Rings film has been released on the internet and is already causing quite a stir among fans, with over 500 000 views on you tube. Created on a budget of just £25 000, Born of Hope is set long before the events in the Lord of the Rings Trilogy and tells the story of Aragorns parents, Arathorn and Gilraen and the birth of Aragorn himself.

The brain child of Kate Madison, who even put her whole savings into...

The theory that we are all aliens from outer space has been once again thrust into the media spotlight by the british Scientist Prof Chandra Wickramasinghe of Cardiff University. He claims that the evidence that life started outside our solar system is quite "overwhelming".

The first seeds of life are thought to have been...

Harper Collins new Imprint Angry Robot Books is moving from strength to strength and really pushing the boundries with new ideas and intelligent fiction.

Not content with this, they have found a approach of telling a story that will allow adult and child to both enjoy the same novel. Kaaron Warren is the author...

Last week Amazon was forced to remove thousands of e-books from it's US site after one of the 6 biggest book publishers in the world, Macmillan announced that they wanted the ebook prices to be significantly raised from the current standard of $9.99

This week Amazon has caved into the pressure from Macmillan and has...

The shortlist for the 2009 British Science Fiction Association (BSFA) Awards have been announced and include Ursula Le Guin for new novel Lavinia and Adam Roberts for the acclaimed novel "Yellow Blue Tibia" which according to Kim Stanley Robinson, should have won the Booker Prize.

Adam Roberts debut novel, Salt was nominated...

Trudi Canavan, australian author of the Black Magician Trilogy and the Age of the Five series, has won the 2009 Best Fantasy Aurealis Award for her new novel "Magicians Apprentice".

Her previous novels have all been nominated for both Aurealis and Ditmar awards and have entered the Australian SF...

The author of the rather excellent novel Passengers to Sentience has written some very amusing Scifi and Robot rich family friendly Limericks, all contained in a collection called the "Completely Electronic Robot and Science Fiction Limerick Book" available completely free as an ebook from Smashwords.

The final nominations for the 2009 Philip K Dick awards have been announced. The nominations include established author Ian MacDonald for his latest novel Cyberbad Days, along with some previously unkown (to us anyway) authors.

The winner will be announced on Friday 2nd April 2010 at The...

Science fiction and fantasy can exclusively reveal that the acclaimed British comedy author, scriptwriter, producer and stand up comedian, Rob Grant has confirmed that new novels are on the horizon.

Revealed to a trusted source privately on the social networking site Twitter, he confirmed that he has been busy doing stand up comedy,...

Knighttime is a new website featuring a serial fantasy story published in audio format. Based in the Kingdom of Udenland which is populated by strange creatures and "unique" characters, the protagonists are the adventurous Knights "Sir Cottington" and "Sir Bratwurst".

Created by a group called "the Hazardous Players", every other week a new audio...

The finalists of the 2009 Aurealis awards have been announced. The Aurealis awards were created in 1995 to recognise the achievements of Australian science fiction, fantasy and horror writers.

Designed to compliment the Australian annual science fiction convention Ditmar awards and the Australian Children's book...