SF

Part of what makes VanderMeer's weirdness so striking is his ability to create believably strange natural worlds from a place of granular fascination. He's often credited this to his time living in tropical locales, especially Florida. VanderMeer has described images in Annihilation inspired by the state as "ecstatically beautiful," though others may find them startling.  Read more

Today would have been the 98th birthday of Ray Bradbury, the greatest sci-fi writer in history, who (by no small coincidence) also happened to know a thing or two about writing. Like many American children, I grew up on Bradbury-"The Veldt" remains my favorite of his stories-but as I became a writer myself I began to cherish not just the great author's work, but his attitude towards it.  Read more

Whenever I am speaking at a public event or on the radio, one of the questions I inevitably get is: "What will be the next big discovery?" My answer is always the same: "If I knew, I would be doing it."

We may or may not be living in a dystopian age, but we are certainly living in an age of dystopias. At every turn in a bookstore aisle, you're increasingly likely to stumble across a vision of our world, through the looking glass.  Read more

I confess to a soft spot for dystopian science fiction. Some of my favourite imagined futures include the world paralysed by a giant, perpetual traffic jam (Strange Travellers by Gene Wolfe) and the apocalypse brought on by the disintegration of the moon (Seveneves by Neal Stephenson).  Read more