The winner of the 2020 Sir Julius Vogel Award reviews the sci-fi and fantasy anthology of the moment. Putting together an anthology is a balancing act. You’re making a statement: this is what the genre or scene looks like to me, and I’d like to think it looks that way to you too. Victoria University … Read more
Kim Stanley Robinson is a master of science fiction, and specialises in the climate crisis. His latest novel The Ministry for the Future explores a particularly grim metric. A “wet bulb” is exactly what it sounds like: a thermometer wrapped in a wet towel. It’s a measure of both heat and humidity, and it’s also … Read more
The Sir Julius Vogel Awards last Thursday were meant to be a celebration of some of our best genre writers. It didn’t turn out that way, as Casey Lucas, one of the winners, explains. This is the story of how the nominees and recipients of the 2020 Sir Julius Vogel Awards, New Zealand’s most prominent … Read more
On Saturday the man behind Game of Thrones hosted the ceremony for the prestigious Hugo Awards. Sam Brooks recaps. In a blog post just over a year ago, American writer George RR Martin said that New Zealand had “formal written permission” to jail him if he didn’t have The Winds of Winter (the latest entry … Read more
Week three of our lockdown Top 10s – books about elsewhere, brought to you by the good humans of Unity Books. A reminder that these lists are completely unshackled from space and time and what’s happening in the world of books right now. Take no notice of the numbers, either – we just like the … Read more
Sascha* Stronach’s new book The Dawnhounds is about queer folk who refuse to ‘die pretty’. Here, he heralds a queer revolution in science fiction and fantasy. It’s an archetype we’re all familiar with: the tragic and noble LGBTQIA character who shows up to support the hero, and then dies beautifully while the straight folks run … Read more
For decades fans have argued over the best Star Trek captain. No longer. Today we present the definitive ranking of every main crew member aboard a televised Federation starship (or space station). Every Star Trek fan has wrestled with it: is Kirk a better captain than Picard? Is Archer better than both? The captain you … Read more
New Zealand fantasy writer Steffi Green interviews Charlie Jane Anders, author of the smash-hit novel All The Birds in the Sky, ahead of her appearances this weekend at the New Zealand Festival in Wellington. Like all literary genres, fantasy and science fiction are replete with common tropes. We love stories of sword-fights and space trekking … Read more
When it comes to understanding artificial intelligence, is science fiction just a pesky distraction from the real dangers out there? Microsoft’s authority on all things AI seems to think so, reports Jihee Junn. “With artificial intelligence, we are summoning the demon,” declared Elon Musk back in 2014. “In all those stories where there’s the guy … Read more