Wonder Boys became a movie; The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay took the Pulitzer Prize. Michael Chabon has followed these with an alternate-history mystery set in the noir world of the Alaskan shetls.

A few critics have expressed surprise that their darling would write a book that could be considered both SF and mystery, but the rest of us understand that Real WritersTM can and do write genre. The Yiddish Policemen’s Union has been nominated for and Edgar Award and the 2008 Hugo. A film by the Coen Brothers is in pre-production.

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rickyjames writes, Uber-geek Cory Doctorow is rolling out an interesting new literary project called “Little Brother“, a juvenile novel on sale this month that can also be downloaded for free. Can 17-year-old hacker Marcus, a.k.a “w1n5t0n,” outwit the Department of Homeland Security? Maybe not – who knew they can now ID your personal digital camera by its noise signature? Not me…

Desmond Warzel’s first published story is a good one, and it can be read here.

joe__gee writes, His obituary is on CNN.com.
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But what kind of impossible is it? Michio Kaku explains degrees of SF im/possibility in his new book, Physics of the Impossible.

Kaku’s site may be found here.

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Yann Martel’s award-winning novel, metafictional and metaphysical, does not fit the conventional definition of fantasy. Its protagonist survives a shipwreck and finds himself adrift on the ocean with a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker. As a sea yarn, however, it shares company with the traveler’s tales of yore and includes at least one encounter with the literal fantastic.

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ViperDriver writes,
There is no shortage of science fiction that explores the Interstellar
Empire. There are, in fact, whole series of collections whose short
stories are nought but that. One of the most popular words in sci-fi
politics, ’empire’ is approached in popularity only by various forms of
‘federation.’ There are even explicit explorations of the Roman Empire
extended interstellar, both explicitly and via political theory.

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It was lovely in its intrinsic glow, a rainbow shining in colors without names. It was an arch for things to pass through, but it didn’t lead to another planet.

Things were passing through it now. From the utter blackness inside it, where even Isaac couldn’t see, luminous clouds ascended to the stars.

Robert Charles Wilson’s Spin won the 2005 Hugo for best novel and praise within and without fandom. The sequel, out this past September, looks at events some years later. The stars have returned, humans have settled on Equatoria, and the 34th of August brings something from the heavens….

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William Gibson made his name with the cyberpunk trilogy, written in the 1980s and set in the twenty-first century. Since the twenty-first century increasingly looks like something from a Gibson cyberpunk novel, he has been setting his recent work in the present. This novel follows Pattern Recognition. Although the two works share some characters, references, and plot elements, this is not in the usual sense a sequel.

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According to the Web site of Paul Kidby, the artist for most of the Discworld series, author Terry Pratchett has been diagnosed with “a very rare form of early
onset Alzheimer’s.”