Many authors attempt comedy in science fiction, but few pull it off. Alongside very funny works like John Scalzi’s Redshirts and Terry Pratchett’s entire Discworld series, the pinnacle of hilarious science fiction is Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, about the misadventures of Arthur Dent as he travels across the universe. But Catherynne M. Valente’s new novel Space Opera might give it a run for its money, because it’s one of the funniest books that I’ve ever read. Valente sai

Tonight, Syfy will begin the third season of The Expanse, its science fiction series based on the book series by James S.A. Corey. Here’s what you need to know to get caught up. Warning: Spoilers for previous seasons of The Expanse, and some of the novels, ahead. What the show is aboutThe Expanse is a science fiction story set two centuries from now. Where season 3 beginsDuring season 1, the crew of the Rocinante wound up in the middle of a giant conspiracy to kickstart a war.

Tonight, Syfy will begin the third season of The Expanse, its science fiction series based on the book series by James S.A. Corey. Here’s what you need to know to get caught up. Warning: Spoilers for previous seasons of The Expanse, and some of the novels, ahead. What the show is aboutThe Expanse is a science fiction story set two centuries from now. Where season 3 beginsDuring season 1, the crew of the Rocinante wound up in the middle of a giant conspiracy to kickstart a war.

The two books are short, sharp, get straight to the point, and present a fantastic world that can be consumed in a single sitting. In The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion, Danielle Cain is hitchhiking to the abandoned town of Freedom, Iowa, the last place her friend Clay lived before he killed himself in a hotel room. There, Danielle falls in with a group of like-minded punk anarchists — Brynn, Thursday, and Doomsday — and they watch as the creature brutally kills a man named Anchor. Killjoy’s chara

The two books are short, sharp, get straight to the point, and present a fantastic world that can be consumed in a single sitting. In The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion, Danielle Cain is hitchhiking to the abandoned town of Freedom, Iowa, the last place her friend Clay lived before he killed himself in a hotel room. There, Danielle falls in with a group of like-minded punk anarchists — Brynn, Thursday, and Doomsday — and they watch as the creature brutally kills a man named Anchor. Killjoy’s chara

The Dervish House and Luna: New Moon are complicated, intelligent stories about how societies cope with advanced technologies. I recognized Martin Parr, the photographer; that Spitalfields blogger and his cat; Dan Cruickshank the architectural historian and television presenter. That was my specialism, the Second World War. A love letter. A love letter.

In his new novel, Gunpowder Moon, David Pedreira envisions an inhabited Moon and its role in a larger geopolitical fight for planetary dominance. Some spoilers ahead for Gunpowder Moon. The novel follows Caden Dechert, who heads up the US’s He3 mining operations in Mare Serenitatis (Sea of Serenity). What makes Gunpowder Moon stand out from most lunar novels is Pedreira’s emphasis on realism in the details that make up his world and the political structures that govern it. Pedreira’s book envisi

Microsoft is planning to launch its new Xbox Live Avatars next month. Microsoft missed that target, but sources familiar with the company’s Xbox plans tell The Verge that it will preview the new avatars to Xbox Insiders this month. Microsoft’s Xbox employees already have access to the new avatar system, and the Xbox Alpha group of testers will get access first before they’re broadly available next month. We understand Microsoft is also planning to open a new avatar store in May, allowing Xbox Li

Microsoft is planning to launch its new Xbox Live Avatars next month. Microsoft missed that target, but sources familiar with the company’s Xbox plans tell The Verge that it will preview the new avatars to Xbox Insiders this month. Microsoft’s Xbox employees already have access to the new avatar system, and the Xbox Alpha group of testers will get access first before they’re broadly available next month. We understand Microsoft is also planning to open a new avatar store in May, allowing Xbox Li

Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of Ernie Cline’s science fiction novel Ready Player One is due to hit theaters on March 29th, but synthwave band GUNSHIP beat him to the punch with the video to their latest single, “Art3mis & Parzival”. Like the novel, the animated music video is peppered with references to a wide range of pop culture trappings. But the video also changes style as it progresses, cycling through the simple graphics of early video game consoles, 16-bit animation, side-scrolling, and

HAL-9000, the malevolent supercomputer at the heart of Stanley Kubrick’s classic 2001: A Space Odyssey, is an icon of science fiction cinema. If you’ve seen someone swinging around a lightsaber, there’s a good chance it’s one of Master Replicas’ props, or based off of their models. The new company is made up of several former employees, who are getting back into the prop replica business with a new range of products, including an interactive replica of HAL. The device includes the Fire HD tablet

When Star Trek: Discovery launched on CBS last September, it went where no Star Trek show had gone before. The Battlestar reboot was hailed as a new classic, while Stargate Universe was compared to shows like Galactica and Lost. The original Trek, Battlestar, and Stargate franchises all initially followed a predictable formula: each episode raised a challenge that was usually resolved by the end credits. Star Trek: Discovery is the biggest change to the Star Trek franchise in years, adopting the

In The Gone World, he introduces an even more ambitious investigation: one that jumps back and forth in time, and which could decide the fate of humanity. The Gone World opens with a 20th-century NCIS agent named Shannon Moss on a training mission in the distant future of 2199. In a recent interview with Syfy, Sweterlitsch says The Gone World was inspired partly by chatting with his brother-in-law, an NCIS agent. Sweterlitsch uses the story to examine the consequences of our actionsThese shiftin

Spike Jonze’s 1999 movie Being John Malkovich didn’t receive a Best Picture nomination, but his 2013 movie Her did. The Rotten Tomatoes scores for Best Picture nominees over the years seem to suggest that some kind of shift occurred in the early 2010s. Rotten Tomatoes scores are the opposite of the new Best Picture nominating process — they measure consensus instead of passion. With an average Tomato score of 92.9, this year’s Best Picture nominees have the second highest collective Tomato ratin

Nokia was also the “world’s leading mobile phone supplier” back then, and it used this popularity to feature its Nokia 8110 “banana phone” in The Matrix film. At the time everyone who considered themselves cool (definitely me) wanted a Nokia phone just like Neo’s, but most of us had to settle for the Nokia 7110 with its spring-loaded slider. Grid View Photo by Tom Warren / The VergePhoto by Tom Warren / The VergePhoto by Tom Warren / The VergePhoto by Tom Warren / The VergePhoto by Tom Warren /

Nokia was also the “world’s leading mobile phone supplier” back then, and it used this popularity to feature its Nokia 8110 “banana phone” in The Matrix film. At the time everyone who considered themselves cool (definitely me) wanted a Nokia phone just like Neo’s, but most of us had to settle for the Nokia 7110 with its spring-loaded slider. Grid View Photo by Tom Warren / The VergePhoto by Tom Warren / The VergePhoto by Tom Warren / The VergePhoto by Tom Warren / The VergePhoto by Tom Warren /

That’s why modern consoles are so difficult to hack, because millions of dollars are on the line. And for those people, Linux on the Switch is a huge achievement. A couple of weeks ago, the fail0verflow hacking collective showed a still image on Twitter of a Nintendo Switch booting Linux. They’re one of a small handful of hacker teams who are teasing exploits of the Nvidia Tegra hardware inside the Switch. 😉 #switchnix pic.twitter.com/NMnBq61tOM — fail0verflow (@fail0verflow) February 17, 2018

Intel is introducing a new feature for its processors with integrated graphics, allowing games to be automatically optimized on systems. The feature is similar to Nvidia’s GeForce Experience, an application that’s designed to tweak game settings so they work best on a laptop or PC. Intel’s new graphics control software is particularly useful on laptops that aren’t really designed to run games, and it works on all Skylake or newer processors. PC World reports that this new driver update includes

In Sue Burke’s debut novel Semiosis, she imagines contact in a unique way: first contact not with animal-like life, but between humans and a planet full of intelligent plants. When Semiosis opens, a human colonial expedition — which left Earth in the 2060s — is headed for a distant star. It’s slightly larger than Earth, and there’s copious plant life on the surface. Burke starts her book with the first group of human colonists, and in the following chapters, jumps between successive generations

That influence extends beyond just fantasy novels: an English artist is using Tolkien’s style to reimagine the UK’s national parks for his own beautiful maps. After receiving positive feedback from friends, he thought about adapting the art style to some real world locations, such as the UK’s national parks. To start his maps, Bell says that he works from an open source Ordnance Survey map, and begins drawing by hand. Presently, Bell has adapted a handful of the UK’s national parks, as well as p