From Boing Boing comes news of this year's Locus nominees, shared there because one of its editors, Cory Doctorow, is nominated. I am not a huge SF reader, so most of these have stayed off my radar. But if you go for that stuff, enjoy this list of good books! SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL • The Hydrogen Sonata, Iain M. Banks (Orbit US; Orbit UK) • Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance, Lois McMaster Bujold (Baen) • Caliban’s War, James S.A. Corey (Orbit US; Orbit UK) • 2312, Kim Stanley Robinson (Orbit US; Orbit UK) • Redshirts, John Scalzi (Tor; Gollancz) FANTASY NOVEL • The Killing Moon, N.K. Jemisin (Orbit US; Orbit UK) • The Drowning Girl, Caitlín R. Kiernan...

For many years, author Ray Bradbury didn’t want his books digitized. But he finally relented before his death in 2011, and allowed arguably his most famous book, Fahrenheit 451, to become an e-book. But fans of Bradbury—old and those yet to be made—will be happy to hear that several of his books will in fact be released as e-books starting this Tuesday. There will be 16 backlist titles in the month of April going digital, with several other coming later this year, MediaBistro's GalleyCat blog reported. It seems his family is behind the project as well. His daughter Alexandra Bradbury released a...

HTML5 will be the future of publishing (Tools of Change) 60% of Audiobooks Sold Are Now Digital (Galleycat) The great sci-fi hunt: help us find the best independently published books (The Guardian) Little, Brown UK launches digital-first imprint for literary fiction (Paid Content) Kindle Daily Deals: 30 Kindle Fiction e-books for $1.99 or less...

We've all heard by now about the success of the latest e-book indie darling, Hugh Howey—when his self-published Kindle series became a Kindle best-seller, he made a deal with the big publishers—but in a ground-breaking twist, the deal included only the print rights, and Howey continues to sell the e-books himself. Howey is also notoriously anti-DRM and I dig that, so I finally picked up the Wool Omnibus to see if it was worth the hype. And for the most part? It is. The book is split into five novellas, each taking place in an apocalyptic future where the remains of humanity survive in an elaborate community...

Sometimes a book comes along that is so good you know it'll stay with you forever. Tears in Rain is one of those books for me. I found it by accident. It showed up on my Kindle with Special Offers earlier this month. I saw it was about replicants and was Prime Lending eligible. I wasn't expecting much, but hey: Free! Now I intend to go back and buy it. It's that good. The story is a thriller. The main character is a replicant private detective who has been hired to investigate some gruesome murders. Bruna Husky is well drawn and three-dimensional. She's...

  By Matthew Marchesano | for Technology Tell One of the most significant figures in the world of science fiction, writer Arthur C. Clarke, has been digitized. Thirty-five titles by Clarke, including the 2001: A Space Odyssey, will be released in digital format for the first time in the U.S. The availability comes with an announcement made by independent e-book company RosettaBooks. You can now browse and purchase Clarke’s available e-books at Amazon, the Nook store and Kobo for $8.99 per title. Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey was famously adapted into the classic Stanley Kubrick film of the same name. The book’s sequel, 2010: Odyssey Two, was also...

Science fiction in literature and movies has a long history and dates way back. The great Polish writer Stanisław Lem (1921-2006) wrote the 1961 sci-fi novel ”Solaris” that was later turned into a film in 1972 by Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky and again in 2002 in a new Hollywood remake by Steven Soderbergh, starring George Clooney. And from “Soylent Green” in 1973 to “The Day After Tomorrow” in 2004, movies also began to venture into a new genre of science fiction that might be called “cli-fi” (for climate fiction). Cli-fi is also a new genre for novels and short stories, and one of the new practitioners is American writer...

From the press release: E-Reads, a leading independent e-book publisher and a powerhouse in fantasy and science fiction, has acquired US e-book and print rights to fifteen titles by British science fiction Grandmaster Brian Aldiss, winner of two Hugo Awards, a Nebula Award and a John W. Campbell Memorial Award. Included in the trove are his Helliconia trilogy, the Squire quartet, and such other classics as Greybeard, Dark Light Years, and Galaxies like Grains of Sand. E-Reads will also publish a new work, Finches of Mars. The reissue program will begin with fifteen titles, but E-Reads has...

From paidContent: Science fiction/fantasy publisher Orbit, which is part of Hachette Book Group, is expanding its short fiction e-offerings from the U.S. to the UK and other countries where Orbit titles are sold. The program, which includes original fiction from Orbit authors, launched in the U.S. in April. “The digital short fiction market is clearly gaining momentum…The success of the program in the US has been very encouraging,” said Anne Clarke, the editorial director of Orbit UK, in a statement. More in the article. (Via paidContent.)...

From the press release: Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) today announced the launch of 47North, the seventh imprint from Amazon Publishing, focused on science fiction, fantasy and horror. 47North launches with 15 books, including “The Mongoliad: Book One,” the first in the ambitious, five-book, collaborative Foreworld series led by Neal Stephenson and Greg Bear. All of these books will be available to English readers in Kindle, print and audio formats at www.amazon.com, as well as at national and independent booksellers. 47North will publish original and previously published works, as well as out-of-print books.  “Amazon customers have a huge appetite for science fiction,...

From the [e-reads] blog: E-Reads has signed a deal with UK publisher Gollancz to publish e-book editions in the UK and Commonwealth of almost 400 science fiction and fantasy titles as part of Gollancz’s Gateway initiative. Orion deputy CEO and publisher Malcolm Edwards and Gollancz digital publisher Darren Nash negotiated the deal, which includes works by more than 50 authors, with E-Reads founder and president Richard Curtis and agent Danny Baror of Baror International. Titles by authors such as Greg Bear, Harlan Ellison, James Gunn, Fritz Leiber and George Zebrowski will be published in Gateway...

From The Bookseller. More details in the article: The data, released as part of a seminar held yesterday with Enders Analysis, 'Digital Seminar: e-books and their impact on the market', showed genres such as science fiction and romance are “overperforming” thanks to the tastes of early adopters of e-books. For example, the e-book market share of the science fiction and fantasy sector globally for the 10 weeks since June was 10%, more than treble the genre’s market share of print book sales. The share taken by romance and saga books was 14%, seven times its print market share. Julie Meynink, business...