Big Idea Category

The Big Idea: Seth Shostak

Science fiction writers such as myself live in a state of wariness about the concept of alien intelligence truly existing. On one hand, how cool would it be to finally know we’re not alone in the universe — every science fiction writer in the world would be vindicated. On the other hand, we’d also be […]

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The Big Idea: Jay Lake

Normally I write a bit about each of the Big Idea authors, but here’s all you need to know about Jay Lake, one of my fave people in science fiction/fantasy and a Hugo co-nominee with me for METAtropolis: He’s awesome. His new book Green? Also awesome. His Big Idea piece? Totally completes the awesome trifecta. […]

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The Big Idea: Tom Levenson

Issac Newton: You know him as the man who invented calculus and described the physical world with a model that persisted until Einstein. But there was another side of Newton: Crime-fighter! No, he didn’t wear a mask and a cape; it’s not that kind of crime fighting. Rather, in 1695 Newton left the academic life […]

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The Big Idea: John Joseph Adams

It’s not just authors who have Big Ideas: Editors sometimes get them, too. For example, John Joseph Adams, who has been recently been making a name for himself in speculative fiction by editing a string of compelling anthologies, including the best selling zombie anthology The Living Dead. His latest anthology, Federations, aims to evoke the […]

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China Miéville on Crime Novels

China Miéville’s new novel The City & The City hits the stores today, and it’s a novel that simultaneously fulfills Miéville fan expectatation and is something that they never would have seen coming. Fans of the author almost certainly expected a complex and satisfying tale of a fantastic city real enough that you get the […]

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The Big Idea: C.C. Finlay

Surprise: Everything you thought you knew about the American Revolution is wrong! Well, actually, not wrong, but if author C.C. Finlay has his way, you’ll come to believe it’s woefully incomplete. Why? Because in Finlay’s Traitor to the Crown trilogy, of which the latest, A Spell for the Revolution, has just come out, it’s not […]

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The Big Idea: Greg van Eekhout

How does one get from Los Angeles to Ragnorak? If you said “take a left at Albuquerque,” you’ve watched too many Bugs Bunny cartoons, and also, you’re not Greg van Eekhout, the Nebula-nominated writer who is making his novel-length debut with Norse Code. Along with knowing how to write the sort of apocalyptic fantasy that […]

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The Big Idea: Edward Willett

As much as I like the title of this feature here, not all books originally spring from a big idea. Just ask Edward Willett, whose latest book, Terra Insegura, is part of a series that sprang originally from a quick and dirty writing exercise. But from that humble beginning, Willett’s done well: Marseguro, the first […]

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The Big Idea: Robert J. Sawyer

What would we do if the World Wide Web became sentient? I, for one, would welcome our new LOLcatting overlord, and would ask it to kill every spammer it could find, in its mercy. But then I’m thinking about the idea rather shallowly. Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author Robert J. Sawyer, however, has been thinking […]

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The Big Idea: Kaza Kingsley

One of the nice things about going to a science fiction convention is that sometimes you meet new authors with interesting stories about their path to publication. When I was at Millennicon this year, I met Kaza Kingsley, whose story of her Erec Rex series of young adult books was interesting indeed: Kingsley built her […]

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The Big Idea: Brian Evenson

On the list of “two great tastes that go together,” the genres “detective mystery” and “religious fiction” might not be on the top of your list of things to combine — but then, you’re probably not Brian Evenson, whose latest novel Last Days does just that, bringing a former detective together with a very odd […]

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The Big Idea: Paul Melko

Our informal Week ‘O Big Ideas continues today with an appearance by Paul Melko, member of the Ohio SF/F Cabal (motto: “There’s more of us than you think”), whose latest multiverse-hopping book The Walls of the Universe is getting the sort of starred reviews (“With imagination and sympathy, Melko makes the journey genuinely exciting” — […]

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