J.K. Rowling is writing a screenplay based on Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2001) for Warner Bros. The film will  launch a new series of spin-offs set in the world of Harry Potter.

For more, see the story on Tor.com. ...Read More

Ellen Datlow reported on Facebook that author Lucius Shepard, 66, suffered a stroke a week after being admitted to the hospital for various health problems on August 5, 2013. He is now recovering in rehab. Datlow wrote, “He wants everyone to know that he’s okay, that he’s working on it, and that he cannot speak well, can’t write at all, and he can just barely read.” ...Read More

SF writer Theodore Beale, who blogs as Vox Day, announced that the SFWA Board has voted to expel him from the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America. He posted a letter from SFWA President Steven Gould that reads, in part:

After careful consideration of the evidence gathered by the Board-appointed investigator and your response, and in compliance with the existing Massachusetts By-Laws, the approved operations and procedures, and legal ...Read More

The estate of Texas literary agent Glenn Lord donated a large collection of materials related to Robert E. Howard to the Harry Ransom Center, a humanities research library and museum at the University of Texas. The collection contains over 15,000 pages of manuscripts, sketches, and ephemera, including correspondences between Howard and H.P. Lovecraft.  Howard, best known for creating the character of Conan the Barbarian, wrote more than 100 stories for ...Read More

Forbes released its list of top-earning authors for the past 12 months, and SF/F authors dominate the list, taking nine of the 16 slots. Authors of genre interest are:

1. E.L. James: $95 million 2. James Patterson: $91 million 3. Suzanne Collins: $55 million 8. Nora Roberts: $23 million 9. Dan Brown: $22 million 10. Stephen King: $39 million 11. Dean Koontz: $20 million 14. Rick Riordan: $14 million 15. ...Read More

The Center for the Study of Women in Society is celebrating its 40th Anniversary by creating the Le Guin Feminist Science Fiction Fellowship.

The Fellowship will be realized through a collaboration between the University of Oregon Knight Library, the Robert D. Clark Honors College (CHC), and the Center for the Study of Women in Society. The purpose of the Fellowship is to encourage continued research in the area of feminist ...Read More

Science fiction writers Michael Swanwick, Gardner Dozois, Tom Purdom, and Ben Bova were among 50 people honored in a display at the Philadelphia International Airport titled “Philadelphia’s Literary Legacy: Selected Authors, Playwrights, and Poets – from Writers of the Declaration of Independence to Present Day”. The airport partnered with the Free Library of Philadelphia to select a wide range of authors including Benjamin Franklin, Louisa May Alcott, and Pearl S. ...Read More

The International Astronomical Union approved astronomer José Luis Galache’s request to name an asteroid after author Iain M. Banks, on June 23, 2013. Asteroid Iainbanks is 3.8 miles across, and is in the Main Asteroid Belt of the Sol system. It takes 3.94 years to complete a revolution around the Sun. Read more about the asteroid on the MPC blog, and view an interactive sketch of its orbit.

Read the ...Read More

A crowdfunding project launched on May 15, 2013 on Kickstarter to turn Blood Kiss, a script by Emmy Award-winning writer Michael Reaves, into a film. Writer Neil Gaiman and actress and fantasy writer Amber Benson will both star if the film is funded.

For more information, and to donate, see Blood Kiss on Kickstarter. ...Read More

Science fiction and fantasy writer Jay Lake announced in a blog post yesterday that he has been diagnosed with terminal cancer.

From his blog post: “the short form version is that I have a large mass in my peritoneum, two inches or more in size, along with another somewhat smaller mass. These are more omental tumors. Multiple masses of various sizes spread throughout my liver, some of them confirmed tumors, ...Read More

The results of the SFWA officers’ election were announced. As of July 1, 2013, the new board will be:

President: Steven Gould

Vice-President: Rachel Swirsky

Secretary: Susan Forest

Treasurer: Bud Sparhawk

South/Central Regional Director: Lee Martindale

Overseas Regional Director: Tansy Rayner Roberts

There were 516 ballots cast by the April 26, 2013 deadline, up from 395 last year. Of those, 23 were discarded as invalid due to lack of the ...Read More

Clarion West has received a $10,000 Art Works Grant from the National Endowment of the Arts to support its six-week Summer Writers Workshop, as well as its monthly one-day workshops for Pacific Northwest Writers.  This is part of a plan by the NEA to award $26.3 million in grants to nonprofit national, regional, state, and local organizations nationwide. Thirteen different disciplines are represented by the grants, and Clarion West is ...Read More

After recording his lines for a scene with Milhouse and Comic Book Guy in an episode of The Simpsons on April 4, Harlan Ellison was injured when he fell out of a chair in the Writers’ Enclave room, as reported on the Harlan Ellison Webderland. Harlan described it:

“Then one of the ancient, rickety old swivel chairs they use to furnish the Writers’ Enclave, in which I sat extolling, tipped ...Read More

A petition is being circulated by the Philadelphia Weekly to place a historical marker in honor of late SF grandmaster Issac Asimov on the corner of 50th and Spruce, where he once lived: “Isaac Asimov. The late grand master of science fiction who authored 500 books across every Dewey Decimal category and invented the very idea of ‘robotics’ as a field of study, thus shaping the course of 20th- and ...Read More

Iain Banks, Scottish SF and mainstream author, 59, has announced that he is “officially Very Poorly.” He has been diagnosed with late stage gall bladder cancer, and it is extremely unlikely that he will live beyond a year. He has withdrawn from all scheduled appearances and had asked his partner, Adele,  if she would do the honor of “becoming my widow (sorry – but we find ghoulish humour helps).”

From ...Read More

Edward E. Marsh, who spent 30 years amassing a vast SF and fantasy collection, donated much of the collection to San Diego State University’s Love Library. Valued at over $2.25 million, the collection includes ephemera such as press clippings, notes, busts of authors, movie props, original book cover art, literary contracts, authors’ yearbooks, and  autographs, and features works by Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Arthur C. Clarke, L. ...Read More

Two notable fundraising events have arisen as a result of science fiction author Jay Lake’s ongoing struggle with colon cancer, one to directly assist with medical funding and the other supporting a documentary about Lake.

An inventive fundraiser through youcaring.com is online, called “Sequence a Science Fiction Writer.” From the site: “a new technology is becoming available—one that may offer [Jay’s] doctors a better option for treating the cancer. We’re ...Read More

The intersection of Fifth and Flower streets in Downtown Los Angeles will be renamed Ray Bradbury Square, thanks to a vote by the City Council on Tuesday. Bradbury was known to frequent nearby Clifton’s Cafeteria, and had written on the public typewriters in the Central Library, where he also spent several days a week reading everything he could, according to his daughter. The motion was introduced by councilman Jose Huizar, ...Read More

Dell Magazines announced the retirement today of Stanley Schmidt, editor of Analog Science Fiction and Fact. Schmidt will be succeeded by Trevor Quachri, who has been the managing editor of both Asimov’s and Analog for the past two years. Schmidt said,

“I have now been editor of Analog for 34 years, tying or (depending on how you count) slightly exceeding the previous longest-tenure record of John W. Campbell. I still ...Read More

Tor.com announced today that Hugo-award winning editor and publisher Ann VanderMeer is taking on the role of consulting fiction editor at the publication. Tor.com publishes science fiction and fantasy short fiction, and has had stories on both the Hugo and Nebula final ballots, including “Ponies” by Kij Johnson, which won the Nebula in 2011. VanderMeer was fiction editor for Weird Tales from 2007-2011 and has edited the Best American Fantasy ...Read More

NASA announced Wednesday that it is naming the landing site of the Mars Curiosity rover “The Bradbury Landing,” after late author Ray Bradbury. The name was chosen by the Curiosity science team, and was announced on Bradbury’s 92nd birthday, August 22, 2012.

“It was not a difficult decision for the science team,” said Michael Meyer, NASA program scientist for Curiosity. “Many of us and millions of other readers were inspired ...Read More

Forbes released its list of top-earning authors of 2011 today, and science fiction and fantasy authors dominate the list, taking nine of the 15 slots. The genre authors are:

1.   James Patterson: $94 million

2.   Stephen King: $39 million

7.   Nora Roberts/J.D. Robb: $23 million

9.    Suzanne Collins: $20 million

10. Dean Koontz: $19 million

11. J.K. Rowling: $17 million

12. George R.R. Martin: $15 million

13. Stephenie Meyer: $14 ...Read More

Fred Lerner has donated his SF/fantasy periodicals collection to Columbia University. Lerner, a Columbia College alumnus and doctoral graduate of Columbia’s former School of Library Service, founded the University Science Fiction Society in the late 1960s and wrote his 1981 dissertation on “Modern science fiction and its reception by the American literary and educational communities, 1926-1970”.

The collection is the first of its kind at Columbia, and includes “substantial runs” ...Read More

Strange Horizons has announced that writer An Owomoyela is joining the magazine as a new fiction editor. Owomoyela will co-edit with the two other new fiction editors, Brit Mandelo and Julia Rios, who joined earlier this year.

Senior fiction editor Jed Hartman, who has been with the magazine since its founding in 2000, is stepping down. “I have every confidence in the excellent new editorial team’s tastes and abilities, and ...Read More