Neal Town Stephenson is an American writer known for his works of speculative fiction. His novels have been categorized as science fiction, historical fiction, cyberpunk, postcyberpunk, and baroque.
Science fiction is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel universes, extraterrestrial life, sentient artificial intelligence, cybernetics, certain forms of immortality, and the singularity. Science fiction predicted several existing inventions, such as the atomic bomb, robots and borazon, whose names entirely match their fictional predecessors.
Syfy is an American basic cable channel owned by the NBCUniversal Television and Streaming division of Comcast's NBCUniversal through NBCUniversal Cable Entertainment. Launched on September 24, 1992, the channel broadcasts programming relating to the science fiction, horror, and fantasy genres.
Dragon Con is a North American multigenre convention, founded in 1987, which takes place annually over the Labor Day weekend in Atlanta, Georgia. As of 2017, the convention draws attendance of over 80,000, features hundreds of guests, encompasses five hotels in the Peachtree Center neighborhood of downtown Atlanta near Centennial Olympic Park, and runs thousands of hours of programming for fans of science fiction, fantasy, comic books, and other elements of fan culture. It is owned and operated by a private for-profit corporation, with the help of a 1,500-member volunteer staff. Dragon Con has hosted the 1990 Origins Game Fair and the 1995 North American Science Fiction Convention (NASFiC).
Michael Z. Williamson is an American military science fiction and military fiction author best known for his libertarian-themed Freehold series published by Baen Books. Between 2004 and 2016, Williamson published eight Freehold novels, exploring military and political themes as well as first contact with alien beings. This was followed by the Forged in Blood (2017) and Freehold: Resistance (2019) anthologies, consisting of short stories taking place in the Freehold universe, some by Williamson and some by other authors, including Larry Correia, Tony Daniel, Tom Kratman and Brad R. Torgersen.
Brandon Sanderson is an American author of epic fantasy and science fiction. He is best known for the Cosmere fictional universe, in which most of his fantasy novels, most notably the Mistborn series and The Stormlight Archive, are set. Outside of the Cosmere, he has written several young adult and juvenile series including The Reckoners, the Skyward series, and the Alcatraz series. He is also known for finishing Robert Jordan's high fantasy series The Wheel of Time and has created several graphic novel fantasy series including the White Sand and Dark One.
Charlie Jane Anders is an American writer and commentator. She has written several novels, published magazines and websites, and hosted podcasts. In 2005, she received the Lambda Literary Award for work in the transgender category, and in 2009, the Emperor Norton Award. Her 2011 novelette Six Months, Three Days won the 2012 Hugo and was a finalist for the Nebula and Theodore Sturgeon Awards. Her 2016 novel All the Birds in the Sky was listed No. 5 on Time magazine's "Top 10 Novels" of 2016, won the 2017 Nebula Award for Best Novel, the 2017 Crawford Award, and the 2017 Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel; it was also a finalist for the 2017 Hugo Award for Best Novel.
Daniel Andrew Wells is an American horror and science fiction author. Wells's first published novel, I Am Not a Serial Killer, was adapted into a movie in 2016. He is currently cowriting The Apocalypse Guard with Brandon Sanderson.
Nora Keita Jemisin is an American science fiction and fantasy writer, better known as N. K. Jemisin. Her fiction includes a wide range of themes, notably cultural conflict and oppression. Her debut novel, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, and the subsequent books in her Inheritance Trilogy received critical acclaim. She has won several awards for her work, including the Locus Award. The three books of her Broken Earth series made her the first author to win the Hugo Award for Best Novel in three consecutive years, as well as the first to win for all three novels in a trilogy. She won a fourth Hugo Award, for Best Novelette, in 2020 for Emergency Skin. Jemisin was a recipient of the MacArthur Fellows Program Genius Grant in 2020.
Liu Cixin is a Chinese science fiction writer. He is a nine-time winner of China's Galaxy Award and has also received the 2015 Hugo Award for his novel The Three-Body Problem as well as the 2017 Locus Award for Death's End. He is also a winner of the Chinese Nebula Award. In English translations of his works, his name is given as Cixin Liu. He is a member of China Science Writers Association and the vice president of Shanxi Writers Association. He is also called "Da Liu".
Brad R. Torgersen is an American science fiction author whose short stories regularly appear in various anthologies and magazines, including Analog Science Fiction and Fact and Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show.
The Expanse is an American science fiction television series developed by Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby, based on the series of novels of the same name by James S. A. Corey. The series is set in a future where humanity has colonized the Solar System. It follows a disparate band of protagonists—United Nations Security Council member Chrisjen Avasarala, police detective Josephus Miller, ship's officer James Holden and his crew—as they unwittingly unravel and place themselves at the center of a conspiracy that threatens the system's fragile state of cold war, while dealing with existential crises brought forth by newly discovered alien technology.
Andrew Taylor Weir is an American novelist and former computer programmer. His 2011 novel The Martian was adapted into the 2015 film of the same name directed by Ridley Scott. He received the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 2016 and his novel Project Hail Mary is a finalist for the 2022 Hugo Award for Best Novel.
The Expanse is a series of science fiction novels by James S. A. Corey, the joint pen name of authors Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck. The first novel, Leviathan Wakes, was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 2012. The complete series was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Series in 2017. It later won, following its second nomination for the same award in 2020.
Amie Kaufman is a New York Times bestselling and internationally bestselling Australian author of science fiction and fantasy for young adults. She is known for the Starbound Trilogy and Unearthed, which she co-authored with Meagan Spooner; for her series The Illuminae Files, co-authored with Jay Kristoff; and for her solo series, Elementals. Her books have been published in over 35 countries.
The Dragon Awards are a set of literary and media awards voted on by fandom and presented annually since 2016 by Dragon Con for excellence in various categories of science fiction, fantasy, horror novels, movies, television, and games.
Fonda Lee is a Canadian-American author of speculative fiction. She is best known for writing The Green Bone Saga, the first of which, Jade City, won the 2018 World Fantasy Award and was named one of the 100 Best Fantasy Books of All Time by Time magazine. The Green Bone Saga was also included on NPR's list, "50 Favorite Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books of the Past Decade".
Rebecca F. Kuang is a Chinese-American fantasy writer. Her first novel, The Poppy War, was released in 2018, followed by the sequels The Dragon Republic in 2019 and The Burning God in 2020. Kuang has won the Compton Crook Award, the Crawford Award, and the 2020 Astounding Award for Best New Writer, along with being a finalist for the Nebula, Locus, World Fantasy, The Kitschies, and British Fantasy awards for her first novel.
Raised by Wolves is an American science fiction drama television series created by Aaron Guzikowski that premiered on HBO Max on September 3, 2020. The first two episodes were directed by Ridley Scott, who also serves as an executive producer for the show. The series was renewed for a second season shortly after its debut, and the second season premiered on February 3, 2022.
A fantasy podcast is a podcast related to or discussing the fantasy genre, which usually focuses on the magical, supernatural, mythical, or folkloric. Fantasy stories are set in fictional universes or fantasy worlds that are often reminiscent of the middle Ages and the early modern period. Despite having a fictional setting, fantasy stories can contain or reference locations, events, or people from the real world. Characters in these stories often encounter fictional creatures such as dwarves, elves, dragons, and fairies. Common types of fantasy podcasts are audio dramas, narrated short stories, role-playing games, or discussions and reviews of fantasy topics such as fantasy films, books, games, and other media. The intended audience of a fantasy podcast can vary from young children to adults. Fantasy podcasts emerged from storytelling and the creation of the radio. Fantasy podcasts have often been adapted into television programs, graphic novels, and comics. Fantasy podcasts are a subgenre of fiction podcasts and are distinguished from science fiction podcasts and horror podcasts by the absence of scientific or macabre themes, respectively, though these subgenres regularly overlap.
