The NEW SciFi4Me Lit is HERE! (Mostly)
When did science fiction begin?
Well, that really depends on what your definition is for Scifi. The term “science fiction” was used as early as 1851, though most stories of that age and beyond were commonly called “scientific romance.” “Science fiction” became part of the popular vernacular in the 1920’s and 1930’s. But if you look at the genre as a whole — and I’m definitely including fantasy and all its incarnations — an argument can definitely be made that scifi is one of our earliest forms of storytelling. Our ancestors speculated about the heavens and gods and how and why things happened here on Earth. Classic myths from all cultures used fantasy and the “science” of the time to speculate about the seasons and the movements of the heavens and more. Early written stories like Gilgamesh and Beowulf have fantastical elements mixed with human, and to me that is very “genre.” Today we no longer have to rely solely on a travelling storyteller to share the tales of others. Our books, both traditional and e-book, share ideas of those long gone and open the way for those yet to come. And these books inspire us to more, including adaptations to TV, movies, games, and more to reach even more people. (For good or ill and everywhere in between!)
With this in mind, I looked at what we had for a literary side on SciFi4Me… not much. Occasional reviews, a handful of e-books, and text links to authors. We’ve just been so busy giving you other great content that we kept putting books on the back-burner… “we’ll get to it… soon.” But when you see how much of what we cover on the site began with the written word, we decided we needed to up our game! While I admit I am not a huge reader (though I come from a family of readers), this legacy of where the real roots of scifi are prompted me to take on revamping the literary side of SciFi4Me. I worked in books for many years, and it instilled a love for the written heritage of the stories we tell today. So I really wanted to give the literary side its due. With that, we have the NEW SciFi4Me Lit!
You will see that our new landing page for SciFi4Me Lit will have some of the latest news in the literary world as well as our latest releases and reviews. We are adding more e-books monthly to the Free4Me Library, and we’ve added a page for publisher releases called Pub Crawl. Book Reviews we do will be distinguished from publisher ones in Reviews4Me, because they are done by us for you. Awards are featured, too, on their own page! Authors are still being revamped (soon you will have so much more information at a glance!), and we’re in the process of creating our new Artists Alley to feature the artists of SciFi comics and graphic novels!
We all hope you enjoy the new SciFi4Me Lit! It will continue to evolve and grow, and we would love your feedback! Are you interested in joining the Lit team? We want more book reviewers and literary blog-writers, and we can always use help for the pages Authors, Artists Alley, Pub Crawl, and more! What are you reading and looking forward to? What else do we need to cover? Let me know what you think in the comments, contact me in the form below, or give us a call on our hotline. Enjoy!
