Annalee Newitz

Screenshot: Disney+By Sabina GravesFlorida’s controversial anti-LGBTQ “Don’t Say Gay” bill has passed the state senate, heading to the desk of governor Ron DeSantis, all but guaranteeing its entry into state law—and one of the state’s biggest businesses, the Walt Disney Company, has largely chosen to stay silent.Instead of turning its attention toward supporting LGBTQ youth and their families, Disney focused its efforts on a different situation making headlines in Florida: its latest luxury vacation venture aboard the…

 Burrowed Image: Angry RobotThere are two prominent themes among the new January books: YA fantasies and horror novels, with several entries in each genre. But there’s also plenty of sci-fi (including the latest from io9 co-founder Annalee Newitz!) and adult fantasy awaiting your eyeballs—so start 2023 off right, with a new book or two!Image: BerkleyBack in a Spell by Lana HarperWhen a lonely witch decides to take a chance on romance, a disastrous first date sparks an unexpectedly magical connection. (January 3)G/O Media…

Children of Virtue and Vengeance by Tomi AdeyemiImage: Henry Holt and Co.We’re up to our eyeballs in genre books, folks—space capers, fantasy adventures, alt-history thrillers, short-fiction collections, and even a couple of nonfiction books thrown in for good measure. Dive in, and get ready for an amazing season of reading.SeptemberNo One’s Home by D.M. PulleyA family looking for a fresh start moves to a new town to renovate an abandoned mansion, but soon finds there’s no escaping their troubled past—or the home’s…

Photo: Gene Page/AMCWhen io9 co-founders Annalee Newitz and Charlie Jane Anders hired me as a Senior Editor back in 2012, I never expected to still be at the site a decade later. I certainly never expected to recap The Walking Dead the entire time, and now that the show is over, I have no idea how to feel about it. But I’m pretty sure it’s not good.And when I say a decade, I mean 10 years almost exactly. Annalee and CJ made it very clear that one of my tasks upon being hired would be taking on recaps of the…

Image: Del ReyWay back in 2019, io9 revealed an excerpt from Chuck Wendig’s apocalyptic thriller Wanderers—a book about a pandemic of sorts that went on to be a hit amid a real-world pandemic. Then, in late 2021, we revealed the cover and prologue for its sequel, Wayward, which was originally due in August 2022. That got bumped a few months, but the time of arrival is almost here, and we’ve got one more peek at Wendig’s latest to share.Here’s the summary, in case you need a refresher:Five years ago, ordinary Americans…

Image: TorAs io9 co-founders Annalee Newitz and Charlie Jane Anders acted as Toastmasters during the Hugo awards ceremony at Chicon, the 80th World Science Fiction and Fantasy convention, they were also awarded with some Hugos of their very own!Other notable winners included Arkady Martine’s A Desolation Called Peace, which is the second novel in her Teixcalaan series, and the second in the series to win a Hugo. The first book, A Memory Called Empire, won in 2020. Another big winner was publisher Tor, which published…