The first full moon of winter has been and gone. It’s time to turn our gaze to the skies and see what dreams may come. That’s right, folks, it’s SCIFIMONTH! Once again, Lisa and I will be your hosts for a month-long celebration of all things science fictional. So, what can you expect this year?

We’ve got over 3 dozen bloggers, authors, and publishers aboard as we fly in search of new worlds and bright futures. No doubt we’ll find a few dystopias along the way too, but we’ll do our damnedest not to accidentally found any – or to kick off any intergalactic wars or robot revolutions. We understand that on Twitter, everyone can hear you scream, and you can listen in at #RRSciFiMonth – plus I’ll post regular mission status updates here at There’s Always Room for One More (expect a links round-up every 7-10 days).

So who’s along for the ride?

So far, we’re expecting SciFiMonth veterans Deanna Reads Books, Exploring by Starlight, Coffee and Crows, Bones, Books & Buffy, A Dance with Books, The Curious SFF Reader, Jorie Loves a Story, Always Me, The Bibliosanctum, Little Red Reviewer, Lynn’s Books, the Nashville Bookworm, the Bookish Muggle, Angry Robot, SFFworld, Humber SFF, Space and Sorcery and Earl Grey Editing.

New crew this year includes: Jessticulates, the Fairy Bookmother, Elena Square Eyes, A Thousand Worlds, Reader Voracious, Alexandra Wolfe, Beth and Books (bonus points go to Beth for making the most of her timezone advantage and getting the first SciFiMonth post live!), Chuckles Book Cave, Absolute Shannonigans, the Bookforager, Alternative Read, Hibernator’s Library,  and Never Judge a Book By Its Cover.

Flying patrol on Twitter we’ve got Ivo, Tim Tofton, Chris Voss, Alex Shepherd and Cole Dowden.

It’s never too late to join us

Just sign up in the fleet register so that we know you’re along for the ride, and if you’re on Twitter follow @SciFiMonth for all the latest updates!

What will be happening?

We all plot our own course and right now it’s a bit hand-wavey, timey-wimey, anything-could-happen-just-roll-with-it. If you do have some activities or posts planned, please add them to our master schedule so we can see what’s going on and include you in the regular mission status updates!

Photo challenge

Our SciFiMonth photo challenge kicks off today (ahem, although I’m on holiday and under-prepared, so I’ll be playing catch up at the weekend!).

Feel free to do as many or as few days as you like on your social media network of choice – just tag #RRSciFiMonth when you post. If you find a prompt confusing, check out the supporting comments or give us a yell! Want to be sure we see you? Leave a comment on this post letting us know what social media network you’ll be  using and one of us will definitely swing by to admire your work.

Giveaways

It’s too late to get in on the SciFiMonth sign-up giveaway (if you signed up, don’t forget you also need to make a post of some sort somewhere to guarantee your name goes in the hat!), but never fear – Lisa has a SciFiMonth kick-off giveaway for you! Whoosh on over to Dear Geek Place to get in on a chance to win a copy of Ursula Le Guin’s classic The Left Hand of Darkness.

Read-along

Last but not least, there’s the SciFiMonth read-along – Lisa and the lovely Jorie will be hosting weekly Sunday Twitter chats to discuss the joy of taking The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet (#smallangryplanet) starting on November 11th. Check out the weekly reading breakdowns also over at Dear Geek Place.

It’s more like guidelines anyway

Ultimately, there’s no rules for SciFiMonth – no obligations, no targets, no pressure – so you can generally expect us all to be talking about why we love SF and celebrating our favourite things in every way we can think of.

I’ll be sticking to speculative fiction and space opera (except for my weekly dose of Tremontaine – I can’t abandon the Duchess at the climax of the final season!). Expect aliens, space travel, advanced technologies and alternate futures. I’m lining up reviews of mostly recent releases this year; some SFtastic Top Tens; and I hope to revisit The Book Was Better (or was it) to look at some on-screen SF efforts.

Whether or not you plan to join the blogstravaganza, what will you be reading during SciFi Month?