While we usually restrict ourselves to articles on science fiction and fantasy films, books and TV, I can’t pass up this opportunity to reveal details of Apple’s “latest creation” just announced by Steve Jobs. I woke up amazingly early in Australia to watch Steve Job's presentation and give you the news first.

Apple’s new iPad (pictured below) is a 9.7-inch multimedia tablet computer (half way between a laptop and an iPhone) running a new 1GHz Apple A4 chip developed by Apple and includes WiFI, 3G, Bluetooth, a microphone and speakers and 16GB, 32 GB or 64 GB in flash memory. However much you love your Amazon Kindle e-reader, Apple's iPad eclipses this and every other e-Reader or tablet that has come before it. The Wifi only option starts at US $499, a lot cheaper than some predicted.

Ursula K. Le Guin, a science fiction and fantasy writer most famous for her Earthsea trilogy, The left hand of darkness and The dispossessed, is taking on Google’s right to scan and sell millions of books online after the search engine giant reached an agreement with the US Authors Guild. According to The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald, Ursula Le Guin has submitted a petition to a US judge signed by 365 other writers opposing the legal settlement. The petition asks the judge to exempt the US from a revised legal settlement reached between Google and US authors and publishers.

If you're a fan of the science fiction writer John Wyndham, most famous for his novel The Day of the Triffids, and believe that there’s nothing more to enjoy, you may well be mistaken (or perhaps not?). More than 41 years after his death, Penguin has published a new John Wyndham novel called Plan for Chaos. According to the Irish Times, Liverpool University Press, holders of the Wyndham archive, published Plan to Chaos last year as a specialist book with a high price tag but has now released it to mainstream booksellers. Wyndham wrote Plan for Chaos in 1951, just before he wrote his walking plant masterpiece, The Day of the Triffids.

Robert Paul Holdstock, British fantasy's leading light, died in London on 29 November, aged 61. He was struck down by a severe E.coli infection on 18 November and fought on in intensive care until Sunday. The thoughts of those of us who treasure his writing go out to his family and friends.

Although best known for his mythic fantasy, Robert Holdstock also wrote science fiction (Eye Among the Blind) and horror (The Fetch), amongst others. But it is for his fantasy that Robert Holdstock received wide recognition, notably for the outstanding Mythago Wood cycle of novels and most recently the Merlin Codex series. Mythago Wood won the BSFA Award for Best Novel (1984) and the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel (1985) and its sequel, Lavondyss, won the BSFA Award for Best Novel (1988).

Death has been kind to the everlasting memory of Philip K. Dick (1928-1982), one of the most influential and perhaps also one of the most eccentric authors of the twentieth century. Since his untimely death at the age of 53 there's been nothing short of an explosion of interest in the man and his work and as each year passes, his remarkable influence on other writers, in cinema and mainstream culture becomes more apparent. Such posthumous success and wide-reaching influence is unprecedented for any previous writer of science fiction and it's further evidence that Death has a genius for irony: only in the afterlife has Phil Dick enjoyed the wide success he deserved and craved throughout his life!

First published in 1988, the biography Don't Panic: Douglas Adams and the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has been revised and refreshed to cover the feature film (unfortunately not as successful as fans hoped), Adams' untimely death in 2001, and the publication of the sixth novel by Eoin Colfer, And Another Thing. It also covers the 30th anniversary of the novel that kick-started Adams' rise to stardom, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Hitchhiker's was 30 years old in October 2009.

It's widely acknowledged that Alan Moore's Watchmen is responsible for introducing a gritty realism to comic books, in part through a more realistic depiction of violence and its consequences, but most importantly in terms of characterisation: Watchmen's characters are elevated from two to three dimensions through Moore's gift to them of an inner, emotional world. Unfortunately, it's the more lurid of these innovations that has been Watchmen's most enduring legacy, driven by the market's appetite for graphic violence and the failure of many writers to appreciate that gratuitous depictions of violence do not in themselves equate with realism.

Which is not a criticism of Watchmen, of course, but rather of the market for comic books in general.

Science fiction authors have long been outcasts from the literary world, in some cases critics using the worst examples of the genre as ammunition against it. Unfortunately though, at times even science fiction authors themselves can turn on their own kind: "Science fiction is rockets, chemicals and talking squids in outer space,” mocked Margaret Atwood (The Guardian, 28 January 2009), one of her many attempts to convince people that she is not a science fiction author, even though one of her most famous novels, A Handmaid's Tale, is exactly that.

James Norcliffe’s new novel The Loblolly Boy is a magical, curious and thought provoking story for children about a young boy’s wish to flee the harsh reality of life in a home for abandoned children and the price that he pays to achieve that wish. Both contemporary and suitably timeless, the story is in part a re-imagining of the stories of Peter Pan and Pinocchio for the twenty first century. While the tale is presented from the perspective of the novel’s child characters, Norcliffe’s delightful prose, humour and adult insights ensure that he has written that rare children’s book, as much a joy for adults to read as for children.

Neil Gaiman has just picked up his fourth Hugo Award, the 2009 award for Best Novel for his outstanding young adult fantasy The Graveyard Book. While the novel does get a young adult classification, recognition like this proves once again (as if proof were needed) how well Gaiman's fiction transcends such narrow classifications as age. The Awards Ceremony took place on 9 August at the the 67th Worldcon in Montreal, Québec. A complete list of this year's Hugo Award Winners can be found on the Hugo Awards website.