Few writers have had the influence of H.P. Lovecraft on SF, fantasy, and horror, but the eccentric author’s racism and xenophobia—extreme even by the standards of his time— shamble through many of his stories and can make contemporary readers terribly uncomfortable. Matt Ruff is the latest writer to address Lovecraft’s other disturbing rather directly in a Lovecraft-influenced novel. Lovecraft Country unfolds against the backdrop of mid-1950s America, and focuses on characters who face both the eldritch horrors and the Jim Crow racism lurking beneath the surface of American life.
Category Archives: Books
Novel Review: The Affinities
Robert Charles Wilson’s 2015 offering is more social science fiction, a blend of creeping near-dystopia, spy/crime thriller, and unnervingly plausible look at the next decade. It also may be the best among those SF novels overlooked by both the Hugos and Nebulas.
Book Review: Making the Rounds
So did every day have to be interesting? Was God an entertainer?
–“The Missing Word”
Alan Weiss has published a number of stories in different genres, and many academic papers. This new collection concerns an itinerant wizard and his faithful, if not always amiable, horse.
Novel Review: “Lock In”
With the TV adaptation of John Scalzi’s 2014 SF/detective novel in development/preproduction, we thought we’d review the 2014 source. We’re a bit late to the party, we know. Consider it a bonus “Weekend Review.”
Novel Review: Updraft
One of the most-discussed YA novels of the last year is Fran Wilde’s Updraft, the first of a series set in the wild “Bone Universe,” where humans live in gigantic towers of bone and fly above the clouds on manufactured wings. The book has been nominated for a 2016 Nebula and the Andre Norton Award. Does it live up to the hype?
Novel Review: Luna: New Moon
This premise sold to television first. The first book appeared in September, while the series remains in development. The Luna saga comes closer than anything to A Song of Ice and Fire / Game of Thrones…. In Spaaace! Volume one features corporate feudalism, shifting alliances, family in-fighting, pointy-end battles (projectile weapons are banned), and graphic sex scenes.
It’s also by Ian McDonald, an SF writer of considerable talent.
Novel Review: Ready Player One
Recently picked up as movie (to be directed by Steven Spielberg, no less), this homage to 80’s culture was all the rage within the geek community when it debuted. Is it all it’s cracked up to be?
Book Review: Bazaar of Bad Dreams
The prison was twenty miles from the nearest small city, on an otherwise empty expanse of prairie where the wind blew almost all the time. The main building was a looming stone horror perpetrated on the landscape at the beginning of the twentieth century. Growing from either side were concrete cellblocks built one by one over the previous forty-five years, mostly with federal money that began flowing during the Nixon years and just never stopped.
At some distance from the main body of the prison was a smaller building. The prisoners called this adjunct Needle Manor (99).
Stephen King closed 2015 with a diverse collection of short fiction that displays his sense of horror, humor, hokiness, and humanity.
Novel Review: Seveneves
An amateur astronomer in Utah was the first person on Earth to realize that something unusual was happening. Moments earlier, he had noticed a blur flourishing in the vicinity of the Reiner Gamma formation, near the moon’s equator. He assumed it was a dust cloud thrown up by a meteor strike. He pulled out his phone and blogged the event, moving his stiff thumbs (for he was high on a mountain and the air was as cold as it was clear) as fast as he could to secure the claim to himself. Other astronomers would soon be pointing their telescopes at the same dust cloud—might be doing it already! But—supposing he could move his thumbs fast enough—he would be the first to point it out. The fame would be his; if the meteorite left behind a visible crater, perhaps it would even bear his name.
His name was forgotten. By the time he had gotten his phone out of his pocket, his crater no longer existed. Nor did the moon. (1)
It’s been a long time coming, but the most monumental SF novel of 2015 receives its review. Is Neal Stephenson’s apocalyptic epic worth negotiating its 800+ pages?
Novel Review: Illuminae
This experimental YA novel, published in October, gives us space opera, corporate wrongdoing, deranged AI, virus-afflicted psychokillers, teen love, and weird typographic effects. It has received substantial praise. Does it live up to expectations? Would an older reader enjoy it?