An exception was the crew, who stared frankly at the Ariekei they had never seen before. Across the room I saw my helmsman and I saw the expression on his face. Once I had heard a theory. It was an attempt to make sense of the fact that no matter how travelled people are, no matter how cosmopolitan, how biotically miscegenated from their homes, they can’t be insouciant at the first sight of any exot race. The theory is that we’re hardwired with the Terre biome, that every glimpse of anything not descended from the original backwater home, our bodies know we should not ever see.
Category Archives: Books
Novel Review: Zoo City
Yellow light slicing across my pillow like a knife would be the appropriate simile, but it feels more like a mole digging its way into my skull through my right eyeball. There is a boy in my bed, or at least I think it’s a boy. It’s hard to judge gender by the back of someone’s head. But I have my suspicions, based on the sandy curls and the snippets of last night that my brain is starting to defrag (277).
South African author Lauren Beukes received too little attention for her excellent debut novel, Moxyland, but critics have been fawning over her follow-up, an alternate history which blends a noir investigation of the music industry with totem-animal toting lowlifes. Is it as good as people say, or are they making up for having until now missed one of the great emerging SF/fantasy writers?
Continue reading →
Book Review – Fast Foreward 1
With the Hugo Awards coming up, I’m going to a break down of some of the nominated works for this year’s awards, This week I’m starting off with Fast Forward 1, edited by Lou Anders, who is nominated for a Best Editor, Long Form award. As this is a collection of short stories, the usual review framework doesn’t quite apply, but I’ll try to fit the usual beats in there. Continue reading →
2011 Hugo Award Nominations Announced
In addition to the 2011 Seiun Award Nominees, the 2011 Hugo Award Nominees were announced today. While io9 has beaten us to the list, where they have speed, we have quality – we have links to the web pages of nominated persons and magazines where possible and Amazon.com links to nominated works (of we weren’t able to link directly to them), plus little bit of analysis. Nominees are below the cut. Continue reading →
2011 Seiun Award Nominations announced
The nominees for the 42nd annual Seiun Awards have been announced, and rather than wait until the winners have been announced like last time, I’ll give a run-down of the nominees, based on a Google translation of a Japanese site with the list, which can be found here. The original versions of the titles are being placed next to the Google Translated versions, in case someone who understands Japanese better wants to translate the titles for me.
The Hugo Award Nominations themselves are being announced this year, and that list will be posted later today. Continue reading →
“A Dance With Dragons” Release Date Set
Yes, we’ve been teased and disappointed a lot over the last few years. But with “Game of Thrones” coming to HBO this month, apparently the proverbial fire has been lit under George Martin’s hind quarters.
Bantam Books has set July 12, 2011 as the release date for the sixth book in the “A Song of Ice and Fire” series. Martin maintains that the delay is due to him needing to fully map out the last two books in the series. Note, that “Dragons” is not yet finished, but will be in time for publication.
It’s been a long wait for fans, hopefully it pays off.
From George Martin’s “Not a Blog“
Book Review – Conspiracies
F. Paul Wilson is one of the wave of horror-thriller writers to come after Stephen King who haven’t gotten the degree of cultural awareness that King has gotten. This is particularly odd considering that he created a very interesting character who is featured in the book I’m reviewing today – Repairman Jack. Continue reading →
Fantasy Author Brian Jacques Has Passed Away
Prolific fantasy author, Brian Jacques, passed away this weekend from a heart attack at age 71.
Jacques is best known for his Redwall series of fantasy novels that featured anthropomorphic woodland creatures in and around the abbey of Redwall. One of the best descriptions of his books have been “Lord of the Rings meets Watership Down.”
Book Review: Chimerascope
Joe swore when he saw Cath doing a kid. He had left her for just a minute, to get a beer from the booth on the pier before it closed for the night…
…Kid’s not more than seven, he thought. Cath promised me no kids. She promised.
–“By Her Hand, She Draws You Down” (63).
Anthologies present a problem for our 42-point review system, even when they collect one author’s work. Rather than give Douglas Smith’s collection a score, I’m posting a review that tries to hit our usual categories along the way.
Book Review: Sarah Court
Craig Davidson’s work has attracted the attention of people like Peter Straub, Chuck Palahniuk (to whose style Davidson’s sometimes draws comparison), Irvine Welsh, and Clive Barker. Most recently, Toronto’s ChiZine Publications brings us Sarah Court, a bizarre, biting novel that defies easy classification. Welcome to Sarah Court, home to the disturbed and the damaged: fathers who destroy their children, a nerd who imagines he’s a vampire, a foster mother who sports a vicious streak, and a thing that lives in a box.