One of the things I find interesting about “hard” science fiction — by way of introducing Peter Watts’s Hugo-nominated novel Blindsight, the best example of the type that I have read in years — is …
Continue readingAuthor: Matt Denault
Matt Denault has never lost the seriousness of a child at play—especially when it comes to reading. He lives just outside Boston.
Zoran Živković Interview + Seven Touches of Music + Steps Through the Mist Review
This week our guest is World Fantasy Award winning author Dr. Zoran Živković. Publishers in the UK and USA have snapped up Živković’s stories, written in his native Serbian, in English translation at an ever-increasing …
Continue readingReview – The Love We Share Without Knowing by Christopher Barzak
“Are you okay?” That is the question asked, in one form or another, in nearly all of the stories that comprise Christopher Barzak’s new mosaic novel The Love We Share Without Knowing. It is a …
Continue readingIn the Forest of Forgetting by Theodora Goss Review
“The Rose in Twelve Petals” begins Theodora Goss’s newly-in-paperback collection In the Forest of Forgetting, and the story makes an ideal introduction to the the author’s work. A retelling of the classic Sleeping Beauty story, …
Continue readingGetting to Know You by David Marusek Review
Getting to Know You is only David Marusek’s second book, but he is already a veteran of the science fiction wars. Marusek’s 2005 novel Counting Heads was the subject of the debut speculative fiction column …
Continue readingMultiReal by David Louis Edelman Review
The labels “science fiction” and “speculative fiction” have long been entwined, with speculative fiction variously considered synonymous with science fiction or an umbrella that contains science fiction. And indeed most science fiction is speculative, either …
Continue readingAdventures in Unhistory by Avram Davidson Review
Imagine if you will that, when you were younger, you had an older relative — a grandfather or great-aunt — who was something of an armchair historian regarding mythology. Every now and then, when you …
Continue readingCon Report – Readercon 18
Readercon 18 was held July 5th through the 8th, 2007, in Burlington, MA, USA. Readercon is known as a very focused convention: there are none of the art shows, music, gaming, costumes, etc. that one …
Continue readingThe Man on the Ceiling by Steve Rasnic & Melanie Tem Review
Tem’s fantastical memoir The Man on the Ceiling, about his wife Melanie. And Melanie’s character, in one of her narrative turns, tells us how a strange and lost man did one night climb through her …
Continue readingThe Last Dragon by J.M. McDermott Review
In Last Dragon, J.M. McDermott strips the fat from the bones of epic quest-driven fantasy, then dresses up the resulting skeleton of story in layer upon layer of fragmented and elliptical narrative. The fit of …
Continue readingGod’s Demon by Wayne Barlowe Review
Hell is a setting but never quite a theme in Wayne Barlowe’s debut novel God’s Demon; this explains both the book’s successes and its disappointments. At its best Barlowe’s novel provides a fairly typical, quasi-medieval …
Continue readingInterfictions: An Anthology of Interstitial Writing Review
What makes certain writings “interstitial” is largely a matter of expectations, say Delia Sherman and Theodora Goss, editors of Interfictions: An Anthology of Interstitial Writing. How, then, to set expectations for the anthology itself? For …
Continue readingNapoleon’s Pyramids by William Dietrich Review
The initial appearance of the pulp hero in the newspapers, radio shows and cinema of 1920s America was a reassuring affirmation of rugged American individualism in a world that, in the wake of World War …
Continue readingAcadem’s Fury by Jim Butcher – Review
There are a few sentences in the Prologue of Jim Butcher’s Academ’s Fury that in some ways reveal all that you need to know about the book: The steady, smoldering throb from his left knee …
Continue readingWarrior and Witch by Marie Brennan – Review
From its cover one might suspect Marie Brennan’s Warrior and Witch to be a fantasy-romance hybrid, but there is actually very little romance in this tale of magic, politics and cultural change. Also misleading about …
Continue readingPatricia McKillip’s Od Magic Review
The genre that today is labeled “fantasy” on the shelves of your local bookseller and library (or the links of your favored e-tailer) is made up of many different literary traditions. There are the mythological …
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