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Archived Reviews
- Reviews for the week of
9/6/10
- Monday: Doctor Who: Series Five, reviewed by Matthew Jones
Wednesday: Stories edited by Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio, reviewed by Chris Kammerud
Friday: Triumff: Her Majesty's Hero by Dan Abnett, reviewed by William Mingin
- Reviews for the week of
8/30/10
- Monday: Narrative Power: Encounters, Celebrations, Struggles, edited by L. Timmel Duchamp, reviewed by Anil Menon
Wednesday: The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson, reviewed by Niall Alexander
Friday: Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, reviewed by Martin Lewis
- Reviews for the week of
8/23/10
- Monday: Above the Snowline by Steph Swainston, reviewed by Niall Harrison
Wednesday: Toy Story 3, reviewed by David J. Schwartz
Friday: The Red Tree by Caitlin R. Kiernan, reviewed by Audrey Homan
- Reviews for the week of
8/16/10
- Monday: Red Plenty by Francis Spufford, reviewed by Adam Roberts
Wednesday: Mammoths of the Great Plains and Tomb of the Fathers by Eleanor Arnason, reviewed by Kelly Jennings
Friday: Shine edited by Jetse de Vries, reviewed by Karen Burnham
- Reviews for the week of
8/9/10
- Monday: A Dark Matter by Peter Straub, reviewed by Jonathan McCalmont
Wednesday: Inception, reviewed by William Mingin
Friday: X6 edited by Keith Stevenson, reviewed by Richard Larson
- Reviews for the week of
8/2/10
- Monday: Under the Dome by Stephen King, reviewed by Abigail Nussbaum
Wednesday: Through the Drowsy Dark by Rachel Swirsky, reviewed by Sara Polsky
Friday: Pinion by Jay Lake, reviewed by Paul Kincaid
- Reviews for the week of
7/26/10
- Monday: The Passage by Justin Cronin, reviewed by T. S. Miller
Wednesday: Finch by Jeff VanderMeer, reviewed by David McWilliam
Friday: Slum Online by Hiroshi Sakurazaka, reviewed by Anil Menon
- Reviews for the week of
7/19/10
- Monday: Chill by Elizabeth Bear, reviewed by Matt Denault
Wednesday: Ruby's Spoon by Anna Lawrence Pietroni, reviewed by Niall Harrison
Friday: Servant of the Underworld by Aliette de Bodard, reviewed by Duncan Lawie
- Reviews for the week of
7/12/10
- Monday: Shirley Jackson: Novels and Stories, edited by Joyce Carol Oates, reviewed by L. Timmel Duchamp
Wednesday: The 2009 Shirley Jackson Award Best Novel shortlist, part one, by Richard Larson
Friday: The Shirley Jackson Award for Best Novel of 2009, by Richard Larson
- Reviews for the week of
7/5/10
- Monday: The Woo of Lost, by Adam Roberts
Wednesday: A Game of Lost, by Bernadette Lynn Bosky
Friday: Two Views: The Devil's Alphabet by Daryl Gregory, reviewed by Michael Froggatt and David J. Schwartz
- Reviews for the week of
6/28/10
- Monday: The Inter-Galactic Playground by Farah Mendlesohn, reviewed by William Mingin
Wednesday: New Model Army by Adam Roberts, reviewed by Nadar Elhefnawy
Friday: Cheek by Jowl by Ursula K Le Guin and Imagination/Space by Gwyneth Jones, reviewed by Paul Kincaid
- Reviews for the week of
6/21/10
- Monday: And Another Thing. . . by Eoin Colfer, reviewed by Andy Sawyer
Wednesday: Tome of the Undergates by Sam Sykes, reviewed by Peter Whitfield
Friday: Bitter Angels by C. L. Anderson, reviewed by Kelly Jennings
- Reviews for the week of
6/14/10
- Monday: Monsters of Men by Patrick Ness, reviewed by Martin Lewis
Wednesday: Spellbent by Lucy A. Snyder, reviewed by Sara Polsky
Friday: The World House by Guy Adams, reviewed by Jonathan McCalmont
- Reviews for the week of
6/7/10
- Monday: Isaac Asimov Presents the Great SF Stories 1, reviewed by Alvaro Zinos-Amaro
Wednesday: The Push by Dave Hutchinson, reviewed by Duncan Lawie
Friday: Under in the Mere by Catherynne M Valente, reviewed by Anil Menon
- Reviews for the week of
5/31/10
- Monday: Mr Shivers by Robert Jackson Bennett and The Kingom of Ohio by Matthew Flaming, reviewed by Dan Hartland
Wednesday: The Trade of Queens by Charles Stross, reviewed by Nader Elhefnawy
Friday: Chimerascope by Douglas Smith, reviewed by T. S. Miller
- Reviews for the week of
5/24/10
- Monday: Pretty Monsters by Kelly Link, reviewed by Abigail Nussbaum
Wednesday: Survivors, reviewed by C. B. Harvey
Friday: Lifelode by Jo Walton, reviewed by Paul Kincaid
- Reviews for the week of
5/17/10
- Monday: The Poison Eaters and Other Stories by Holly Black, reviewed by L. Timmel Duchamp
Wednesday: The Dream of Perpetual Motion by Dexter Palmer, reviewed by Niall Harrison
Friday: Directive 51 by John Barnes, reviewed by Kelly Jennings
- Reviews for the week of
5/10/10
- Monday: Horns by Joe Hill and Neverland by Douglas Clegg, reviewed by Hannah Strom-Martin
Wednesday: Dragon Haven by Robin Hobb, reviewed by Lisa Goldstein
Friday: Metro 2033 by Dmitry Glukhovsky, reviewed by Michael Froggatt
- Reviews for the week of
5/3/10
- Monday: The Rats and the Ruling Sea by Robert V. S. Redick, reiewed by Anil Menon
Wednesday: Imagination/Space: Essays and Talks on Fiction, Feminism, Technology, and Politics by Gwyneth Jones, reviewed by Farah Mendlesohn
Friday: Memoirs of a Master Forger by William Heaney, reviewed by Michael Levy
- Reviews for the week of
4/26/10
- Monday: The 2010 Arthur C. Clarke Award shortlist, reviewed by Dan Hartland (part one)
Wednesday: The 2010 Arthur C. Clarke Award shortlist, reviewed by Dan Hartland (part two)
Friday: The Age of Ra by James Lovegrove, reviewed by Nader Elhefnawy
- Reviews for the week of
4/19/10
- Monday: Cloud & Ashes by Greer Gilman, reviewed by Justina Robson
Wednesday: Cold Earth by Sarah Moss, reviewed by Paul Kincaid
Friday: Sandman Slim by Richard Kadrey, reviewed by Audrey Homan
- Reviews for the week of
4/12/10
- Monday: A Short History of Fantasy by Farah Mendlesohn and Edward James, reviewed by Matthew Cheney
Wednesday: Kick Ass, reviewed by Martin Lewis
Friday: The Returners by Gemma Malley, reviewed by Hallie O'Donovan
- Reviews for the week of
4/5/10
- Monday: VALIS and Later Novels by Philip K. Dick, reviewed by Adam Roberts
Wednesday: The Bookman by Lavie Tidhar, reviewed by Michael Froggatt
Friday: Lightbreaker by Mark Teppo, reviewed by Peter Whitfield
- Reviews for the week of
3/29/10
- Monday: The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N. K. Jemisin, reviewed by Maureen Kincaid Speller
Wednesday: Terminal World by Alastair Reynolds, reviewed by Duncan Lawie
Friday: Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde, reviewed by Sara Polsky
- Reviews for the week of
3/22/10
- Monday: When it Changed: Science into Fiction edited by Geoff Ryman, reviewed by Matt Denault
Wednesday: Experiments at 3 Billion A.M. by Alexander Zelenyj, reviewed by James Trimarco
Friday: The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, reviewed by David J. Schwartz
- Reviews for the week of
3/15/10
- Monday: The Stone Dance of the Chameleon by Ricardo Pinto, reviewed by David McWilliam
Wednesday: Naamah's Kiss by Jacqueline Carey, reviewed by Hannah Strom-Martin
Friday: The Secret History of Science Fiction, edited by James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel, reviewed by Paul Kincaid
- Reviews for the week of
3/8/10
- Monday: Selected short fiction from 2009, reviewed by Alvaro Zinos-Amaro
Wednesday: 2009 short fiction, reviewed by Abigail Nussbaum
Friday: The Stone Dance of the Chameleon by Ricardo Pinto, reviewed by David McWilliam
- Reviews for the week of
3/1/10
- Monday: Red Claw by Philip Palmer, reviewed by Jonathan McCalmont
Wednesday: The Brain Thief by Alexander Jablokov, reviewed by Karen Burnham
Friday: In Great Waters by Kit Whitfield, reviewed by T. S. Miller
- Reviews for the week of
2/22/10
- Monday: Heroes in the Wind by Robert E. Howard, reviewed by William Mingin
Wednesday: Audrey's Door by Sarah Langan, reviewed by Richard Larson
Friday: The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart by Jesse Bullington, reviewed by Abigail Nussbaum
- Reviews for the week of
2/15/10
- Monday: Avilion by Robert Holdstock, reviewed by David J. Schwartz
Wednesday: Boneshaker by Cherie Priest, reviewed by Colin Harvey
Friday: Chasing the Dragon by Justina Robson, reviewed by Niall Harrison
- Reviews for the week of
2/8/10
- Monday: A Book of Endings by Deborah Biancotti, reviewed by Dan Hartland
Wednesday: Dragon Keeper by Robin Hobb, reviewed by Lisa Goldstein
Friday: Eclipse Three, edited by Jonathan Strahan, reviewed by T. S. Miller
- Reviews for the week of
2/1/10
- Monday: Tales from the Mabinogion: The Ninth Wave by Russell Celyn Jones and White Ravens by Owen Sheers, reviewed by Paul Kincaid
Wednesday: The Day of the Triffids, reviewed by C. B. Harvey
Friday: The Beast with Nine Billion Feet by Anil Menon, reviewed by L. Timmel Duchamp
- Reviews for the week of
1/25/10
- Monday: The 2009 David Gemmell Legend Award Shortlist, Part One, reviewed by Nic Clarke
Wednesday: The 2009 David Gemmell Legend Award Shortlist, Part Two, reviewed by Nic Clarke
Friday: Love Puppets and other webcomics by Jessica McLeod and Edward J. Grug III, reviewed by Michael H. Payne
- Reviews for the week of
1/18/10
- Monday: The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood and The Rapture by Liz Jenzen, reviewed by Martin Lewis
Wednesday: Cast a Deadly Spell, reviewed by Raz Greenberg
Friday: Wild Hunt by Margaret Ronald, reviewed by Hannah Strom-Martin
- Reviews for the week of
1/11/10
- Monday: The Other Lands by David Anthony Durham, reviewed by Niall Harrison
Wednesday: Sherlock Holmes, reviewed by Dan Hartland
Friday: Two Views: Doctor Who, "The End of Time", reviewed by Tony Keen and Tim Phipps
- Reviews for the week of
1/4/10
- Monday: 2009 Year In Review, by Our Reviewers
Wednesday: Avatar, reviewed by Roz Kaveney
Friday: The Cardinal's Blades and L'Alchimiste des Ombres by Pierre Pevel, reviewed by Kari Sperring
- Reviews for the week of
12/21/09
- Monday: The Apex Book of World SF, edited by Lavie Tidhar, reviewed by Andy Sawyer
Tuesday: Intelligent Design edited by Denise Little, reviewed by Nader Elhefnawy
Wednesday: Total Oblivion, More or Less by Alan DeNiro, reviewed by Hallie O'Donovan
- Reviews for the week of
12/14/09
- Monday: Makers by Cory Doctorow, reviewed by Anil Menon
Wednesday: Never Slow Dance With a Zombie by E Van Lowe, reviewed by Sara Polsky
Friday: Fire by Kristin Cashore, reviewed by Nic Clarke
- Reviews for the week of
12/7/09
- Monday: Gardens of the Sun by Paul McAuley, reviewed by Duncan Lawie
Wednesday: The Martian General's Daughter by Theodore Judson, reviewed by Mahesh Raj Mohan
Friday: The Road, reviewed by T. S. Miller
- Reviews for the week of
11/30/09
- Monday: The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi, reviewed by Niall Harrison
Wednesday: Hellbound Hearts edited by Paul Kane and Marie O'Reagan, reviewed by David McWilliam
Friday: V, reviewed by Raz Greenberg
- Reviews for the week of
11/23/09
- Monday: Lamentation and Canticle by Ken Scholes, reviewed by Hannah Strom-Martin
Wednesday: Transition by Iain (M.) Banks, reviewed by Adam Roberts
Friday: Objects of Worship by Claude Lalumiere, reviewed by Anil Menon
- Reviews for the week of
11/16/09
- Monday: Filaria by Brent Hayward, reviewed by Matt Denault
Wednesday: The Year's Best Science Fiction and Fantasy, volume 3, edited by Jonathan Strahan, reviewed by Nader Elhefnawy
Friday: Two Views: Moxyland by Lauren Beukes, reviewed by James Trimarco and Paul Raven
- Reviews for the week of
11/9/09
- Monday: The Magicians by Lev Grossman, reviewed by John Clute
Wednesday: Interfictions 2, edited by Delia Sherman and Christopher Barzak, reviewed by T. S. Miller
Friday: Green by Jay Lake, reviewed by Kyra Smith
- Reviews for the week of
11/2/09
- Monday: Ark by Stephen Baxter, reviewed by Jonathan McCalmont and Alvaro Zinos-Amaro
Wednesday: The Drowning City by Amanda Downum, reviewed by Kari Sperring
Friday: Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater, reviewed by Hallie O'Donovan
- Reviews for the week of
10/26/09
- Monday: The Black Mirror and Other Stories, edited by Franz Rottensteiner (trans. Mike Mitchell), reviewed by Adam Roberts
Wednesday: 1942 by Robert Conroy, reviewed by Douglas W. Texter
Friday: Orbus by Neal Asher, reviewed by Dan Hartland
- Reviews for the week of
10/19/09
- Monday: House of Windows by John Langan and Slights by Kaaron Warren, reviewed by Richard Larson
Wednesday: Rampant by Diana Peterfreund, reviewed by Sara Polsky
Friday: Fifty Key Figures in Science Fiction, edited by Mark Bould, Andrew M. Butler, Adam Roberts and Sherryl Vint, reviewed by Martin Lewis
- Reviews for the week of
10/12/09
- Monday: The Stranger by Max Frei, reviewed by William Mingin
Wednesday: Tile by Maryanne Rose Papke, reviewed by Michael H. Payne
Friday: Red Planets: Marxism and Science Fiction, edited by Mark Bould and China Mieville, reviewed by Michael Froggatt
- Reviews for the week of
10/5/09
- Monday: Grazing the Long Acre by Gwyneth Jones, reviewed by Andy Sawyer
Wednesday: Voyage to Arcturus by David Lindsay, reviewed by Joel Zartman
Friday: Blood of the Mantis by Adrian Tchaikovsky, reviewed by Peter Whitfield
- Reviews for the week of
9/28/09
- Monday: Zadayi Red by Caleb Fox, reviewed by Karen Burnham
Wednesday: The Resistance, by Muse by Muse, reviewed by Adam Roberts
Friday: Darkborn by Alison Sinclair, reviewed by Hannah Strom-Martin
- Reviews for the week of
9/21/09
- Monday: Two Views: Dollhouse, season one, reviewed by Bernadette Lynn Bosky and Gianduja Kiss
Wednesday: The Girl with Glass Feet by Ali Shaw, reviewed by Keri Sperring
Friday: The Fire in the Stone by Nicholas Ruddick, reviewed by Dan Hartland
- Reviews for the week of
9/14/09
- Monday: The New Uncanny edited by Sarah Eyre and Ra Page, reviewed by Paul Kincaid
Wednesday: District 9, reviewed by David J. Schwartz
Friday: The Lord of the Sands of Time by Issui Ogawa and All You Need is KILL by Hiroshi Sakurazaka, reviewed by Martin Lewis
- Reviews for the week of
9/7/09
- Monday: The Mammoth Book of Mindblowing SF edited by Mike Ashley, reviewed by Graham Sleight
Wednesday: The Gift of Joy by Ian Whates, reviewed by Anil Menon
Friday: One by Conrad Williams, reviewed by David McWilliam
- Reviews for the week of
8/31/09
- Monday: Amberlight and Riversend by Sylvia Kelso, reviewed by Abigail Nussbaum
Wednesday: Consorts of Heaven by Jaine Fenn, reviewed by Peter Whitfield
Friday: Wireless by Charles Stross, reviewed by Nader Elhefnawy
- Reviews for the week of
8/24/09
- Monday: The New Space Opera 2, eds. Jonathan Strahan and Gardner Dozois, and Open Your Eyes by Paul Jessup, reviewed by Richard Larson
Wednesday: Tides From the New Worlds by Tobias S. Buckell, reviewed by Alvaro Zinos-Amaro
Friday: Nekropolis by Tim Waggoner, reviewed by Kyra Smith
- Reviews for the week of
8/17/09
- Monday: The Ask and The Answer by Patrick Ness, reviewed by Martin Lewis
Wednesday: Jasmyn by Alex Bell, reviewed by Angela Slatter
Friday: Zoo by Otsuichi, reviewed by Karen Burnham
- Reviews for the week of
8/10/09
- Monday: The Hungry Ghosts by Anne Berry and White is for Witching by Helen Oyeyemi, reviewed Dan Hartland
Wednesday: The Best of Michael Moorcock, edited by John Davey with Ann and Jeff VanderMeer, reviewed by Duncan Lawie
Friday: Best Served Cold by Joe Abercrombie, reviewed by Niall Harrison
- Reviews for the week of
8/3/09
- Monday: On Joanna Russ, edited by Farah Mendlesohn, reviewed by L. Timmel Duchamp
Wednesday: Torchwood: Children of Earth, reviewed by Roz Kaveney
Friday: The Laurentine Spy by Emily Gee, reviewed by Rosalind Casey
- Reviews for the week of
7/27/09
- Monday: Impossible Stories II by Zoran ivković, reviewed by Anil Menon
Wednesday: Moon, reviewed by David J. Schwartz
Friday: Blood of Ambrose by James Enge, reviewed by William Mingin
- Reviews for the week of
7/20/09
- Monday: Traitor to the Crown by C. C. Finlay, reviewed by Paul Kincaid
Wednesday: Spiral Hunt by Margaret Ronald, reviewed by Hannah Strom-Martin
Friday: Spook City: stories by Peter Atkins, Clive Barker and Ramsey Campbell, edited by Angus Mackenzie, reviewed by Andy Sawyer
- Reviews for the week of
7/13/09
- Monday: The Long Price Quartet by Daniel Abraham, reviewed by Gwyneth Jones
Wednesday: The Routledge Companion to Science Fiction, edited by Mark Bould, Andrew M. Butler, Adam Roberts and Sherryl Vint, reviewed by Nick Hubble
Friday: The Painting and the City by Robert Freeman Wexler, reviewed by Matt Denault
- Reviews for the week of
7/6/09
- Monday: The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún by J. R. R. Tolkien, reviewed by Adam Roberts
Wednesday: The Very Best of Gene Wolfe, by David McWilliam
Friday: Two Tastes of Paprika: Yasutaka Tsutsui's novel (trans. Andrew Driver), and Satoshi Kon's anime, reviewed by Martin Lewis
- Reviews for the week of
6/29/09
- Monday: Beyond Balram: Stories by Vandana Singh and Ian McDonald, reviewed by Dan Hartland
Wednesday: Legend of the Seeker, Season One, reviewed by Hannah Strom-Martin
Friday: God of Clocks by Alan Campbell, reviewed by Martin Lewis
- Reviews for the week of
6/22/09
- Monday: Buyout by Alexander Irvine, reviewed by Alvaro Zinos-Amaro
Wednesday: The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan, reviewed by Hallie O'Donovan
Friday: Ages of Wonder, edited by Julie E. Czerneda and Rob St. Martin, reviewed by Nader Elhefnawy
- Reviews for the week of
6/15/09
- Monday: Up, reviewed by David J. Schwartz
Wednesday: Genesis by Bernard Beckett, reviewed by Jonathan McCalmont
Friday: Fast Ships, Black Sails, edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer, reviewed by Richard Larson
- Reviews for the week of
6/8/09
- Monday: This Is Not a Game by Walter Jon Williams, reviewed by Paul Raven
Wednesday: Steal Across the Sky by Nancy Kress, reviewed by Niall Harrison
Friday: Retribution Falls by Chris Wooding, reviewed by Michael Levy
- Reviews for the week of
6/1/09
- Monday: Hoshruba, Book One: The Land and the Tilism, by Muhammad Husain Jah, translated by Musharraf Ali Farooqi, reviewed by Anil Menon
Wednesday: Blood and Ice by Robert Masello, reviewed by Duncan Lawie
Friday: Nights of Villjamur by Mark Charan Newton, reviewed by Martin Lewis
- Reviews for the week of
5/25/09
- Monday: Irons in the Fire by Juliet E. McKenna, reviewed by Nic Clarke
Wednesday: Regenesis by C. J. Cherryh, reviewed by Nader Elhefnawy
Friday: Knife by R.J. Anderson, reviewed by Hallie O'Donovan
- Reviews for the week of
5/18/09
- Monday: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Season Two, reviewed by David Hines
Wednesday: Star Trek, reviewed by Iain Clark
Friday: A Madness of Angels by Kate Griffin, reviewed by Laura Blackwell
- Reviews for the week of
5/11/09
- Monday: Battlestar Galactica: "Daybreak", reviewed by Roz Kaveney and Karen Meisner
Wednesday: A Thread of Truth by Nina Allan, reviewed by Martin Lewis
Friday: True Blood, season one, reviewed by Adam Roberts
- Reviews for the week of
5/4/09
- Monday: UFO in Her Eyes by Xiaolu Guo, reviewed by Richard Larson and Karen Burnham
Wednesday: Living with Ghosts by Kari Sperring, reviewed by Hannah Strom-Martin
Friday: The Accord by Keith Brooke, reviewed by Duncan Lawie
- Reviews for the week of
4/27/09
- Monday: The 2009 Arthur C. Clarke Award Shortlist, reviewed by Edward James
Wednesday: Patient Zero by Jonathan Maberry, reviewed by Colin Harvey
Friday: Far North by Marcel Theroux, reviewed by Dan Hartland
- Reviews for the week of
4/20/09
- Monday: Palimpsest by Catherynne M. Valente, reviewed by Matt Denault
Wednesday: Fathom by Cherie Priest, reviewed by Sara Polsky
Friday: Eclipse Two: New Science Fiction and Fantasy, edited by Jonathan Strahan, reviewed by James A. Trimarco
- Reviews for the week of
4/13/09
- Monday: Mr. Gaunt and Other Uneasy Encounters by John Langan, reviewed by Abigail Nussbaum
Wednesday: Subterfuge, edited by Ian Whates, reviewed by Tanya Brown
Friday: Dragonfly Falling by Adrian Tchaikovsky, reviewed by Peter Whitfield
- Reviews for the week of
4/6/09
- Monday: Powers: Secret Histories, compiled and edited by John Berlyne, reviewed by Graham Sleight
Wednesday: Marcher by Chris Beckett, reviewed by Niall Harrison
Friday: The Sound of Building Coffins by Louis Maistros, reviewed by Paul Kincaid
- Reviews for the week of
3/30/09
- Monday: The Seven Beauties of Science Fiction by Istvan Csicser-Ronay Jr., reviewed by Adam Roberts
Wednesday: The Good Homor Man by Andrew Fox, reviewed by Jonathan McCalmont
Friday: In Great Waters by Kit Whitfield, reviewed by Kari Sperring
- Reviews for the week of
3/23/09
- Monday: Flora's Dare: How a Girl of Spirit Gambles All to Expand Her Vocabulary, Confront a Bouncing Boy Terror, and Try to Save Califa from a Shaky Doom (Despite Being Confined to Her Room) by Ysabeau S Wilce
Wednesday: Zoe's Tale by John Scalzi
Friday: Gullstruck Island by Frances Hardinge
- Reviews for the week of
3/16/09
- Monday: Mind Over Ship by David Marusek, reviewed by Paul Raven
Wednesday: Rosa and the Veil of Gold by Kim Wilkins, reviewed by Hannah Strom-Martin
Friday: The Judging Eye by R. Scott Bakker, reviewed by Peter Whitfield
- Reviews for the week of
3/9/09
- Monday: Two Views: Yellow Blue Tibia by Adam Roberts, reviewed by Michael Froggatt and Abigail Nussbaum
Wednesday: The Manual of Detection by Jedediah Berry, reviewed by Karen Meisner
Friday: The Adamantine Palace by Stephen Deas, reviewed by Nic Clarke
- Reviews for the week of
3/2/09
- Monday: The Company by KJ Parker, reviewed by Niall Harrison
Wednesday: The State of the Art by Iain M. Banks, adapted by Paul Cornell for Radio 4, reviewed by Farah Mendlesohn
Friday: Journey into Space by Toby Litt, reviewed by Martin Lewis
- Reviews for the week of
2/23/09
- Monday: Gears of War: Aspho Fields by Karen Traviss, reviewed by Nader Elhefnawy
Wednesday: Poe, edited by Ellen Datlow, reviewed by Jonathan McCalmont
Friday: Dragon in Chains by Daniel Fox, reviewed by Kari Sperring
- Reviews for the week of
2/16/09
- Monday: The Walls of the Universe by Paul Melko, reviewed by Alvaro Zinos-Amaro
Wednesday: The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle, reviewed by Sara Polsky
Friday: The Dragon's Nine Sons and Three Unbroken by Chris Roberson, reviewed by Duncan Lawie
- Reviews for the week of
2/9/09
- Monday: Shambling Towards Hiroshima by James Morrow, reviewed by Michael Froggatt
Wednesday: Subtle Edens, edited by Allen Ashley, reviewed by Martin Lewis
Friday: Night Work by Thomas Glavinic, reviewed by Alan DeNiro
- Reviews for the week of
2/2/09
- Monday: The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson, reviewed by Richard Larson
Wednesday: City at the End of Time by Greg Bear, reviewed by Tony Keen
Friday: The Night Children by Kit Reed, reviewed by Michael Levy
- Reviews for the week of
1/26/09
- Monday: Spirit: or, The Princess of Bois Dormant by Gwyneth Jones, reviewed by Paul Kincaid
Wednesday: Just After Sunset by Stephen King, reviewed by Colin Harvey
Friday: Long Walks, Last Flights and other Strange Journeys by Ken Scholes, reviewed by Niall Harrison
- Reviews for the week of
1/19/09
- Monday: Watermind by M.M. Buckner, reviewed by L. Timmel Duchamp
Wednesday: Going Under by Justina Robson, reviewed by Kari Sperring
Friday: The Bell at Sealey Head by Patricia A. McKillip, reviewed by Hannah Strom-Martin
- Reviews for the week of
1/12/09
- Monday: The Best of Lucius Shepard, by Victoria Hoyle
Wednesday: The Spirit, reviewed by William Mingin
Friday: The Chronicles of the Black Company by Glen Cook, reviewed by Martin Lewis
- Reviews for the week of
1/5/09
- Monday: 2008 In Review, by Our Reviewers
Wednesday: Lavinia by Ursula K. Le Guin, reviewed by Adam Roberts
Friday: METAtropolis edited by John Scalzi, reviewed by Farah Mendlesohn
- Reviews for the week of
12/22/08
- Monday: Other Worlds, Better Lives: A Howard Waldrop Reader—Selected Long Fiction 1989-2003, reviewed by Graham Sleight
Wednesday: Voices From Fairyland: The Fantastical Poems of Mary Coleridge, Charlotte Mew, and Sylvia Townsend Warner, edited and wth poems by Theodora Goss, reviewed by Karen J. Weyant
Friday: Queen of K'n-Yan by Asamatsu Ken, translated by Kathleen Taiji, reviewed by Kari Sperring
- Reviews for the week of
12/15/08
- Monday: Half a Crown by Jo Walton, reviewed by John Clute
Wednesday: Liberation by Brian Francis Slattery, reviewed by Abigail Nussbaum
Friday: The Last Book by Zoran Živković, reviewed by Matt Denault
- Reviews for the week of
12/8/08
- Monday: The Ant King and Other Stories by Benjamin Rosenbaum, reviewed by Dan Hartland
Wednesday: Winterstrike by Liz Williams, reviewed by David McWilliam
Friday: Shadowbridge and Lord Tophet by Gregory Frost, reviewed by Michael Levy
- Reviews for the week of
12/1/08
- Monday: Song of Time by Ian R Macleod, reviewed by Adam Roberts
Wednesday: Dead Set, reviewed by Martin Lewis
Friday: The Engine's Child by Holly Phillips, reviewed by Hannah Strom-Martin
- Reviews for the week of
11/24/08
- Monday: Very Bad Deaths and Very Hard Choices by Spider Robinson, reviewed by Greg Beatty
Wednesday: Twelve Collections and The Teashop by Zoran Živković, reviewed by Lara Buckerton
Friday: Fast Foward 2, edited by Lou Anders, reviewed by Alvaro Zinos-Amaro
- Reviews for the week of
11/17/08
- Monday: Button, Button by Richard Matheson, reviewed by William Mingin
Wednesday: The Angel Maker by Stefan Brijs, reviewed by Paul Kincaid
Friday: The Adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary E. Pearson, reviewed by Sara Polsky
- Reviews for the week of
11/10/08
- Monday: A Field Guide to Surreal Botany, eds. Janet Chui and Jason Erik Lundberg, reviewed by Richard Larson
Wednesday: The Last Theorem by Arthur C. Clarke and Frederik Pohl, reviewed by Nader Elhefnawy
Friday: The Temporal Void by Peter F. Hamilton, reviewed by Karen Burnham
- Reviews for the week of
11/3/08
- Monday: The ABC Family Network show The Middleman, reviewed by Rov Kaveney
Wednesday: Or Else My Lady Keeps the Key by Kage Baker, reviewed by Donna Royston
Friday: The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness, reviewed by Martin Lewis
- Reviews for the week of
10/27/08
- Monday: Blonde Roots by Bernadine Evaristo, reviewed by Gwyneth Jones
Wednesday: The Wiscon Chronicles, volume 2, edited by L. Timmel Duchamp and Eileen Gunn, reviewed by Hannah Storm-Martin
Friday: The Last Reef and other stories by Gareth L. Powell, reviewed by Gene Melzack
- Reviews for the week of
10/20/08
- Monday: Dangerous Laughter by Steven Millhauser, reviewed by Paul Kincaid
Wednesday: Filter House by Nisi Shawl, reviewed by Matthew Cheney
Friday: Steampunk, eds. Ann and Jeff VanderMeer, and Extraordinary Engines, ed. Nick Gevers, reviewed by Duncan Lawie
- Reviews for the week of
10/13/08
- Monday: An Evil Guest by Gene Wolfe, reviewed by Adam Roberts
Wednesday: Two Views: Pandemonium by Daryl Gregory, reviewed by Amy O'Loughlin and Dan Hartland
Friday: Realms: the first year of Clarkesworld Magazine, edited by Nick Mamatas and Sean Wallace
- Reviews for the week of
10/6/08
- Monday: Paper Cities, edited by Ekaterina Sedia, reviewed by L. Timmel Duchamp
Wednesday: Paper Cities: an anthology of urban fantasy, edited by Ekaterina Sedia, reviewed by Maureen Kincaid Speller
Friday: The Turing Test by Chris Beckett, reviewed by Colin Harvey
- Reviews for the week of
9/29/08
- Monday: The Steel Remains by Richard Morgan, reviewed by Graham Sleight
Wednesday: Unwelcome Bodies by Jennifer Pelland, reviewed by Tanya Brown
Friday: The Quiet War by Paul McAuley, reviewed by Abigail Nussbaum
- Reviews for the week of
9/22/08
- Monday: The Night Sessions by Ken MacLeod, reviewed by Nic Clarke
Wednesday: Superpowers by David J Schwartz, reviewed by Karen Burnham
Friday: The Luminous Depths by David Herter, reviewed by Finn Dempster
- Reviews for the week of
9/15/08
- Monday: Sideways in Crime edited by Lou Anders, reviewed by William Mingin
Wednesday: Midnight Never Come by Marie Brennan, reviewed by R. J. Burgess
Friday: Year Million, edited by Damien Broderick, reviewed by Alvaro Zinos-Amaro
- Reviews for the week of
9/8/08
- Monday: Anathem by Neal Stephenson, reviewed by Martin Lewis
Wednesday: Implied Spaces by Walter Jon William, reviewed by Dustin Kurtz
Friday: The Gone-Away World by Nick Harkaway, reviewed by Jonathan McCalmont
- Reviews for the week of
9/1/08
- Monday: Wit's End/The Case of the Imaginary Detective by Karen Joy Fowler, reviewed by Abigail Nussbaum
Wednesday: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Diaz, reviewed by Dan Hartland
Friday: Atmospheric Disturbances by Rivka Galchen, reviewed by David McWilliam
- Reviews for the week of
8/25/08
- Monday: Neuropath by Scott Bakker and Blindsight by Peter Watts, reviewed by Nader Elhefnawy
Wednesday: The Roswell Poems by Rane Arroyo, reviewed by Karen J. Weyant
Friday: The Del Rey Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy, edited by Ellen Datlow, reviewed by Richard Larson
- Reviews for the week of
8/18/08
- Monday: Speculative Japan, edited by Gene van Troyer and Grania Davis, reviewed by Niall Harrison
Wednesday: Everything is Sinister by David Llwellyn and The Heritage by Will Ashon, reviewed by Martin Lewis
Friday: Year's Bests edited by Jonathan Strahan, and David Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer, reviewed by Karen Burnham
- Reviews for the week of
8/11/08
- Monday: The X-Files: I Want to Believe, reviewed by Abigail Nussbaum
Wednesday: Iron Angel by Alan Campbell, reviewed by Finn Dempster
Friday: Sputnik Caledonia by Andrew Crumey, reviewed by Michael Froggatt
- Reviews for the week of
8/4/08
- Monday: Collected Poems by Mervyn Peake, edited by R.W. Maslen, reviewed by Adam Roberts
Wednesday: The Affinity Bridge by George Mann, reviewed by Hannah Strom-Martin
Friday: Escapement by Jay Lake, reviewed by Paul Kincaid
- Reviews for the week of
7/28/08
- Monday: Hello Summer, Goodbye and I Remember Pallahaxi by Michael G. Coney, reviewed by Colin Harvey
Wednesday: The Sharing Knife: Passage by Lois McMaster Bujold, reviewed by Greg Beatty
Friday: The Ninth Circle by Alex Bell, reviewed by Tanya Brown
- Reviews for the week of
7/21/08
- Monday: Two Views: The Margarets by Sheri S Tepper, reviewed by Nic Clarke and Sherryl Vint
Wednesday: Lost Boys by James Miller, reviewed by Martin Lewis
Friday: Martin Martin's on the Other Side by Mark Wernham, reviewed by Jonathan McCalmont
- Reviews for the week of
7/14/08
- Monday: Flood by Stephen Baxter, reviewed by Adam Roberts
Wednesday: The Princes of the Golden Cage by Nathalie Mallet, reviewed by Hannah Strom-Martin
Friday: Elric: The Stealer of Souls (Chronicles of the Last Emperor of Melniboné: Volume 1) by Michael Moorcock, reviewed by Nader Elhefnawy
- Reviews for the week of
7/7/08
- Monday: Galactic Suburbia: Recovering Women's Science Fiction by Lisa Yaszek, reviewed by Maureen Kincaid Speller
Wednesday: Dreamers of the Day by Mary Doria Russell, reviewed by Niall Harrison
Friday: Omega by Christopher Evans, reviewed by Paul Kincaid
- Reviews for the week of
6/30/08
- Monday: An Experimental Life: books by and about Naomi Mitchison, reviewed by Nic Clarke
Wednesday: On Spoiling the Fourth Season of Battlestar Galactica, by Roz Kaveney
Friday: Shadow Gate by Kate Elliott, reviewed by Juliet E. McKenna
- Reviews for the week of
6/23/08
- Monday: Singularity's Ring by Paul Melko, reviewed by Gwyneth Jones
Wednesday: The Philosopher's Apprentice by James Morrow, reviewed by Abigail Nussbaum
Friday: Celebration, edited by Ian Whates, reviewed by Graham Sleight
- Reviews for the week of
6/16/08
- Monday: Torchwood, season two, reviewed by Tim Phipps
Wednesday: The Ex Files: The Lost Tales and the return of Babylon 5, reviewed by Iain Clark
Friday: Drinking the Blood of the Dead: The Nines, Southland Tales and Doomsday, reviewed by Martin Lewis
- Reviews for the week of
6/9/08
- Monday: Farah Mendlesohn's Rhetorics of Fantasy, reviewed by John Clute
Wednesday: Nicola Barker's Darkmans, reviewed by Alan DeNiro
Friday: Jaine Fenn's Principles of Angels, reviewed by Dan Hartland
- Reviews for the week of
6/2/08
- Monday: Axiomatic and Dark Integers by Greg Egan, reviewed by Karen Burnham
Wednesday: Quarantine and Teranesia by Greg Egan, reviewed by Colin Harvey
Friday: Incandescence by Greg Egan, reviewed by Adam Roberts
- Reviews for the week of
5/26/08
- Monday: Roz Kaveney's Superheroes!, reviewed by Tony Keen
Wednesday: Robert VS Redick's The Red Wolf Conspiracy, reviewed by Colin Harvey
Friday: John Meaney's Dark Blood, reviewed by Duncan Lawie
- Reviews for the week of
5/19/08
- Monday: John Kessel's The Baum Plan for Financial Independence, reviewed by Dustin Kurz
Wednesday: Iron Man, reviewed by Iain Clark
Friday: L. Timmel Duchamp's Blood in the Fruit, reviewed by Lesley A. Hall
- Reviews for the week of
5/12/08
- Monday: Alastair Reynolds' House of Suns, reviewed by Dan Hartland
Wednesday: David Thomson's Suspects, reviewed by Graham Sleight
Friday: McCalmont J and Harrison N. Juan Antonio Bayona's El Orfanato: a psychiatric review
- Reviews for the week of
5/5/08
- Monday: What It Is We Do When We Read Science Fiction by Paul Kincaid, reviewed by Martin Lewis
Wednesday: Last Argument of Kings by Joe Abercrombie, reviewed by Larry Nolen
Friday: The Shadow Year by Jeffrey Ford, reviewed by Michael Levy
- Reviews for the week of
4/28/08
- Monday: The 2008 Arthur C Clarke Award Shortlist—Part One, reviewed by Abigail Nussbaum
Wednesday: The 2008 Arthur C Clarke Award Shortlist—Part Two, reviewed by Abigail Nussbaum
Friday: Jonathan Barnes's The Domino Men, reviewed by Lisa Goldstein
- Reviews for the week of
4/21/08
- Monday: The Starry Rift edited by Jonathan Strahan, reviewed by Karen Burnham
Wednesday: Wildwood Dancing and Cybele's Secret by Juliet Marillier, reviewed by Hannah Strom-Martin
Friday: Dark Space by Marianne de Pierres, reviewed by R. J. Burgess
- Reviews for the week of
4/14/08
- Monday: Iain M Banks's Matter, reviewed by Gwyneth Jones
Wednesday: Victor Pelevin's The Sacred Book of the Werewolf, reviewed by Michael Froggatt
Friday: Jason Burdett's Bangkok Haunts, reviewed by Jason Erik Lundberg
- Reviews for the week of
4/7/08
- Monday: The Bone Key by Sarah Monette, reviewed by L. Timmel Duchamp
Wednesday: Last Dragon by J.M. McDermott, reviewed by Michael Levy
Friday: Worshipping Small Gods by Richard Parks, reviewed by Richard Larson
- Reviews for the week of
3/31/08
- Monday: Michael Swanwick's The Dragons of Babel, reviewed by John Clute
Wednesday: Cory Doctorow's Little Brother, reviewed by Farah Mendlesohn
Friday: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, reviewed by Iain Clark
- Reviews for the week of
3/24/08
- Monday: The Shock of the Old by David Edgerton, reviewed by Bruce Sterling
Wednesday: Rewired by James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel, reviewed by Roz Kaveney
Friday: Ascendancies by Bruce Sterling, reviewed by Nader Elhefnawy
- Reviews for the week of
3/17/08
- Monday: The 2008 William L. Crawford Award Shortlist, reviewed by Victoria Hoyle (part one)
Wednesday: The 2008 William L. Crawford Award Shortlist, reviewed by Victoria Hoyle (part two)
Friday: Ben Peek's Black Sheep, reviewed by Martin Lewis
- Reviews for the week of
3/10/08
- Monday: A Sword From Red Ice by JV Jones, reviewed by Nic Clarke
Wednesday: Halting State by Charles Stross, reviewed by David V Barrett
Friday: Four Novels of the 1960s by Philip K Dick, reviewed by Adam Roberts
- Reviews for the week of
3/3/08
- Monday: Paolo Bacigalupi's Pump Six and Other Stories, reviewed by Abigail Nussbaum
Wednesday: Vandana Singh's Of Love and Other Monsters, reviewed by Richard Larson
Friday: Stephen Baxter's Weaver, reviewed by Jonathan McCalmont
- Reviews for the week of
2/25/08
- Monday: Swiftly by Adam Roberts, reviewed by Dan Hartland
Wednesday: Rome Burning by Sophia McDougall, reviewed by Tony Keen
Friday: The Fade by Chris Wooding, reviewed by Colin Harvey
- Reviews for the week of
2/18/08
- Monday: Stephen King's Duma Key, reviewed by Adam Roberts
Wednesday: Liz Williams's Precious Dragon and Bloodmind, reviewed by Donna Royston
Friday: Tobias Buckell's Ragamuffin, reviewed by Paul Kincaid
- Reviews for the week of
2/11/08
- Monday: Debatable Space by Philip Palmer, reviewed by Paul Raven
Wednesday: Kethaniby Eric Brown, reviewed by Michael Levy
Friday: The SFWA European Hall of Fame, edited by James Morrow and Kathryn Morrow, reviewed by Martin Lewis
- Reviews for the week of
2/4/08
- Monday: Cloverfield reviewed by Roz Kaveney
Wednesday: Daniel Abraham's The Long Price: Shadow and Betrayal, reviewed by Siobhan Carroll
Friday: Dislocations, edited by Ian Whates, reviewed by Duncan Lawie
- Reviews for the week of
1/28/08
- Monday: Bad Blood by Rhiannon Lassiter, reviewed by Nic Clarke
Wednesday: Mindscape by Andrea Hairston, reviewed by Nader Elhefnawy
Friday: Dangerous Offspring by Steph Swainston, reviewed by David Soyka
- Reviews for the week of
1/21/08
- Monday: Ink by Hal Duncan and In the Cities of Coin and Spice by Catherynne M Valente, reviewed by Dan Hartland
Wednesday: Christopher Barzak's One for Sorrow, reviewed by Richard Larson
Friday: T.A. Pratt's Blood Engines, reviewed by Hannah Strom-Martin
- Reviews for the week of
1/14/08
- Monday: Mike Ashley's Gateways to Forever, reviewed by William Mingin
Wednesday: Gary Gibson's Stealing Light, reviewed by Colin Harvey
Friday: Karen Miller's The Awakened Mage, reviewed by R.J. Burgess
- Reviews for the week of
1/7/08
- Monday: 2007 In Review, by our reviewers
Wednesday: The Red Men by Matthew de Abaitua, reviewed by Martin Lewis
Friday: Till Human Voices Wake Us by Mark Budz, reviewed by Abigail Nussbaum
- Reviews for the week of
12/17/07
- Monday: Night and Day: the place of Equinox in Samuel R. Delany's Oeuvre
Tuesday: Aye, and Gomorrah, and other stories, reviewed by Graham Sleight
Wednesday: About Writing, reviewed by L. Timmel Duchamp
Thursday: Dark Reflections, reviewed by Paul Kincaid
- Reviews for the week of
12/10/07
- Monday: Jim Crace's The Pesthouse and Sarah Hall's The Carhullan Army, reviewed by Victoria Hoyle
Wednesday: Matt Ruff's Bad Monkeys, reviewed by Michael Levy
Friday: Joe Haldeman's The Accidental Time Machine, reviewed by Karen Burnham
- Reviews for the week of
12/3/07
- Monday: KJ Parker's Engineer Trilogy, reviewed by Farah Mendlesohn
Wednesday: Dan Simmons' The Terror, reviewed by Adam Roberts
Friday: Cherie Priest's Not Flesh Nor Feathers, reviewed by JC Runolfson
- Reviews for the week of
11/26/07
- Monday: Battlestar Galactica: Razor, reviewed by Abigail Nussbaum
Wednesday: Ekaterina Sedia's The Secret History of Moscow, reviewed by Nic Clarke
Friday: Richard K. Morgan's Thirteen/Black Man, reviewed by Sherryl Vint
- Reviews for the week of
11/19/07
- Monday: Beowulf, reviewed by Roz Kaveney
Wednesday: Minsoo Kang's Of Tales and Enigmas, reviewed by Justin Howe
Friday: Tony Ballantyne's Divergence, reviewed by Duncan Lawie
- Reviews for the week of
11/12/07
- Monday: Laird Barron's The Imago Sequence, reviewed by William Mingin
Wednesday: The Best of Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, reviewed by Michael Levy
Friday: Jon Courtenay Grimwood's 9 Tail Fox, reviewed by Alex Saltman
- Reviews for the week of
11/5/07
- Monday: David Marusek's Getting to Know You, reviewed by Adam Roberts
Wednesday: Susan Palwick's Shelter, reviewed by Richard Larson
Friday: Stephen Baxter's Navigator, reviewed by Jonathan McCalmont
- Reviews for the week of
10/29/07
- Monday: Stephen King's Lisey's Story, reviewed by Farah Mendlesohn
Tuesday: Ellen Kushner's The Privilege of the Sword, reviewed by Nic Clarke
Wednesday: Scott Lynch's The Lies of Locke Lamora, reviewed by Victoria Hoyle
Thursday: Catherynne M. Valente's In the Night Garden, reviewed by Dan Hartland
Friday: Gene Wolfe's Soldier of Sidon, reviewed by Tony Keen
- Reviews for the week of
10/22/07
- Monday: Joanna Russ's The Country You Have Never Seen, reviewed by Sarah Monette
Tuesday: The Seeker: The Dark is Rising, reviewed by Hannah Strom-Martin
Wednesday: Peter F Hamilton's The Dreaming Void, reviewed by Karen Burnham
Thursday: Legends of the Fall: Television's newest SF shows, reviewed by K. Tempest Bradford
- Reviews for the week of
10/15/07
- Monday: Two Views: Bryan Francis Slattery's Spaceman Blues, reviewed by Martin Lewis and Rose Fox
Wednesday: The Ultimates and The Ultimates 2, reviewed by Tony Keen
Friday: Ursula K. Le Guin's Powers, reviewed by Lisa Goldstein
- Reviews for the week of
10/8/07
- Monday: Adam Roberts' Land of the Headless and Splinter, reviewed by Victoria Hoyle
Wednesday: Gary Alan Wassner's The Revenge of the Elves, reviewed by Brian Malone
Friday: Robin McKinley's Dragonhaven, reviewed by Hannah Strom-Martin
- Reviews for the week of
10/1/07
- Monday: Trust Me, I'm A Fabulator: Three Books reviewed by Dan Hartland
Wednesday: Two Views: Kelley Armstrong's No Humans Involved, reviewed by Genevieve Williams and Colin Harvey
Friday: Harry Turtledove's In At The Death, reviewed by Nader Elhefnawy
- Reviews for the week of
9/24/07
- Monday: Anna Kavan's Ice and Guilty, reviewed by Abigail Nussbaum
Wednesday: Paul McAuley's Cowboy Angels, reviewed by Michael J. Levy
Friday: Karen Miller's The Innocent Mage, reviewed by R. J. Burgess
- Reviews for the week of
9/17/07
- Monday: It Happened Otherwise? Three Alternate Histories, reviewed by Paul Kincaid
Wednesday: Stardust, reviewed by David J. Schwartz
Friday: Lois McMaster Bujold's The Sharing Knife: Legacy, reviewed by Donna Royston
- Reviews for the week of
9/10/07
- Monday: Ben Bova's Titan, reviewed by Adam Roberts
Wednesday: Justina Robson's Selling Out, reviewed by David Soyka
Friday: Kage Baker's The Sons of Heaven, reviewed by Lisa Goldstein
- Reviews for the week of
9/3/07
- Monday: Best American Fantasy, reviewed by Gwyneth Jones
Wednesday: Polyphony 6, reviewed by Paul Kincaid
Friday: Mike Carey's The Devil You Know and Vicious Circle, reviewed by Laura Blackwell
- Reviews for the week of
8/27/07
- Monday: William Gibson's Spook Country, reviewed by Graham Sleight
Wednesday: Simon R. Green's The Man With the Golden Torc, reviewed by William Mingin
Friday: Steven Moffatt's Jekyll, reviewed by Colin Harvey
- Reviews for the week of
8/20/07
- Monday: Paul G. Tremblay and Sean Wallace's Fantasy, reviewed by Nic Clarke
Wednesday: Scott Lynch's Red Seas Under Red Skies, reviewed by Martin Lewis
Friday: John Meaney's Bone Song, reviewed by Duncan Lawie
- Reviews for the week of
8/13/07
- Monday: Two Views: Transformers, reviewed by Tim Phipps and Tim Phipps
Wednesday: John Klima's Logorrhea, reviewed by L. Timmel Duchamp
Friday: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, reviewed by Catie Ash
- Reviews for the week of
8/6/07
- Monday: Doctor Who: Series Three, reviewed by Adam Roberts
Wednesday: Jack Dann's The Man Who Melted, reviewed by Nader Elhefnawy
Friday: Eliot Fintushel's Breakfast with the Ones You Love, reviewed by Paul Kincaid
- Reviews for the week of
7/30/07
- Monday: Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union, reviewed by Abigail Nussbaum
Tuesday: Helen Oyeyemi's The Opposite House, reviewed by Niall Harrison
Wednesday: Jonathan Strahan's The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Volume 1, reviewed by Colin Harvey
Thursday: David Anthony Durham's Acacia, reviewed by Hannah Strom-Martin
- Reviews for the week of
7/23/07
- Monday: Forrest Aguirre's Swans Over the Moon, reviewed by Colin Greenland
Tuesday: Jay Lake's Trial of Flowers and Mainspring, reviewed by Nic Clarke
Wednesday: Theodora Goss and Delia Sherman's Interfictions, reviewed by David Soyka
Thursday: Ellen Klages's Portable Childhoods, reviewed by Richard Larson
- Reviews for the week of
7/16/07
- Monday: The Name of the Wind and The Children of Hurin, reviewed by Adam Roberts
Tuesday: Lionel Shriver's The Post-Birthday World, reviewed by Victoria Hoyle
Wednesday: Ted Chiang's The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate, reviewed by Bill Mingin
Thursday: Brian Aldiss's HARM, reviewed by Nader Elhefnawy
- Reviews for the week of
7/9/07
- Monday: Elizabeth Hand's Generation Loss, reviewed by Matthew Cheney
Tuesday: Ysabeau S. Wilce's Flora Segunda, reviewed by David V. Barrett
Wednesday: Frances Hardinge's Verdigris Deep, reviewed by Farah Mendlesohn
Thursday: Scarlett Thomas's The End of Mr Y, reviewed by Dan Hartland
- Reviews for the week of
7/2/07
- Monday: The Solitudes, reviewed by Abigail Nussbaum
Tuesday: Love & Sleep, reviewed by Graham Sleight
Wednesday: Dćmonomania, reviewed by Paul Kincaid
Thursday: Endless Things, reviewed by John Clute
- Reviews for the week of
6/25/07
- Monday: Richard Labonté and Lawrence Schimel's The Future is Queer, reviewed by Rose Fox
Tuesday: Alastair Reynolds's The Prefect, reviewed by Martin Lewis
Wednesday: Nalo Hopkinson's The New Moon's Arms, reviewed by J.C.Runolfson
Thursday: Mike Resnick's Alien Crimes, reviewed by Karen Burnham
- Reviews for the week of
6/18/07
- Monday: Patrick Rothfuss' The Name of the Wind, reviewed by Hannah Strom-Martin
Tuesday: François Devenne's Three Dreams on Mount Meru, reviewed by Finn Dempster
Wednesday: Joe Abercrombie's Before They Are Hanged, reviewed by Siobhan Carroll
Thursday: Steven Brust's Dzur, reviewed by Genevieve Williams
- Reviews for the week of
6/11/07
- Monday: 28 Weeks Later, reviewed by Martin Lewis
Tuesday: Eric Brown's Helix, reviewed by R.J. Burgess
Wednesday: Catherine Jinks's Evil Genius, reviewed by Duncan Lawie
Thursday: Kelley Eskridge's Dangerous Space, reviewed by Ilana Teitlebaum
- Reviews for the week of
6/4/07
- Monday: Ken MacLeod's The Execution Channel, reviewed by Paul Kincaid
Tuesday: Lucius Shepard's Softspoken, reviewed by Richard Larson
Wednesday: The Coyote Road: Trickster Tales, edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling, reviewed by J. C. Runolfson
Thursday: Andrew Butcher's The Time of the Reaper, reviewed by Siobhan Carroll
- Reviews for the week of
5/28/07
- Monday: Margo Lanagan's Red Spikes, reviewed by Colin Greenland
Tuesday: David Devereux's Hunter's Moon, reviewed by Richard Larson
Wednesday: Paul McAuley's Players, reviewed by Karen Burnham
Thursday: Extended Play: the Elastic Book of Music, reviewed by Paul Raven
- Reviews for the week of
5/21/07
- Monday: Two Views: Guy Gavriel Kay's Ysabel, reviewed by Graham Sleight and Victoria Hoyle
Tuesday: Jed Mercurio's Ascent, reviewed by Michael Froggatt
Wednesday: Stephen Hunt's The Court of the Air, reviewed by Colin Harvey
Thursday: Tom Holt's Barking, reviewed by Lisa Goldstein
- Reviews for the week of
5/14/07
- Monday: Mistakes and all: Defending Battlestar Galactica, by Jeremy Adam Smith
Tuesday: China Miéville's Un Lun Dun, reviewed by Dan Hartland
Wednesday: Spider-Man 3, reviewed by Iain Clark
Thursday: Mary Rosenblum's Horizons, reviewed by Duncan Lawie
- Reviews for the week of
5/7/07
- Monday: Tricia Sullivan's Double Vision and Sound Mind, reviewed by L. Timmel Duchamp
Tuesday: Mat Coward's So Far, So Near, reviewed by Jonathan McCalmont
Wednesday: Jeffrey Thomas's Deadstock, reviewed by Finn Dempster
Thursday: Kage Baker's Rude Mechanicals, reviewed by Sherryl Vint
- Reviews for the week of
4/30/07
- Monday: Ian McDonald's Brasyl, reviewed by Adam Roberts
Tuesday: One of these books is not like the others: three tomes about SF TV, reviewed by Tim Phipps
Wednesday: Minister Faust's From the Notebooks of Dr. Brain, reviewed by Karen Burnham
- Reviews for the week of
4/23/07
- Monday: Rudyard Kipling's The Mark of the Beast and Other Fantastical Tales, reviewed by Bill Mingin
Tuesday: Sunshine, reviewed by Adam Roberts
Wednesday: Richard Morgan's Black Man/Thirteen, reviewed by Martin Lewis
Thursday: Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union, reviewed by Lisa Goldstein
- Reviews for the week of
4/16/07
- Monday: The Arthur C. Clarke Award shortlist, reviewed by Farah Mendlesohn
Tuesday: The Solaris Book of New SF and Fast Forward 1, reviewed by David Soyka
Wednesday: CJ Cherryh's Deliverer, reviewed by Siobhan Carroll
Thursday: Robert Reed's Flavours of My Genius, reviewed by Colin Harvey
- Reviews for the week of
4/9/07
- Monday: Farah Mendlesohn's Glorifying Terrorism, reviewed by Dan Hartland
Tuesday: The Last Mimzy, reviewed by Bill Mingin
Wednesday: Primeval: The First Season, reviewed by Iain Clark
- Reviews for the week of
4/2/07
- Monday: Jon Armstrong's Grey, reviewed by Richard Larson
Tuesday: Mike Allen's Mythic 2, reviewed by Donna Royston
Wednesday: Matthew Hughes' Majestrum, reviewed by Siobhan Carroll
Thursday: Shortlist Overview: the 2007 Philip K. Dick Award, reviewed by Nicholas Whyte
- Reviews for the week of
3/26/07
- Monday: Two Views: Cormac McCarthy's The Road, reviewed by Victoria Hoyle and Paul Kincaid
Tuesday: Tim Pratt's Hart & Boot & Other Stories, reviewed by Karen Burnham
Wednesday: Alastair Reynolds' Galactic North and Zima Blue, reviewed by Duncan Lawie
Thursday: Alisa Libby's The Blood Confession, reviewed by Hannah Strom-Martin
- Reviews for the week of
3/19/07
- Monday: M. Rickert's Map of Dreams, reviewed by Niall Harrison
Tuesday: Arkady & Boris Strugatsky's Roadside Picnic, reviewed by Jonathan McCalmont
Wednesday: Sean Wright's Jaarfindor Remade and Love under Jaarfindor Spires, reviewed by Colin Harvey
- Reviews for the week of
3/12/07
- Monday: Jan Morris's Hav, reviewed by Matthew Cheney
Tuesday: Cherie Priest's Dreadful Skin, reviewed by J.C. Runolfson
Wednesday: Carlos Fuentes's The Eagle's Throne, reviewed by R.J. Burgess
Thursday: Rob Grant's Fat, reviewed by Siobhan Carroll
- Reviews for the week of
3/5/07
- Monday: Joe Hill's Heart-Shaped Box, reviewed by Abigail Nussbaum
Tuesday: Mary Gentle's Ilario, reviewed by Nic Clarke
Wednesday: Contact, for the Nintendo DS, reviewed by Erin Hoffman
- Reviews for the week of
2/26/07
- Monday: Bruce Holland Rogers's The Keyhole Opera, reviewed by Graham Sleight
Tuesday: Stephen Baxter's Conqueror, reviewed by Jonathan McCalmont
Wednesday: Roger Levy's Icarus, reviewed by Pete Young
Thursday: Jonathan Barnes's The Somnambulist, reviewed by David Soyka
- Reviews for the week of
2/19/07
- Monday: Thomas Pynchon's Against the Day, reviewed by Adam Roberts
Tuesday: Darren Aronofsky's The Fountain, reviewed by Martin Lewis
Wednesday: Ian Whates's Time Pieces, reviewed by Colin Harvey
Thursday: Bruce Boston's Shades Fantastic and Masque of Dreams, reviewed by JoSelle Vanderhooft
- Reviews for the week of
2/12/07
- Monday: The James Tiptree Award Anthology 3: Subversive Stories about Sex and Gender, edited by Karen Joy Fowler, Pat Murphy, Debbie Notkin, and Jeffrey D. Smith, reviewed by Victoria Hoyle
Tuesday: Charles Stross's The Jennifer Morgue, reviewed by Mark Teppo
- Reviews for the week of
2/5/07
- Monday: The Arthur C Clarke Award: A Critical Anthology, reviewed by Claire Brialey
Tuesday: Harry Turtledove's Settling Accounts: The Grapple, reviewed by Nader Elhefnawy
Wednesday: David Langford's The End of Harry Potter, reviewed by Karen Burnham
Thursday: Rudy Rucker's Mathematicians in Love, reviewed by Yoon Ha Lee
- Reviews for the week of
1/29/07
- Monday: Alfonso Cuaron's Children of Men, reviewed by William Mingin
Tuesday: Peter S. Beagle's The Line Between, reviewed by Justin Howe
Wednesday: Elizabeth Moon's The Serrano Legacy, reviewed by Duncan Lawie
Thursday: Robert A. Heinlein and Spider Robinson's Variable Star, reviewed by Nicholas Whyte
- Reviews for the week of
1/22/07
- Monday: A Thousand Words About Heroes, by Roz Kaveney
Tuesday: David Herter's On The Overgrown Path, reviewed by Finn Dempster
Wednesday: Jack McDevitt's Odyssey, reviewed by Karen Burnham
Thursday: Guillermo del Toro's El Laberinto del Fauno (a.k.a. Pan's Labyrinth), reviewed by David J. Schwartz
- Reviews for the week of
1/15/07
- Monday: Two Views: Doctor Who, "The Runaway Bride", reviewed by Nicholas Whyte and Tony Keen
Tuesday: George R. R. Martin's Dreamsongs, reviewed by Colin Harvey
Wednesday: L. Timmel Duchamp's Talking Back: Epistolary Fantasies, reviewed by Maureen Kincaid Speller
Thursday: Sound and Fury: The Sputtering Candle of Battlestar Galactica, by Dan Hartland
- Reviews for the week of
1/8/07
- Monday: John Clute's The Darkening Garden, reviewed by Sarah Monette
Tuesday: H.G. Wells's Star Begotten, reviewed by Paul Kincaid
Wednesday: Gwyneth Jones's Rainbow Bridge, reviewed by Sherryl Vint
Thursday: Torchwood: "Captain Jack Harkness" and "End of Days", reviewed by Iain Clark
- Reviews for the week of
1/1/07
- Monday: 2006 In Review, by Our Reviewers
Tuesday: Stephen Baxter's Resplendent, reviewed by Adam Roberts
Wednesday: Robert Charles Wilson's Julian, reviewed by Niall Harrison
Thursday: Allen Ashley's Urban Fantastic, reviewed by Jeremy Adam Smith
- Reviews for the week of
12/18/06
- Monday: Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling's Salon Fantastique, reviewed by Nic Clarke
Tuesday: Paul Auster's Travels in the Scriptorium, reviewed by Paul Kincaid
Wednesday: Alexander C. Irvine's Pictures From An Expedition, reviewed by Dan Hartland
Thursday: Don't Stop: A West Wing retrospective by Graham Sleight
- Reviews for the week of
12/11/06
- Monday: Pete Crowther's Forbidden Planets, reviewed by Mark Rich
Tuesday: Ray Bradbury's Farewell Summer, reviewed by David Soyka
Wednesday: Joon-ho Bong's The Host, reviewed by Jonathan McCalmont
Thursday: John Meaney's To Hold Infinity, reviewed by Colin Harvey
- Reviews for the week of
12/4/06
- Monday: M. John Harrison's Nova Swing, reviewed by Abigail Nussbaum
Tuesday: Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn: The Final Empire, reviewed by Siobhan Carroll
Wednesday: Paul Haines's Doorways for the Dispossessed, reviewed by R.J. Burgess
- Reviews for the week of
11/27/06
- Monday: The Prestige: the film and the screenplay, reviewed by Paul Kincaid
Tuesday: Catherynne M. Valente's The Grass-Cutting Sword and In The Night Garden, reviewed by Donna Royston
Wednesday: Joe Lansdale's Mad Dog Summer, reviewed by Duncan Lawie
Thursday: Tamara Siler Jones's Valley of the Soul, reviewed by Jonathan McCalmont
- Reviews for the week of
11/20/06
- Monday: Susanna Clarke's The Ladies of Grace Adieu, reviewed by Victoria Hoyle
Tuesday: David A. Sutton's Clinically Dead, reviewed by Kelly Christopher Shaw
Wednesday: Judy Allen's Unexplained, reviewed by Matt Cardin
Thursday: Gary Fry's The Impelled, reviewed by Colin Harvey
- Reviews for the week of
11/13/06
- Monday: Karen Traviss's Matriarch, reviewed by Sherryl Vint
Tuesday: Jim Younger's High John the Conqueror, reviewed by Jonathan McCalmont
Wednesday: Philip Jose Farmer's Pearls From Peoria, reviewed by Danny Adams
Thursday: Keith Donohue's The Stolen Child, reviewed by R.J. Burgess
- Reviews for the week of
11/6/06
- Monday: Julie Phillips' James Tiptree, Jr: The Double Life of Alice Sheldon, reviewed by Farah Mendlesohn
Tuesday: The James Tiptree Award Anthology 1, reviewed by Victoria Hoyle
Wednesday: The James Tiptree Award Anthology 2, reviewed by Victoria Hoyle
Thursday: James Tiptree, Jr's Her Smoke Rose Up Forever, reviewed by Adam Roberts
- Reviews for the week of
10/30/06
- Monday: Justine Larbalestier's Daughters of Earth, reviewed by Maureen Kincaid Speller
Tuesday: Max Brooks's World War Z (audio book), reviewed by Siobhan Carrol
Wednesday: Jericho, reviewed by Alasdair Stuart
Thursday: Ursula K. Le Guin's Voices, reviewed by Lisa Goldstein
- Reviews for the week of
10/23/06
- Monday: Jo Walton's Farthing, reviewed by Dan Hartland
Tuesday: Carolyn Ives Gilman's Candle in a Bottle, reviewed by Colin Harvey
- Reviews for the week of
10/16/06
- Monday: Charles Stross's Glasshouse, reviewed by L. Timmel Duchamp
Tuesday: Horton, Hartwell, Cramer, Strahan, Datlow, Link & Grant: The Year's Best Fantasy, reviewed by Nic Clarke
Wednesday: Kage Baker's The Machine's Child, reviewed by Lisa Goldstein
- Reviews for the week of
10/9/06
- Monday: La Science Des Rêves (a.k.a The Science of Sleep), reviewed by David J. Schwartz
Tuesday: Alan Campbell's Scar Night and Jay Amory's The Fledgling of Az Gabrielson, reviewed by Finn Dempster
Wednesday: Ellen Kushner's The Privilege of the Sword, reviewed by Yoon Ha Lee
- Reviews for the week of
10/2/06
- Monday: Glen Hirshberg's American Morons, reviewed by William Mingin
Tuesday: Terry Pratchett's Wintersmith, reviewed by Juliana Froggatt
Wednesday: Simon Haynes's Hal Spacejock series, reviewed by Colin Harvey
Thursday: Laurell K. Hamilton's Strange Candy, reviewed by Elizabeth Barrette
- Reviews for the week of
9/25/06
- Monday: David Moles and Susan Marie Groppi's Twenty Epics, reviewed by Rose Fox
Tuesday: Frank Schatzing's The Swarm, reviewed by Jonathan McCalmont
Wednesday: Mark Chadbourn's Jack of Ravens, reviewed by Donna Royston
Thursday: Lisa Tuttle's The Silver Bough, reviewed by Genevieve Williams
- Reviews for the week of
9/18/06
- Monday: Clifford D. Taylor's Skinks: A Pet Store Odyssey, reviewed by Tim Phipps
Tuesday: John Scalzi's Old Man's War and The Ghost Brigades, reviewed by Justin Howe
Wednesday: Edward J. McFadden III and E. Sedia's Jigsaw Nation, reviewed by Mark Teppo
Thursday: Theodora Goss's In the Forest of Forgetting, reviewed by Abigail Nussbaum
- Reviews for the week of
9/11/06
- Monday: Dozois, Horton, Strahan, Hartwell & Cramer: The Year's Best SF, reviewed by Dan Hartland
Tuesday: Lucy Sussex's Absolute Uncertainty, reviewed by James Trimarco
Wednesday: Lucius Shepard's Life During Wartime, reviewed by R.J. Burgess
Thursday: John Burdett's Bangkok Tattoo, reviewed by Jason Erik Lundberg
- Reviews for the week of
9/4/06
- Monday: Polyphony 5, reviewed by Paul Kincaid
Tuesday: Feeling Very Strange: The Slipstream Anthology, reviewed by Niall Harrison
Wednesday: ParaSpheres, reviewed by Darja Malcolm-Clarke
Thursday: The Vintage Book of Amnesia, reviewed by Graham Sleight
- Reviews for the week of
8/28/06
- Monday: Mark Budz's Idolon, reviewed by Niall Harrison
Tuesday: Tamar Yellin's Kafka in Bronteland and Other Stories, reviewed by Paul Kincaid
Wednesday: Etgar Keret's The Bus Driver Who Wanted To Be God and Other Stories, reviewed by R. J. Burgess
Thursday: Superman Returns, reviewed by Mahesh Raj Mohan
- Reviews for the week of
8/21/06
- Monday: Marvel's Civil War, issues 1-3, reviewed by Jeremy Adam Smith
Tuesday: Amanda Hemingway's The Sword of Straw, reviewed by Rose Fox
Wednesday: Nini Kiriki Hoffman's Catalyst, reviewed by Duncan Lawie
Thursday: M. Night Shyamalan's The Lady in the Water, reviewed by William Mingin
- Reviews for the week of
8/14/06
- Monday: Naomi Novik's Throne of Jade and Black Powder War, reviewed by Rose Fox
Tuesday: Andreas Eschbach's The Carpet Makers, reviewed by Finn Dempster
Wednesday: Joe Abercrombie'sThe Blade Itself, reviewed by Siobhan Carroll
Thursday: Kage Baker's Mendoza in Hollywood, reviewed by Sherryl Vint
- Reviews for the week of
8/7/06
- Monday: Doctor Who and the Nostalgia Factor: "School Reunion," reviewed by Iain Clark
Tuesday: Happy Times and Places: "Love and Monsters," reviewed by Tim Phipps
Wednesday: Six comments on "Army of Ghosts"/"Doomsday," by Abigail Nussbaum
Thursday: The Big Picture Show: Who S2, reviewed by Graham Sleight
- Reviews for the week of
7/31/06
- Monday: Alan DeNiro's Skinny-Dipping in the Lake of the Dead, reviewed by Adam Roberts
Tuesday: Chris Roberson's Paragea, reviewed by Mark Teppo
Wednesday: Paul Levinson's The Plot to Save Socrates, reviewed by Colin Harvey
- Reviews for the week of
7/24/06
- Monday: Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, reviewed by Jasmine Johnston
Tuesday: Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes, reviewed by R. J. Burgess
Wednesday: Lois McMaster Bujold's The Sharing Knife: Beguilement, reviewed by Greg Beatty
Thursday: Flatland, Flatterland, Spaceland: an education in three books, by Lori Ann White
- Reviews for the week of
7/17/06
- Monday: Adam Roberts's Palgrave History of Science Fiction, reviewed by Dan Hartland
Tuesday: Justina Robson's Keeping It Real, reviewed by Colin Harvey
Wednesday: Stephen Baxter's Emperor, reviewed by Jonathan McCalmont
Thursday: Half-Life 2: Episode One for PC, reviewed by Erin Hoffman
- Reviews for the week of
7/10/06
- Monday: Brian Stableford's Streaking, reviewed by John Clute
Tuesday: Zoran ivković's Impossible Stories, reviewed by Nicholas Whyte
Wednesday: John Burdett's Bangkok 8, reviewed by Jason Erik Lundberg
Thursday: Stephen King's The Colorado Kid, reviewed by Bill Mingin
- Reviews for the week of
7/3/06
- Monday: Nintendo Recent Release Roundup: Fresh Faces on Old Favorites in the Palm of Your Hand, reviewed by Erin Hoffman
Tuesday: Steve Cockayne's The Good People, reviewed by Farah Mendlesohn
Wednesday: Jon Courtenay Grimwood's End of the World Blues, reviewed by David Soyka
Thursday: Mythic, edited by Mike Allen, reviewed by Donna Royston
- Reviews for the week of
6/26/06
- Monday: Scott Lynch's The Lies of Locke Lamora, reviewed by C.M. Morrison
Tuesday: Robert Freeman Wexler's Circus of the Grand Design, reviewed by Niall Harrison
Wednesday: Kim Wilkins's Giants of the Frost, reviewed by Siobhan Carroll
Thursday: Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward's Writing The Other: A Practical Approach, reviewed by Genevieve Williams
- Reviews for the week of
6/19/06
- Monday: Elizabeth Bear's Worldwired Trilogy, reviewed by Claire Brialey
Tuesday: Elizabeth Bear's Blood & Iron, reviewed by Steve Berman
Wednesday: Ian Watson's The Butterflies of Memory, reviewed by Paul Kincaid
Thursday: Jon George's Zootsuit Black, reviewed by Farah Mendlesohn
- Reviews for the week of
6/12/06
- Monday: Best. Franchise. EVAR: The Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form, reviewed by Jonathan McCalmont
Tuesday: Ian McDonald's River of Gods, reviewed by Mark Teppo
Wednesday: Charles Burns's Black Hole, reviewed by Justin Howe
Thursday: Geoff Ryman's The King's Last Song, reviewed by Abigail Nussbaum
- Reviews for the week of
6/5/06
- Monday: One Million A.D., edited by Gardner Dozois, reviewed by Matthew Cheney
Tuesday: Vernor Vinge's Rainbows End, reviewed by Colin Harvey
Wednesday: Fredric Jameson's Archaeologies of the Future, reviewed by John Garrison
Thursday: X-Men: The Last Stand, reviewed by Iain Clark
- Reviews for the week of
5/29/06
- Monday: Ian R. MacLeod's The Summer Isles, reviewed by Graham Sleight
Tuesday: The Dedalus Book of Finnish Fantasy, reviewed by Rose Fox
Wednesday: Daniel Abraham's A Shadow In Summer, reviewed by David Soyka
Thursday: Farah Mendlesohn's Diana Wynne Jones: Children's Literature and the Fantastic Tradition, reviewed by Lesley A. Hall
- Reviews for the week of
5/22/06
- Monday: Two Views: Barth Anderson's The Patron Saint of Plagues, reviewed by Mark Teppo and Paul Kincaid
Tuesday: Simon Brown's Troy, reviewed by Ben Peek
Wednesday: Adam Roberts's Gradisil, reviewed by Finn Dempster
Thursday: Bruce Sterling's Visionary in Residence, reviewed by James A. Trimarco
- Reviews for the week of
5/15/06
- Monday: Simon Ings's The Weight of Numbers, reviewed by Abigail Nussbaum
Tuesday: Holly Phillips's The Burning Girl, reviewed by Dan Hartland
Wednesday: Carol Emshwiller's I Live With You, reviewed by Maureen Kincaid Speller
Thursday: Tobias Buckell's Crystal Rain, reviewed by Donna Royston
- Reviews for the week of
5/8/06
- Monday: Shadow of the Colossus, for Playstation 2, reviewed by Erin Hoffman
Tuesday: Philip Reeve's A Darkling Plain, reviewed by Martin Lewis
Wednesday: The Encyclopedia of Fantastic Victoriana, reviewed by Tim Phipps
Thursday: Ken Macleod's The Highway Men, reviewed by Farah Mendlesohn
- Reviews for the week of
5/1/06
- Monday: Allen Steele's Coyote Trilogy, reviewed by Justin Howe
Tuesday: Alexandre Aja's The Hills Have Eyes, reviewed by Jonathan McCalmont
Wednesday: Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu's Zahrah the Windseeker, reviewed by Genevieve Williams
Thursday: Liz Williams's Darkland, reviewed by Colin Harvey
- Reviews for the week of
4/24/06
- Monday: L. Timmel Duchamp's The Red Rose Rages (Bleeding), reviewed by Lesley A. Hall
Tuesday: Ian R. Macleod's Past Magic, reviewed by Niall Harrison
Wednesday: Frances Hardinge's Fly by Night, reviewed by Donna Royston
Thursday: Conrad Williams's London Revenant, reviewed by Kelly Christopher Shaw
- Reviews for the week of
4/17/06
- Monday: Neil Gaiman's Anansi Boys, reviewed by Jasmine Johnston
Tuesday: Tony Ballantyne's Capacity, reviewed by Finn Dempster
Wednesday: James Morrow's The Last Witchfinder, reviewed by Farah Mendlesohn
Thursday: Kage Baker's The Children of the Company, reviewed by Colin Harvey
- Reviews for the week of
4/10/06
- Monday: Write 'Em Until We Can't: Battlestar Galactica Lays Down Its Burdens, by Dan Hartland
Tuesday: Mark von Schlegel's Venusia, reviewed by Justin Howe
Wednesday: Jeffrey Ford's The Empire of Ice Cream, reviewed by Rose Fox
Thursday: Parietal Games: Critical Writings by and on M. John Harrison, reviewed by Paul Kincaid
- Reviews for the week of
4/3/06
- Monday: Silver Screen, reviewed by Maureen Kincaid Speller
Tuesday: Mappa Mundi, reviewed by Nicholas Whyte
Wednesday: Natural History, reviewed by Tony Keen
Thursday: Living Next-Door to the God of Love, reviewed by Tanya Brown
- Reviews for the week of
3/27/06
- Monday: Karl Schroeder's Lady of Mazes, reviewed by Ursula Pflug
Tuesday: V for Vendetta, reviewed by Iain Clark
Wednesday: Jay Lake's Rocket Science, reviewed by Rose Fox
Thursday: Kevin Brockmeier's The Brief History of the Dead, reviewed by Paul Kincaid
- Reviews for the week of
3/20/06
- Monday: Joe Hill's 20th Century Ghosts, reviewed by Graham Sleight
Tuesday: Jeff Vandermeer's Shriek: An Afterword, reviewed by Abigail Nussbaum
Wednesday: Sharyn November's Firebirds Rising, reviewed by C.M. Morrison
Thursday: Amber Benson and Christopher Golden's Ghosts of Albion: Accursed, reviewed by Nicholas Whyte
- Reviews for the week of
3/13/06
- Monday: Polder: A Festschrift for John Clute and Judith Clute, edited by Farah Mendlesohn, reviewed by Niall Harrison
Tuesday: Two Views: The Complete Calvin & Hobbes, reviewed by Juliana Froggatt and Mattia Valente
Wednesday: Y: The Last Man, reviewed by Jed Hartman
Thursday: Knowing Where To Look: The 2005 BSFA "Best Artwork" Award shortlist, by Pete Young
- Reviews for the week of
3/6/06
- Monday: Octavia E. Butler's Fledgling, reviewed by Rob Gates
Tuesday: David Marusek's Counting Heads, reviewed by Dan Hartland
Wednesday: Brian Aldiss's Cultural Breaks, reviewed by Mark Rich
Thursday: Bernard Cornwell's The Pale Horseman and Douglas Clegg's Mordred, Bastard Son, reviewed by Christopher M. Cevasco
- Reviews for the week of
2/27/06
- Monday: Naomi Novik's His Majesty's Dragon, reviewed by Rose Fox
Tuesday: Eric Brown's The Extraordinary Voyage of Jules Verne, reviewed by Colin Harvey
Wednesday: Richard Paul Russo's The Rosetta Codex, reviewed by Finn Dempster
Thursday: Lydia Millet's Oh Pure and Radiant Heart, reviewed by Ben Peek
- Reviews for the week of
2/20/06
- Monday: Doug Lain's Last Week's Apocalypse, reviewed by Matthew Cheney
Tuesday: Maurice Dantec's Babylon Babies, reviewed by James A. Trimarco
Wednesday: George Zebrowski's Macrolife: A Mobile Utopia, reviewed by Justin Howe
Thursday: Electroplankton, for Nintendo DS, reviewed by Erin Hoffman
- Reviews for the week of
2/13/06
- Monday: Jeanette Winterson's Weight and Margaret Atwood's The Penelopiad, reviewed by Dan Hartland
Tuesday: Jeffrey Ford's The Cosmology of the Wider World, reviewed by Tony Keen
Wednesday: Catherynne M. Valente's Oracles: A Pilgrimage, reviewed by J.C. Runolfson
Thursday: Catherynne M. Valente's Yume No Hon: The Book of Dreams, reviewed by Niall Harrison
- Reviews for the week of
2/6/06
- Monday: Janine Cross's Touched by Venom, reviewed by Liz Henry
Tuesday: Life on Mars, reviewed by Martin Lewis
Wednesday: The Alchemy of Stars: Rhysling Award Winners Showcase, reviewed by Elizabeth Barrette
Thursday: Martin Sketchley's The Affinity Trap, reviewed by Mahesh Raj Mohan
- Reviews for the week of
1/30/06
- Monday: Scalpels and Surgical Masks: A Review of the Aurealis Awards Short Fiction Finalists, by Ben Peek
Tuesday: Terry Bisson's Numbers Don't Lie, reviewed by Nicholas Whyte
Wednesday: Jon Courtenay Grimwood's 9Tail Fox, reviewed by Mark Teppo
Thursday: Steph Swainston's No Present Like Time, reviewed by Donna Royston
- Reviews for the week of
1/23/06
- Monday: Lou Anders's Futureshocks, reviewed by Mahesh Raj Mohan
Tuesday: M.P. Shiel's The House of Sounds, reviewed by Greg Beatty
Wednesday: Scott Mackay's Tides, reviewed by Justin Howe
Thursday: Dale Bailey's The Resurrection Man's Legacy, reviewed by Colin Harvey
- Reviews for the week of
1/16/06
- Monday: Christopher Priest: The Interaction, reviewed by John Clute
Tuesday: Two Views: Doctor Who, "The Christmas Invasion", reviewed by Graham Sleight and Tim Phipps
Wednesday: Vera Nazarian's The Clock King and the Queen of the Hourglass, reviewed by Martin Lewis
Thursday: Tim Pratt's The Strange Adventures of Rangergirl, reviewed by Kelly Christopher Shaw
- Reviews for the week of
1/9/06
- Monday: Insert Your Lost Pun Here: Is ABC's Ratings Phenomenon Losing Its Way? by Abigail Nussbaum
Tuesday: Paul McAuley's Little Machines, reviewed by Paul Kincaid
Wednesday: Aeon Flux, reviewed by Neil Anderson
Thursday: Karen L. Newman's Eeku, reviewed by Donna Royston
- Reviews for the week of
1/2/06
- Monday: 2005 In Review, by Our Reviewers
Tuesday: Fiona Avery's The Crown Rose, reviewed by Genevieve Williams
Wednesday: Gardner Dozois's Galileo's Children, reviewed by Tim Gebhart
Thursday: Of Mice and Gender: The best-laid plans of Battlestar Galactica, by Dan Hartland
- Reviews for the week of
12/19/05
- Monday: Gary Westfahl's Science Fiction Quotations, reviewed by Jeremy Adam Smith
Tuesday: Terry Pratchett's Thud!, reviewed by Juliana Froggatt
Wednesday: Liz Williams's The Snake Agent, reviewed by David Soyka
Thursday: The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe, reviewed by Neil Anderson
- Reviews for the week of
12/12/05
- Monday: The Year's Best Australian Science Fiction and Fantasy, Volume 1, reviewed by Ian McHugh
Tuesday: Rosaleen Love's The Travelling Tide, reviewed by Lesley A. Hall
Wednesday: Michael Cunningham's Specimen Days, reviewed by Paul Kincaid
Thursday: Two Views: Ken Macleod's Learning the World, reviewed by Niall Harrison and Dan Hartland
- Reviews for the week of
12/5/05
- Monday: Maureen F. McHugh's Mothers and Other Monsters, reviewed by Abigail Nussbaum
Tuesday: Michael Blumlein's The Healer, reviewed by Lori Ann White
Wednesday: Anne Sheldon's The Adventures of the Faithful Counselor, reviewed by Donna Royston
Thursday: Jeffrey Allen Tucker's A Sense of Wonder: Samuel R. Delany, Race, Identity and Difference, reviewed by Greg Beatty
- Reviews for the week of
11/28/05
- Monday: Greg Pak's Robot Stories and More Screenplays, reviewed by Gwenda Bond
Tuesday: Graham Joyce's The Limits of Enchantment, reviewed by Lynda E. Rucker
Wednesday: L. Timmel Duchamp's Alanya to Alanya, reviewed by Matthew L. Moffett
Thursday: Alexander C. Irvine's The Narrows, reviewed by Kelly Christopher Shaw
- Reviews for the week of
11/21/05
- Monday: Naomi Mitchison's Travel Light, reviewed by Dan Hartland
Tuesday: Orson Welles's Dracula, reviewed by J.M. Comeau
Wednesday: Francesca Lia Block's The Rose and the Best, reviewed by J.C. Runolfson
Thursday: Robert Charles Wilson's Spin, reviewed by Mark Teppo
- Reviews for the week of
11/14/05
- Monday: Tricia Sullivan's Double Vision, reviewed by Claire Brialey
Tuesday: Jonathan Strahan's Best Short Novels: 2005, reviewed by Colin Harvey
Wednesday: Mirrormask, reviewed by Alex Saltman
Thursday: Night Watch, reviewed by Liz Batty
- Reviews for the week of
11/7/05
- Monday: Two Views: Geoff Ryman's Air, reviewed by Geneva Melzack and Iain Emsley
Tuesday: Encounters: An Anthology of Australian Speculative Fiction, reviewed by Paul Kincaid
Wednesday: Nova Scotia: New Scottish Speculative Fiction, reviewed by Martin Lewis
Thursday: Doom, reviewed by Neil Anderson
- Reviews for the week of
10/31/05
- Monday: Wallace and Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, reviewed by Graham Sleight
Tuesday: Charles Coleman Finlay's The Prodigal Troll, reviewed by Genevieve Williams
Wednesday: Richard Bowes's From The Files of the Time Rangers, reviewed by Mark Rich
Thursday: Fantasy Magazine #1, reviewed by Pam McNew
- Reviews for the week of
10/24/05
- Monday: China Miéville's Looking for Jake, reviewed by Kelly Christopher Shaw
Tuesday: W. Warren Wagar's H. G. Wells: Traversing Time, reviewed by Paul Kincaid
Wednesday: Tim Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, reviewed by Lori Ann White
Thursday: The American Astronaut, reviewed by Justin Howe
- Reviews for the week of
10/17/05
- Monday: Two Views: Serenity, reviewed by Mahesh Raj Mohan and Niall Harrison
Tuesday: Zoran Zivkovic's Hidden Camera, reviewed by Dan Hartland
Wednesday: Jonathan Cowie and Tony Chester's Essential SF: A Concise Guide, reviewed by James Palmer
Thursday: A Tale of Two Sisters, reviewed by Lynda E. Rucker
- Reviews for the week of
10/10/05
- Monday: Holly Phillips's In the Palace of Repose, reviewed by Yoon Ha Lee
Tuesday: Enki Bilal's The Nikopol Trilogy, reviewed by Mark Teppo
Wednesday: The 4400, reviewed by Selila Honig
Thursday: Lois McMaster Bujold's The Hallowed Hunt, reviewed by Greg Beatty
- Reviews for the week of
10/3/05
- Monday: Scott Westerfield's Peeps, reviewed by John Joseph Adams
Tuesday: Howl's Moving Castle, reviewed by Laura Blackwell
Wednesday: Chris Roberson's Here, There & Everywhere, reviewed by Mahesh Raj Mohan
Thursday: The Lost Generation: Threshold, Surface, and Invasion, reviewed by Mattia Valente
- Reviews for the week of
9/26/05
- Monday: Judith Berman's Bear Daughter, reviewed by Jane Acheson
Tuesday: Battlestar Galactica, season two: the opening quartet, reviewed by Dan Hartland
Wednesday: Paul Park's A Princess of Roumania, reviewed by Kat Jong
Thursday: Lego Star Wars, reviewed by Tim Phipps
- Reviews for the week of
9/19/05
- Monday: Doctor Who 2005: a feature-length review by Graham Sleight
Tuesday: Kelly Link's Magic for Beginners reviewed by Geneva Melzack
Wednesday: Byron de Prorok's Dead Men Do Tell Tales reviewed by Justin Howe
Thursday: Kate Wilhelm's Storyteller reviewed by Greg Beatty
- Louise Marley's The Child Goddess, by Greg Beatty
(5/16/05)
- The Child Goddess is a science fable. That is to say, in this novel Louise Marley uses the settings and tools of science fiction to tell an intentionally simplified and stylized story of extreme moral clarity.
- Steam Power to the People: China Miéville's Iron Council, by Myke Cole
(11/22/04)
- In its vivid prose, focus on working class protagonists, detailed fantasy world, deftly presented political flavor and most importantly skillfully crafted story, it's an absolute must-read for Miéville fans old and new alike.
- Cyberpunk Festivals and Nanotech Genies: Singularity Sky by Charles Stross, by Paul Lucas
(11/15/04)
- The book manages to successfully marry the old genre of space opera to the newer memes of cyberpunk, nanotech, and twenty-first century physics.
- Stories You Should Read: A Review of Gene Wolfe's Innocents Aboard, by Sean Melican
(11/8/04)
- If you are too cynical to believe that ghosts exist, or that candy wrappers hold the secrets of the universe, or that monsters and gods live everywhere, then this is not a book for you.
- Two Horror Classics for All Hallows' Day, by Jeff Edwards
(11/1/04)
- [I]f you just can't get enough [horror], here are a couple of lesser-known collections from the blood-soaked pens of two of the biggest names in the genre.
- Her Story is Legend: Queen of the Amazons by Judith Tarr, by J.G. Stinson
(10/25/04)
- The Amazons as [Tarr] shows them make a lot more sense than the ones the ancient writers described. Tarr presents them, not as the Other (the stranger, the scapegoat, the enemy), but as a people with different customs and an alternate philosophy from the Greeks.
- Apocalypse Then: Earth Abides by George R. Stewart, by Marian Powell
(10/18/04)
- Can a novel over a half a century old speak to current concerns?
- Bewitching Women: Kelley Armstrong's Dime Store Magic, by Lara Apps
(10/11/04)
- Armstrong has created believable, likable characters . . . they are strong, witty, and imperfect, and it does not take long before the reader is whole-heartedly rooting for them.
- A Journey of Words: Keith Miller's The Book of Flying, by Yoon Ha Lee
(10/4/04)
- Throughout The Book of Flying, Miller's prose delights with its alliteration, wordplay and teasing rhymes.
- Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell: Magic Chuses To Reemerge in Regency England, by Luc Reid
(9/27/04)
- Clarke goes beyond writing about a magical England of the early 1800's: her style suggests that she has spent a good deal of time there, and gotten in the habit of writing and thinking as though it were her home.
- Considering The Ordinary: A Review of Grimsley's The Ordinary, by Steve Berman
(9/20/04)
- For aficionados of speculative fiction new to the author, The Ordinary will be an interesting but long-winded offering.
- The Sins of the Past: Stewart O'Nan's The Night Country, by Scott Urban
(9/13/04)
- O'Nan deliberately invokes the small-town feel of Ray Bradbury's early work, especially Dandelion Wine and Something Wicked This Way Comes.
- Discontent, Illusion, and Murder: Jeff VanderMeer's City of Saints and Madmen, by Mark Rich
(9/6/04)
- Not a novel, but rather a thematic collection, it contains works of short fiction . . . linked by their all having something to do with an imaginary place named Ambergris, an exotic city full of odd dwellings and odder dwellers.
- Swords, Sorcery, and the Small Press: Jeff Wheeler's Landmoor, by Colin Harvey
(8/30/04)
- I'd recommend Landmoor to all devotees of heroic fantasy who are willing to be won over by a thoughtful, intelligent action story.
- Speculative Poetry: Petting the Time Shark and The Modern Art Cave, by Shannon Riley
(8/23/04)
- Speculative writing, less concerned with subtlety than mainstream literature and more with the communication of ideas and emotions through vivid words and imagery, hits characteristically close to the bone and to the heart.
- A Historical Prose Poem: Nalo Hopkinson's The Salt Roads, by Sean Melican
(8/16/04)
- [T]here is hardly a narrative climax (though there are several sexual climaxes) and most of the endings (there are several) come to unlikely, though ultimately satisfying, conclusions.
- Oppression and Magic: Mojo: Conjure Stories edited by Nalo Hopkinson, by Rob Gates
(8/16/04)
- [Mojo] can mean any magic "imbued with African flavor and with the need of indentured peoples to take some control over their lives. . . . [I]t's tricky, powerful, and dangerous if not used wisely." Nineteen writers have taken the risk of playing with this risky magic . . . in this original and thoughtful anthology.
- Many Voices: A Review of Polyphony, Vol. 1, 2, and 3, by Greg Beatty
(8/9/04)
- These stories use the fantastic as methods to evoke emotion. They focus on the personal, the interpersonal, and the social. In doing so, they strive for, and often achieve, beauty.
- Detached from Shadows: The Two Sams by Glen Hirshberg, by Susan Stinson
(8/2/04)
- Hirshberg's tales are scary, moving, morally ambitious and technically gorgeous.
- A Playfully Profligate Pantheon: Leslie What's Olympic Games, by A. M. Dellamonica
(7/26/04)
- Polished and witty, Olympic Games combines Zeus's seductiveness with Hera's passionate heart, creating a tale that is entirely unforgettable.
- Self-improvement: Will Self's Dr. Mukti and Other Tales of Woe, by Nick Brownlow
(7/19/04)
- An acidic, pugnacious satirist in the Swiftean mode, Self invests his stories with a kind of grotesque surrealism, undermining reality in order to expose these unconscious, inner landscapes.
- Clade, by Mark Budz: Home is Where It Makes You, by Lori Ann White
(7/12/04)
- Sure, Clade has bitchin' new biotech. . . . But Clade also has mothers who love their children, brothers who stand up for each other . . . and a man and a woman who refuse to let this strange new world change what is most basic and human about them.
- Four Short Reviews, by J.G. Stinson
(7/5/04)
- A quartet from one of our regular reviewers.
- Dreams of the Real: Dreams of the Sea by Élisabeth Vonarburg, by John Garrison
(6/28/04)
- Dreams of the Sea is a novel that merits re-reading, as scenes and conversations play multiple roles within the novel: advancing the plot, revealing characters, expressing positions on philosophical debates.
- Dragon Manners: Tooth and Claw by Jo Walton, by David Soyka
(6/21/04)
- [According to Walton], "This novel is the result of wondering what a world would be like if they were, if the axioms of the sentimental Victorian novel were inescapable laws of biology."
- Dear Diary, I'm a Dragon: Sythyry's Journal by Bard Bloom and Flight of the Godkin Griffin by M.C.A. Hogarth, by Elizabeth Barrette
(6/14/04)
- [I]f you frequent [an online journal site] you should check it for fiction.
- Old Books Made New: Four Book Reviews, by Mary Anne Mohanraj, James Palmer, Greg Beatty, and Sean Melican
(6/7/04)
- Four short reviews of James White's General Practice, Robert Holstock's Mythago Wood, Lord Dunsany's The Pleasures of a Futuroscope, and Gene Wolfe's Latro in the Mist.
- Two Great Tastes That Taste Great Together: Tinker by Wen Spencer, by Tee Morris
(5/31/04)
- Tinker has an exciting plot and likeable characters, but Spencer's elegant interweaving of the magic and mysticism of Elfhome with the sciences of Earth really makes the book a must read.
- Recipe for Monster Mash: Van Helsing, by Tee Morris
(5/24/04)
- Van Helsing is a one-man army against anything that is going bump in the night, lurking under kids' beds, or terrorizing unsuspecting virgins at summer camp.
- Born for Blood: Caitlin Kiernan's Low Red Moon, by Erin Donahoe
(5/24/04)
- [Low Red Moon is] a tale of quiet horror and growing dread, as characters reveal to us a dark, Lovecraftian underworld that creeps along the edges of our own reality.
- Heat & Sand: A Review of George Alec Effinger's Budayeen Nights, by Colin Harvey
(5/17/04)
- Time has lent Effinger's precognition of our New World Order today an eerie accuracy.
- Sharon Lee and Steve Miller's Balance of Trade: A New Episode in a Great Space Opera, by Lisa DuMond
(5/10/04)
- What it is about Lee and Miller's series that makes it so irresistible? Maybe in a world where no one teaches their children to say excuse me or take off their hats indoors. . . . it restores your faith in humans somewhat to see a place where manners actually matter.
- Kaldor City, by Magic Bullet: The pictures are better on the radio., by Jules Jones
(5/3/04)
- [Kaldor City] has what I want in an audiodrama: a strong script with complex characters, performed by an excellent cast.
- Mines, Magic, and Monarchy: Sara Douglass's Beyond the Hanging Wall, by J.G. Stinson
(4/26/04)
- The fact that this is a stand-alone fantasy novel is worth noting all on its own. While Beyond the Hanging Wall has some defects, it also has an involving story and characters who draw the reader into their world.
- What is Required of Survivors: Alice Hoffman's Green Angel, by Ursula Pflug
(4/19/04)
- While intended for the young adult market the lush poetic prose, the resonant imagery, holds appeal for adult readers as well. Big themes are tackled, loss and redemption on both a microcosmic and macrocosmic scale. The story is both personal and global, as all our stories are.
- Virtual Surreality: Everyone in Silico by Jim Munroe, by James Palmer
(4/12/04)
- Jim Munroe is known for writing weird books.
- Hello Again: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, by Sean Melican
(4/5/04)
- This film is such a wonderful contrast to the white-robed, uptight, undeveloped characters shuffling around the white and chrome buildings seen in too many SF movies.
- Precious Metals: Eleanor Arnason's A Woman of the Iron People, by John Garrison
(3/29/04)
- Arnason focuses on what Maurice Blanchot has called "what happens when nothing happens." Her characters do yoga, take breaks to void their bowels, sleep fitfully, complain about aches and pains. They take the time to sit around and discuss their feelings, their goals, their attitudes toward each other and themselves.
- Humour in Eleanor Arnason's Ring of Hwarhath Stories, by Ruth Berman
(3/29/04)
- It's characteristic of Arnason's work that a story with serious moral issues should start from a joke and play out with wry comedy. Her stories are both thematically serious and comic in a way that is often most riotously funny when it is quietest.
- Ensnared by Faith: Katharine Kerr's Snare, by Genevieve Williams
(3/22/04)
- What is the future of religion?
- Yesterday's Tomorrows: Robert Silverberg's The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, by Colin Harvey
(3/15/04)
- These stories utilize most of the genre's staple tropes; first contact, time travel, the end of the world, robots, mutants, space flight, genetic engineering.
- Illuminating Sensuality's Shadow: The Kushiel Trilogy by Jacqueline Carey, by J.G. Stinson
(3/8/04)
- The common thread running through the disparate events is the account of how Phèdre learns what being marked by divinity means on a personal level.
- Gary Braunbeck's Fear in a Handful of Dust: Horror As a Way of Life, by Matthew Costaris
(3/1/04)
- Braunbeck reveals many aspects of his own life and explains how they had an impact on his work. . . . The author does not sugar-coat the painful parts of his life. He delivers them in the honest, brutal fashion necessary for them to contain real power.
- Knightly Values: Gene Wolfe's The Knight, by Thomas G. Bates
(2/23/04)
- Wolfe has advanced two genres to the next level of excellence; future heroic fantasy and "young adult" books have a new target at which to aim, and a new standard with which to be compared.
- The Elegant Confusions of Appleseed: John Clute's Space Opera for the Post-Modern Age, by Karen Burnham
(2/16/04)
- Clute is attempting an update of the space opera. . . . To its science and technology, he adds quantum mechanics and AI. More significantly, he introduces a heavily post-modern world view in which reality is more of a state of mind than anything we can objectively agree upon.
- Robota, or, How Hollywood Ate Science Fiction, by Jeremy Smith
(2/9/04)
- If Robota is as forgettable and derivative as a daydream, it is also just as mesmerizing and cathartic.
- Intrigue and Family Drama Woven Deftly Together: Steven Harper's Trickster, by Mahesh Raj Mohan
(2/2/04)
- The major theme of Trickster is family: the search for loved ones, nurturing existing family ties, and adding to one's own family unit.
- Peculiar Protagonist Fights Familiar Fanged Foes: Robin McKinley's Sunshine, by Erin Donahoe
(1/26/04)
- Your protagonist is Rae. She is not Buffy. . . . She is not Anita. . . . She's a baker.
- Stories Among the Ruins: Angélica Gorodischer's Kalpa Imperial, by John Garrison
(1/19/04)
- Taken as a whole, this collection of stories offers an expansive view of this fictional empire and celebrates it as a stomping ground for the writer's imagination.
- Industrial Fantasy: The Light Ages by Ian MacLeod, by Colin Harvey
(1/12/04)
- With its rich characterization, superb description, depth of invention, and understanding of the moral complexities of the real world, The Light Ages is one of the major novels of 2003.
- A Timely Political Treatise: A Review of Ricardo Pinto's The Standing Dead, by Stephanie Dray
(1/5/04)
- The Standing Dead is not entirely a work of political fiction. The book is also intensely personal, asking questions about the limitations of romantic love and its danger to character and integrity.
- Battlestar Galactica: Re-Imagining the Ragtag Fugitive Fleet, by John Sullivan
(12/22/03)
- After seeing this version, you'll never be able to think of Battlestar Galactica in quite the same way again.
- Seven Silver Bells against Darkness and Death: Garth Nix's Abhorsen Trilogy, by Laura Blackwell
(12/8/03)
- These high fantasy novels achieve an uncanny blend of mythic resonance and solidity of setting that makes the stories personal and immediate, despite their grandeur of scale and style.
- Posthumous Gifts: Poul Anderson's Going for Infinity and For Love and Glory, by Faith L. Justice
(12/1/03)
- Going for Infinity: A Literary Journey provides fans and new readers with a wide-ranging sampler of the best of Poul Anderson. That alone would make this collection special. With the addition of his reflections on his life, art, and the people he loved and worked with, this is a "must read."
- The Birth of Damage: Nina Kiriki Hoffman's A Stir of Bones, by Tim Pratt
(11/24/03)
- As a whole, the series comprises one of the most honest, charming, and moving story-cycles in modern fantasy.
- It's a website! It's a game! No, wait, it's a novel! Diana Slattery's The Maze Game, by Sherryl Vint
(11/17/03)
- This is obviously a novel that is deeply concerned with theoretical questions of language and meaning.
- Tales of House Herbert: Dreamer of Dune: The Biography of Frank Herbert, by Brian Peters
(11/10/03)
- Dreamer of Dune is a flawed work that will probably be of interest only to those who are fans of Frank Herbert and the Dune series.
- Medieval Romance: Michael Tanner and Ellen Maidman's Days Dark as Night, by Genevieve Williams
(11/3/03)
- Set in the fictional country of Adama, an island located somewhere off the northern coast of Europe, Days Dark as Night is the tale of the native inhabitants' revolt against an oppressive occupation from the mainland.
- A Civic Fairy Tale: Lords of Rainbow by Vera Nazarian, by Stephanie Dray
(10/27/03)
- [A]t heart, Lords of Rainbow is about a love affair between the . . . city of Tronaelend-Lis and her citizens.
- Horror, and Something More: Jack Ketchum's Peaceable Kingdom, by Shannon Riley
(10/20/03)
- Steven King once wrote, "a short story is like a quick kiss in the dark from a stranger." If that is true, Jack Ketchum gives readers coffins full of kisses in Peaceable Kingdom.
- Future Organic: Mike Brotherton's Star Dragon, by A. M. Dellamonica
(10/13/03)
- Brotherton's first novel features disarmingly soft technological extrapolation, portraying in detail a human race that has fully embraced the glorious (if often-squishy) potential of genetic engineering.
- Shinichiro Watanabe's Cowboy Bebop: The Movie Kicks Down Heaven's Door, by Laura Blackwell
(10/6/03)
- In 2071, the final frontier is dotted with spaceships, but there's no shiny happy Star Trek culture here in the solar system.
- Blast Off with John Varley's Red Thunder, by Faith L. Justice
(9/29/03)
- Red Thunder is an homage to Heinlein's juveniles, but it also borrows the "can do" attitude of young folks from such classics as the Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew and the Andy Hardy movies. But instead of "let's put on a show in the barn," it's "let's build a spaceship in the warehouse."
- For the Fan Who's Read Everything: Cosmos Latinos, by Joe Sutliff Sanders
(9/22/03)
- The stories are smooth and easy to read, filled not with the jarring prose that often results from translation, but with language so natural it's almost invisible.
- Sexual Transformations: Nymph by Francesca Lia Block, by Susan Stinson
(9/15/03)
- The stories in Nymph don't take a reader to another, distant world, but deeper into the unspoken places of this one. Each story is small and radiant, with delicate, precise language and spare settings that open into hidden recesses of consciousness and sexuality.
- Gridlock: The Day Britain Stopped, by Colin Harvey
(9/8/03)
- Each incident is so carefully crafted, so seamlessly integrated into the larger narrative, that the feeling of actual events being reported never wavers.
- Something Akin to Lucid Dreaming: Jubilee by Jack Dann, by Amy O'Loughlin
(9/1/03)
- A central theme recurs in many of Dann's stories—that of the individual wishing to trip through various levels of human consciousness to achieve transformation of the mind or soul.
- Now Hear This: Audible.com Brings SF Off the Page, by R Michael Harman
(8/25/03)
- The voices in the works I sampled were all at least adequate to the task at hand, and in a few cases were excellent. . . . "Repent, Harlequin!" Said the Ticktockman features Ellison himself narrating, and none other than Robin Williams in the title role.
- Sci-fi Ain't Nothing But Mojo Misspelled: Ernest Hogan's Smoking Mirror Blues, by James M. Palmer
(8/18/03)
- If Harlan Ellison and William Burroughs had sat down to collaborate, this is the kind of book they would have written.
- Let the Magic Unfold: Leah R. Cutter's Paper Mage, by Faith L. Justice
(8/11/03)
- Cutter does on paper what Xiao Yen does with paper—animate her characters with richly realized detail and motivation appropriate to the time and culture.
- Conversations in Miniature: the Genre Poetry of Ian Watson and Michael A. Arnzen, by Mark Rich
(8/4/03)
- A genre is a literary tradition in which certain designs and decorations have become characteristic, either as essential parts or as gratuitous additions. Within the horror genre, once a poem is positioned, it does not matter that a sickening feeling, for instance, is not evoked. It matters that it is invoked.
- Magic, Hellfire, and Chemistry: Lisa Goldstein's The Alchemist's Door, by Genevieve Williams
(7/28/03)
- The Alchemist's Door is an intriguing look into the occult world of the Renaissance—a period when alchemy teetered on the brink of true chemistry as proto-scientists searched for the Philosopher's Stone.
- Bringing Legends to Life, a Review of The Return of Santiago by Mike Resnick, by John Teehan
(7/21/03)
- [T]he road to resurrecting a legend is not an easy one.
- A Heady Brew of Sex, Drugs, Rock 'n' Roll, and Voodoo: Echo and Narcissus by Mark Siegel, by David Soyka
(7/14/03)
- Siegel doesn't attempt to mimic a rock 'n' roll prose style akin to, say, Kerouac's attempt to give the appearance of improvising on a theme like a jazz sax player, but he does offer some keen insight into the stylized dramaturgy of rock performance
- Steel Helix by Ann Tensor Zeddies, by A. M. Dellamonica
(7/7/03)
- Steel Helix is an intriguing meditation on captivity, allegiance, and love.
- Looking Back in Anger: Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later, by Walter Chaw
(6/30/03)
- [T]he culprit of the piece doesn't reveal itself to be the predators, but mankind in all its supercilious aggression.
- I Sing, Ye Gods, of Amy: Amy Unbounded: Belondweg Blossoming, by Shaenon Garrity
(6/23/03)
- Hartman is well on her way to crafting a fantasy world the equal of all the sun-drenched castles in the air we remember from childhoods of feverish bookworming.
- Layers of Memory: Alastair Reynolds's Chasm City, by Steven Francis Murphy
(6/16/03)
- Chasm City is a sociologist's dream laboratory of contrasts between third world, sewer drenched squalor in the Mulch and first world disdain above.
- Foundations: Hal Clement's Heavy Planet and A.E. Van Vogt's The World of Null-A, by Walter Chaw
(6/9/03)
- Courageous and respectful of its audience, The World of Null-A is challenging and entertaining where Mission of Gravity is mostly just entertaining.
- Sailing the Infinite Deep: The Wreck of The River of Stars, by Michael Flynn, by Jeremy Smith
(6/2/03)
- [O]ne gets the sense that Flynn has actually served on one of these ships, as Herman Melville once crisscrossed the Pacific on a brig in search of whales.
- "Strife Without Bitterness": Jo Walton's The Prize in the Game, by Christopher Cobb
(5/26/03)
- The Prize in the Game is an exceptional fantasy; it beautifully, poignantly captures the spirit of a life that is uncivilized but far from uncultured.
- Fish, Fingers, and Friends: Meet Me in the Moon Room, by Ray Vukcevich, by Jed Hartman
(5/19/03)
- One of the things Vukcevich does best is to externalize subjective perception by making metaphors literal, turning the subjective experience into a fantastical or surreal external reality.
- In and Outside the Ekumen: Ursula K. Le Guin's The Birthday of the World: and Other Stories, by Colin Harvey
(5/12/03)
- The collection achieves much of its effect from aggregation; the lesser stories gain from the thematic echoes, while those which were good to outstanding on their own now shine like jewels.
- Charles G. Finney's The Magician Out of Manchuria: Where Have All the Mages Gone?, by Mike Simanoff
(5/5/03)
- "Wartorn towns are inimical to make-believe, boiling, as it were, with slogans and ideologies."
- A Day in the Life: Charles G. Finney's The Circus of Dr. Lao, by Mike Simanoff
(5/5/03)
- This would not play well at Madison Square Garden. Indeed, it out-Barnums old P.T. himself.
- Summer Can't Get Here Soon Enough: Switch.blade: School's Out, Edited by Amy Sterling Casil, by J.G. Stinson
(4/28/03)
- The overall quality of the stories was uneven, but that's true of most anthologies. . . . But that "incredible feeling" was present in several of the stories, and adult readers will likely find scenes from their own educational pasts in at least one of the tales collected here.
- Market Trackers and High-End Hackers: William Gibson's Pattern Recognition, by Genevieve Williams
(4/21/03)
- Gibson's daring here is his willingness to use a national tragedy as a backdrop while that event is still fresh in the minds of those who experienced it. The effort could have fallen on its face in so many ways; instead, Gibson has produced a profoundly moving novel.}}
- Uncover the Facts Concerning the Late Edward Roivas and His Family in Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem, by Dennis C. Hwang
(4/14/03)
- Eternal Darkness conjures a mystical tale of equal parts physical and psychological dread, in the tradition of H. P. Lovecraft, August Derleth, and Clark Ashton Smith.
- The Truth About Angels: Kage Baker's Black Projects, White Knights, by Sherryl Vint
(4/7/03)
- More of the stories in the collection emphasize the "White Knights" aspect of the title over the "Black Projects" one. . . . Such stories . . . provide an alternative to the disturbing image of the Company and its agents developed elsewhere in Baker's work.
- A Singular Debut: Cory Doctorow's Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, by Tim Pratt
(3/31/03)
- With the publication of his first novel . . . [Doctorow has] appeared at the vanguard of a trend within science fiction that's so bleeding-edge it doesn't even have a stupid nickname yet.
- Celebrating New Celebrations: Alexei Panshin's Anthony Villiers books, by Jed Hartman
(3/24/03)
- The Anthony Villiers books are short, funny comedies of manners in a far-future setting; not, perhaps, Panshin's deepest work, but definitely his most entertaining.
- Just Because You're Paranoid Doesn't Mean They're Not Out to Get You: The Buzzing by Jim Knipfel, by David Soyka
(3/17/03)
- The attraction of all this conspiracy theory is that it's in some respects reassuring to think that apparently random acts of violence and stupidity are really the result of some hidden intelligence.
- Easy Reading: The Hard Science Fiction Renaissance, by Greg Beatty
(3/3/03)
- Rather than being dead or moribund, hard SF has huge, untapped potential. It has its own aesthetic, and the rules for this beauty are not accidental or formed in reaction to the mainstream, but conscious and well-conceived.
- Playing Word Games with Prometheus' Fire: Ellen Larson's The Measure of the Universe, by Laura Blackwell
(2/24/03)
- The Measure of the Universe cleverly weaves mystery, romance, and wordplay into a twenty-first century tale of a crusty paleographer from Earth and an exuberantly verbal alien.
- A Secret Agent in Space: John Barnes's The Duke of Uranium, by Paul Schumacher
(2/24/03)
- The Duke of Uranium is . . . an adventure tale about young Jak Jinnaka, who is embarking on the career that, unbeknownst to him, he's been training for all of his life.
- The Stainless Steel Rat Turns Fifty: A Review of Harry Harrison's 50 in 50, by John Teehan
(2/17/03)
- While Harrison's science is generally weak (despite the early influences of John W. Campbell), he succeeds in the arena of "social science fiction" by asking good questions, making reasonable postulations, and coming to interesting conclusions.
- Dreaming the Industrial Future: Simon Logan's I-O, by Matt Cardin
(2/10/03)
- One has the sense that Logan was compelled to write these stories, as if they were squeezed out of him by the force of his imagination.
- A New Generation of Heroes in Dragaera: Steven Brust's The Paths of the Dead, by Christopher Cobb
(2/3/03)
- Insofar as the world-building of fantasy is a game played for the game's own sake, Brust is a master player. Indeed, he sets himself world-building challenges that few fantasists would attempt.
- A Strange But Welcome Friend: James Patrick Kelly's Strange But Not a Stranger, by David Kopaska-Merkel
(1/27/03)
- Most of us really write about H. sapiens when we write about aliens, or we allow words to fail us, lapsing into gibberish, or we simply declare that the aliens are, well, alien, and leave it at that. Kelly does none of these things.
- A Lovely Song, Slightly Out of Tune: Across the Nightingale Floor by Lian Hearn, by Lori Ann White
(1/20/03)
- As he is trained in the ways of death Takeo is faced with a question: Is he a peaceful man being taught to kill, or a killer with a veneer of compassion?
- Engines of Light: The Gnostic Potboilers of Ken MacLeod, by Jeremy Smith
(1/13/03)
- Ken MacLeod's Engine City is his most philosophically reconciled work, in which he seems to achieve the epistemological synthesis he has always restlessly sought.
- Saturating the Present with the Past: Hiromi Goto's The Kappa Child, by Wendy Pearson
(1/6/03)
- The Kappa Child is an intriguing, magical mix of generic fantasy, Japanese mythology, magic realism, alien abduction stories, and what Samuel Delany would call a "literary" interest in the psychological.
- Gedankenexperiments: Michael Swanwick's "Periodic Table of Science Fiction", by R Michael Harman
(12/23/02)
- As a whole, this series is a great example of why short fiction—especially freely available, web-published short fiction—is such an important part of speculative fiction.
- Through the Interstices: Richard Parks's The Ogre's Wife: Fairy Tales for Grownups, by Terry McGarry
(12/16/02)
- Parks's narrative hand reaches through the interstices of mythic and mimetic, between the inebriating mist of enchantment and the rocky scree of cynicism, down into a deep still place as familiar as it is alien.
- Worlds That Weren't: A Definitive Anthology of Alternate History?, by Cynthia Ward
(12/9/02)
- The new anthology Worlds That Weren't, edited by the uncredited Laura Anne Gilman, sports a title that defines alternate history, and is led off by Harry Turtledove, AH's most prominent practitioner—facts that appear to promise an authoritative volume of the subgenre. It's a risky expectation to raise for a collection of original fiction. . . . Do Worlds That Weren't's four contributing authors—Harry Turtledove, S.B M. Stirling, Mary Gentle, and Walter Jon Williams—fulfill the promise of the title?
- Of Digital Souls and Quantum Black Holes: Greg Egan's Schild's Ladder, by Karen Burnham
(12/2/02)
- Egan paints a future where one can revel in the possibilities of infinite human variety, yet all are still recognizably human.
- Diversity and Tradition: The Year's Best Science Fiction: Nineteenth Annual Collection, edited by Gardner Dozois, by Derek James
(11/25/02)
- Overall the quality of the fiction is high . . . mostly by virtue of level of craft brought to bear by both veterans and newcomers. Dozois has an eye for picking stories, whether light-hearted or thought-provokingly deep, that draw you in as you read and stay with you long after.
- Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi: Spirited Away by Hayao Miyazaki, by Amy Harlib
(11/18/02)
- Resonant with universal folkloric motifs yet thoroughly steeped in Miyazaki's own beloved Japanese traditions, the dazzling, weird, one-of-a-kind Spirited Away begins and ends in contemporary Japan, with an extraordinary otherworldly adventure in between.
- Twists of Fate and Mechanical Dragons: Two Escaflownes, Worlds Apart, by Laura Blackwell
(11/18/02)
- More than an original and a copycat, the two Escaflownes are like children of the same parents: although they share similarities of feature, each has its own personality and purpose.
- Sex, Sorcery, and Scholarship in Ellen Kushner's and Delia Sherman's The Fall of the Kings, by Theodora Goss
(11/11/02)
- In The Fall of the Kings, every character becomes important to a plot whose unexpected turns will startle the most careful reader. My favorite characters are not doctors, artists, or aristocrats, but ordinary people who remain faithful to their convictions despite political turmoil. . . .
- Kelley Eskridge's Solitaire: An Absorbing Inquiry into the Nature of Self, by Genevieve Williams
(11/4/02)
- [Eskridge's] ability to take her readers on a spiral path to the innermost depths of an individual mind, and then back out again, make this a fascinating read.
- Undead for the Holidays: Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's Night Blooming and Fred Saberhagen's A Coldness in the Blood, by Greg Beatty
(10/28/02)
- [T]wo very different new books indicate that what our generation needs to deal with is time, identity, and power.
- Magic and Mystery: Barbara Hambly's Sisters of the Raven, by Christopher Cobb
(10/21/02)
- The human story of Sisters of the Raven has all the gripping suspense of a mystery-thriller. . . . But even as the break-neck plot leaps from one crisis to the next, Hambly is building around it and through it a fantasy world of exceptional beauty and complexity.
- Political Surrealism: Brooke Burgess's Broken Saints, by R Michael Harman
(10/14/02)
- Broken Saints lends itself to wild speculation at least as well as conspiracy-based TV shows like The X-Files.
- Sensing the Real in The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, 15th annual collection, ed. Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling, by Mark Rich
(10/7/02)
- The editors have succeeded without question in conveying the breadth and vitality of an important corner of the contemporary writing scene. As to how well they have culled their respective fields . . . very likely they themselves are the only ones to know. Who else has been reading as widely and deeply?
- Quickening New Births: George Zebrowski's Swift Thoughts, by Walter Chaw
(9/30/02)
- Obsessed with the idea that the separation between mind and fundament will eventually incite a civil war in the body politic, Zebrowski presents an ambitious variety of cautionary tales about the dangers and morality of artificial intelligence.
- China Miéville's The Scar: The Literature We Deserve (Lucky for Us!), by Sherryl Vint
(9/23/02)
- Each time I thought I had sorted my way through the various heroes and villains to a stable moral picture, Miéville confronted me with yet another layer of depth and complexity.
- The Honeyed Knots of Jeffrey Ford's The Fantasy Writer's Assistant and Other Stories, by Amy O'Loughlin
(9/16/02)
- Like dreams, Ford's stories straddle the chasm between things manifest and things absurd in a realm where anything is possible.
- Art's Fiercest Spark Burns in Alan Moore's Promethea, by Laura Blackwell
(9/9/02)
- [R]eal or not, Promethea, demigoddess of myth and fiction, is necessary.
- Those Were the Days My Friend, We Thought They'd Never End: The Golden Age by John C. Wright, by David Soyka
(9/2/02)
- Wright's future . . . represents what cybergenetics could conceivably lead to—a world so fabricated, so literally and "spiritually" unreal that it is arguably no longer human.
- A Life Less Ordinary: Kate Bernheimer's The Complete Tales of Ketzia Gold, by Christopher Barzak
(8/26/02)
- [Ketzia's] home is infused with a kind of magic that has lost its meaning. This is Disney World, not Narnia.
- What You Didn't Learn in Civics: Alexander Irvine's A Scattering of Jades, by Theodora Goss
(8/19/02)
- In A Scattering of Jades, Irvine does again what he has done so well in his stories: rewrite history, or rather write the strange truth behind a history we think we know.
- Killing God: Alchemical Adventure and Pulp Metaphysics in Steve Aylett's Shamanspace, by Nick Brownlow
(8/12/02)
- Shamanspace is a savagely uncompromising expression of disappointment and anger.
- Speculations on Sentience: Ian Watson's The Great Escape, by Paul Schumacher
(8/5/02)
- This book will especially appeal to those fascinated with the concepts of machine intelligence, the inner workings of the mind, or the mysteries of perception and language.
- Joining Forces: Steven Barnes's Lion's Blood and Heather Alexander's Insh'Allah, by J. G. Stinson
(7/29/02)
- Honor, duty, love, and social station create bonds for us all, and how we fight against or accept those bonds can determine our future.
- Violence, Ethics, and Ethnicity: Charisma by Steven Barnes, by Greg Beatty
(7/29/02)
- One of the first things that [Barnes] does well [in Charisma] is build a complex narrative, and even that statement is unfair to the novel. . . . As he does so, he interweaves an ambivalent parable of heroism and violence.
- Robert Sawyer's Hominids: It's Not Your Father's Cavemen Story, by John Teehan
(7/22/02)
- Robert Sawyer's latest novel . . . braves such stormy matters as privacy, religion, and the origins of man. It begins with the discovery of a Neanderthal in our midst.
- Sucked into a Whirlpool of Horror: The Spiraling Madness of Junji Ito's Uzumaki, by Laura Blackwell
(7/15/02)
- Uzumaki is that rare work that captures the style of Lovecraft's horror, gradually unveiling the grotesqueries underlying everyday life, without pilfering its distinctive content, or calling everything in sight "Cyclopean" or "squamous".
- Corporate Monsters and Body Thieves: Two Brilliant Chapbooks of Speculative Poetry from Mark McLaughlin and Bruce Boston, by Michael Arnzen
(7/8/02)
- Corporate Monsters is a book written in the tradition of the "grotesque". . . . Boston's Quanta is a collection of his award-winning poetry.
- Of Explorers and Button Eyes: Neil Gaiman's Coraline, by Tim Pratt
(7/1/02)
- When I have children of my own, I'll be waiting impatiently for them to be old enough to enjoy hearing me read Coraline to them aloud.
- Adventures with the Nature of Reality and Fiction: Pat Murphy's Adventures in Time and Space with Max Merriwell, by Wendy Pearson
(6/24/02)
- Adventures in Time and Space with Max Merriwell is serious fun—but then, I'm a sucker for a flirtation with the nature of reality. Add to that a really clever, as well as entertaining, demonstration of quantum physics meshed with a post-modernist literary style that's a cross between hard-core SF and magic realism, and you've got a definite winner on your hands.
- Working for a Living in Alternate Worlds: Strange Trades by Paul Di Filippo, by Amy O'Loughlin
(6/17/02)
- Full of storytelling that is untamed, writing that is superb, and tales that are expansive and suggestive, Strange Trades is a wry romp worthy of your attention.
- Loss and Transcendence, Patricia McKillip's Ombria In Shadow, by Rob Gates
(6/10/02)
- McKillip, in Ombria in Shadow, has combined elements of the Gothic with those of traditional fairy tales to create something that transcends them both.
- In Praise of Genre Fiction: Karin Lowachee's Warchild, by Brian Peters
(6/3/02)
- If you love [action SF]—and I do—this book is an adrenaline-soaked read that's hard to put down for sleep or meals.
- Finding the Human in Hard SF: Impact Parameter by Geoffrey Landis, by Lori Ann White
(5/27/02)
- Not only do we understand the science in Landis's stories, but through his characters we feel its importance. Like the creation of great art or the expression of extraordinary compassion, the pursuit of knowledge can define us as human because it gives us something beyond ourselves toward which we may reach.
- The Way the West Was Lost: Kim Stanley Robinson's The Years of Rice and Salt, by Fred Bush
(5/20/02)
- [T]his . . . is a prolonged meditation on social change, the impact of science on society, and religion's place in modern life. It's about books and why we read them, tales and how we learn. But it's also about monkeys.
- Three A.M. Films' Vengeance of the Dead: Indie Horror From Beyond the Grave, by Doug Brunell
(5/13/02)
- This is a horror movie that recalls an era when fright flicks relied more on atmosphere than on special effects.
- The Second Sex and Science Fiction: A Woman's Liberation: A Choice Of Futures By And About Women, edited by Connie Willis and Sheila Williams, by Faith L. Justice
(5/6/02)
- The characters in these stories discredit the damaging stereotype of women as "victims"—victims of society, circumstances, their own nature. Even when in such familiar roles as matriarch or concubine, these women take charge of their own lives, make choices and live with the consequences.
- "Scrabble with God," Fiction with John M. Ford: The Unpredictable Pleasures of From the End of the Twentieth Century and The Last Hot Time, by Christopher Cobb
(4/29/02)
- Ford is an intensely exciting and surprising writer partly because of this paradox: he is both intensely aware of genre and utterly disrespectful of its social strictures.
- A Dangerous, but Rewarding, Journey into the Heart of Osamu Tezuka's Metropolis, by Laura Blackwell
(4/22/02)
- Long after the first viewing, the magnificently animated Metropolis lingers in the mind's eye. The beautiful, but troubled, city of Metropolis—as diverse and divided as a real-life city—haunts the thoughts.
- Appreciating the Unpredictable in Daniel Pearlman's The Best-Known Man in the World & Other Misfits, by Brian Peters
(4/15/02)
- This is a small-press book by an unconventional author breaking through the ghetto walls that entrap speculative fiction. Buy it. Tell your friends to buy it. Make it a best-selling classic. It's that good.
- The Elements and Style in Nalo Hopkinson's Storytelling Collection, Skin Folk, by Rob Gates
(4/8/02)
- Leave everything behind when you open the cover of this volume—your patterns of speech, your expectations of what makes a hero, and your reliance on the folklore and cultural mythology of Western Europe. You won't need any of them where Skin Folk takes you.
- "Bleeding one's life away from a thousand tiny wounds": Magic and Sacrifice in David Coe's Rules of Ascension, by Christopher Cobb
(4/1/02)
- Where do your loyalties lie? What are you willing to sacrifice for them? Would you sacrifice your life for anything? These are the driving questions behind Rules of Ascension.
- Books Within Books: John Crowley's Aegypt, by Jed Hartman
(3/25/02)
- Aegypt is a novel that provides readers with keys to reading it. The characters talk frequently about books, both their own and those by others (and about lives as books, and books as lives). . . .
- Technological Magic, Magical Technology: Empty Cities of the Full Moon by Howard V. Hendrix, by Lori Ann White
(3/18/02)
- At first read, Howard V. Hendrix's Empty Cities of the Full Moon seems to exemplify Clarke's Law, but in truth Hendrix goes deeper than that: technology is magic, with all its mystical underpinnings and sense of awe intact, while magic is technology, with its rigorous R&D requirements and painstaking development.
- An Uncertain Landmark: 2001: A Science Fiction Poetry Anthology, edited by Keith Allen Daniels, by Roger Dutcher
(3/11/02)
- As might be expected, there are themes that run through the volume: astronomy, DNA/gene research, and theological or mystical speculation. Some of the strongest poems based on astronomy are Tony D'Arpino's "History of the Sky," Gary Every's "Archaeoastronomy Etude," Misha Feigin's "the last word of astronomy," and Florence Fogelin's "Al Museo della Storia di Scienza."
- Through An Ocean, Darkly: Starfish by Peter Watts, by J. G. Stinson
(3/4/02)
- Starfish [tackles] big topics like corporate greed and mismanagement, the resilience of the human spirit, and the wealth of things humans still don't know about Earth's deep ocean environments.
- Trysts: A Triskaidecollection of Queer and Weird Stories, by Steve Berman, by Greg Wharton
(2/25/02)
- The stories take us to many a dark locale with memorable characters. One features a Prague sex club and a clever new slant on the gargoyle; another, paper voodoo dolls and the search for Mr. Right at the Copy Center.
- Keith Hartman's Gumshoe Gorilla: Take One Gay Gumshoe, One Wiccan PI, and Five Clones . . ., by Wendy Pearson
(2/18/02)
- The problem is that there are five Rocklands—all identical clones created by their publicity-mad mother using DNA from the frozen corpse of a Big Name movie star. Five indistinguishable Rockland boys may be cute, but, as Drew and Jen discover, they're hell on an investigation.
- A Rare Gift: Harlequin Valentine by Neil Gaiman and John Bolton, by Erin Donahoe
(2/11/02)
- Gaiman's words depict a strange and wonderful kind of love story, which is enriched by Bolton's photo-realistic paintings.
- Firebird: A New Line of Young Adult Speculative Fiction, by Mary Anne Mohanraj
(2/4/02)
- Firebird is an ambitious project, mixing classic reprints with new titles. In Spring 2002, Firebird is launching with four titles: Westmark, I Am Mordred, Fire Bringer, and The Eye, the Ear, and the Arm.
- Wild Life by Molly Gloss: Speculative Fiction in the Wilderness, by Christopher Cobb
(1/28/02)
- Charlotte constructs her own life right on the border between hard-headed feminist realism and heroic fantasy. Even if the novel had no plot of mystery and high drama at all, her personality would make of daily life a worthy adventure.
- Robert Lynn Asprin's Myth-ion Improbable: A Classic Series of Comic Fantasy Revived, by Paul R. F. Schumacher
(1/14/02)
- Sure, the book has all the elements that I love about the series: Irreverent dialogue, good (and bad) puns, humor in the naive way Skeeve sees things. But the idea of the map is one that I'm going to inflict on my Dungeons & Dragons players as soon as I get the chance.
- Humans Are My Food: The Blood-Sipping Exploits of Edward Lewis Weyland in Suzy McKee Charnas's The Vampire Tapestry, by Amy O'Loughlin
(1/7/02)
- The Vampire Tapestry's stylishness, imagery, and originality of plot illustrate Charnas' reputation as a fabulist of uncommon talent. It's a novel divided into five parts, each of which has Weyland encountering a new array of characters and the humanity of his "despised victims."
- The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, by Walter Chaw
(12/19/01)
- Jackson has translated nearly every element of Tolkien's universe, from a vast, sprawling history implied in the language and the actions of its multi-specied characters, to a completely immersive fantasy realm with nary a seam to spoil the illusion, to a quest that's worthy of epic attention.
- Marie Jakober's The Black Chalice: A Holy Grail Anti-Quest, by Christopher Cobb
(12/17/01)
- The Black Chalice's representation of the struggle between militant Christian piety and sensual pagan magic deserves comparison to Marion Zimmer Bradley's Mists of Avalon and Guy Gavriel Kay's A Song for Arbonne. . . . The work's originality and its more profound attractions lie in the way the tale is told.
- Quantum Religion: Ken Wharton's Divine Intervention, by Lori Ann White
(12/10/01)
- Wharton has created a plausible science-based religion called Symmology, predicated on a new interpretation of quantum mechanics—that the universe is truly time-symmetric.
- I Love Anthologies: A Review of the Year's Best Science Fiction 2001, edited by Gardner Dozois, by Danyel Fisher
(12/3/01)
- A science fiction anthology, writ large, is a collection of the communal hopes and fears of the world today. (Read small, it's what popped into an editor's head.) What interests us today?
- Fan Culture and Serial Fiction: The Guilty Pleasures of Tad Williams' Shadowmarch, by R Michael Harman
(11/26/01)
- Some very smart people have contributed to the design and functionality of the Shadowmarch site, a fact made clear by the ease of its access and usage, and the addictive nature of its social model.
- The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: Fourteenth Annual Collection, edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling: Excellence at the Boundaries of the Genre, by Erin Donahoe
(11/19/01)
- If I had to choose one word to describe this collection of stories and poems, that word would be "dark." Many of the fantasy pieces in this anthology skirt the line between fantasy and horror with reckless abandon.
- The Wild Boy by Warren Rochelle: Engineered Empathy, by Rob Gates
(11/12/01)
- This coming-of-age novel is reminiscent of a number of works from the latter half of the sixties. . . . Humanity survives, but not through any divine right or special dispensation from the universe, but simply because we happened to be lucky or make the right choice at the right time.
- Revolutionary Nautical Fantasy: Robin Hobb's Liveship Traders Series, by Stephanie Dray
(11/5/01)
- Robin Hobb's Liveship Traders series tells a story of family grit and emerging nationhood that would be compelling even if it were lifted out of its fantasy setting. That the story takes place within a magical world where ships come to life, sea-serpents terrorize the oceans, and enchanted trinkets of a lost Elderling race are regularly discovered, makes the story more than compelling—it makes it an extraordinary high fantasy saga.
- Childhood Dangers And Fears Presented Larger Than Life in Joan Aiken's Wolves Sequence, by Beth Kelleher
(10/29/01)
- By empowering her child-heroes to help themselves, Aiken gives her readers the means to confront their own fears and idealizes character traits that useful for dealing with the big bad world. . . . Her heroes rely on pluck, quick wits, and determination to carry them through the twisting plots and looming dangers that surround them.
- Interesting and Unusual Things, and Not Only on Mondays: Joan Aiken's Short Fiction, by Jed Hartman
(10/29/01)
- I've always been struck by Aiken's ability to write stories that go in unexpected directions: a story might start out with a BBC man visiting a village in the country, as in "The Rose of Puddle Fratrum," and end up with an intelligent computer, a cursed ballet, and a mysterious recluse.
- Problems of Xenography: Thunder Rift by Matthew Farrell, by Greg Beatty
(10/22/01)
- The Blues . . . live in a world of sound. They talk, they sing, they chant, they evoke meaning and physical space through a web of resonance, and it is strange and threatening and wonderful.
- Doctor Who Lives . . . In the Theatre of the Mind: Big Finish's Doctor Who: The Fearmonger, by D. K. Latta
(10/15/01)
- Caught between the extremist rhetoric of the Right and the increasingly militant violence of the protesting Left . . . the Doctor and Ace set out to stop the creature and calm emotions even while London threatens to disintegrate into chaos and rioting.
- Steven Brust's Issola: of Assassins, Gods, and Etiquette, by Fred Bush
(10/8/01)
- Issola is a book that reveals secrets. It's a book that releases world-shattering energies, features gods and even more powerful creatures as main characters, and explains the origins of magic and sentient life. It also features Vlad Taltos, sarcastic skuldugger extraordinaire, making wisecracks as usual about everything and anybody. Unfortunately, the combination doesn't work.
- Friendship and Despair in an SF Mystery: C. J. Merle's Of Duty and Death, by Christopher Cobb
(10/1/01)
- This is a book to enjoy in a leisurely fashion, as the characters enjoy the pleasures they manage to find in the midst of their difficulties. The decisive moments of this novel arise as much during the interplay of conversation over dinner or during pillow-talk mixed with foreplay as they do during moments of action or official interrogation.
- Dueling Daemons: Lyda Morehouse's Archangel Protocol, by S. N. Arly
(9/24/01)
- Good and evil aren't laid out in clearly demarcated black and white. . . . Some evil, it seems, may even act for the side of good.
- A Mythological Fantasy of Compulsion and Freedom: Roberta Gellis's Thrice Bound, by Heidi Elizabeth Smith
(9/17/01)
- Thrice Bound is definitely worth reading. It has everything I look for in speculative fiction: the dialogue is witty, the settings are lush, the characters . . . are well-drawn and believable, and the descriptions are crisp.
- Taking Apart SF: Gwyneth Jones's Deconstructing the Starships: Science, Fiction and Reality, by Wendy Pearson
(9/10/01)
- Jones comments that SF writers and readers habitually practice deconstruction, whether they know it or not: . . . 'every writer and reader [of SF] has to practice this modern art habitually, technically, intuitively' in the process of unravelling and comprehending the thought experiment that underlies the creation of any truly science fictional world.
- Speculative Fiction on the Web, by Janean Nusz and R Michael Harman
(9/3/01)
- Whatever it is you like in a story, you'll most likely be able to find it in one of the many magazines residing on the web.
- Ben Bova's Jupiter: and the Truth Shall Set You Free, by John Teehan
(8/27/01)
- Jupiter reads wonderfully. It's hard science fiction with a good extrapolation of the nature of interplanetary exploration. . . . The novel also examines the dialectic between science and religion, showing how they both develop in the light of the other's fire.
- Two Novels of Speculative History: The Year the Cloud Fell by Kurt R. A. Giambastiani and Phoenix Fire by Tim O'Laughlin, by Christopher Cobb
(8/20/01)
- [T]hese novels, both first books for their authors, both set in America in the present or relatively recent past, highlight the strengths and weaknesses of speculative history.
- Moore and O'Neill's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, by Bryan A. Hollerbach
(8/13/01)
- [N]o bald synopsis can possibly do justice to the detail with which Moore and O'Neill have packed the tale. . . .
- Terror for the Thoughtful Reader: The Best of Cemetery Dance, edited by Richard Chizmar, by Amy O'Loughlin
(8/6/01)
- Richard Chizmar's compilation is satisfying reading for anyone on the hunt for highly charged, intelligent modern horror. This is fiction that lingers in the mind and tantalizes the spirit. The stories do not shy away from describing in shocking and unnerving detail human suffering and grief.
- Fun with Your New (Vintage) Disch, by Fred Bush
(7/30/01)
- Vintage Books has recently republished 334 and Camp Concentration, two of Disch's early works, in handsome new editions. Reading them is like walking into a black, windy, rainy night, or exploring the decaying sub-basement of a government office without any idea of how to escape its winding corridors.
- Witnessing Magic: Kelly Link's Stranger Things Happen, by Christopher Barzak
(7/23/01)
- Link's characters allow us to share in a very special, very magical reality that, in turn, allows us to see our own world with new eyes.
- Kubrick's A.I. and Square's Final Fantasy: Plastic for the People, by Danyel Fisher and R Michael Harman
(7/16/01)
- Both movies are beautiful, but ultimately empty.
- Vernor Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep and A Deepness in the Sky, by Amy Harlib
(7/9/01)
- Vinge creates a genuinely new and unique concept of the nature of the galaxy in which the laws of physics vary with location. The greatest potential for intelligence lies at the edges of the galaxy, where computer-like superminds with intellects far beyond the mental capacity of any biological brain dwell.
- Alien or Human? Humanity's orphan children in Scott Mackay's The Meek, by Greg Beatty
(7/2/01)
- You should read The Meek because it is a work of hard science fiction that manages to both be realistic and magical. It re-awoke in me a lot of the classic sense of wonder that led many of us to read science fiction in the first place, and it did so via a string of images that are original and resonant.
- A Maze of Death: China Miéville's Perdido Street Station, by David Horwich
(6/25/01)
- Miéville's main characters live on the margins of society, either by choice, or social pressure, or both. Identities are fluid, alliegances shift suddenly; spies and moles infest the city and its underworld. Betrayal is commonplace, and trust is at a premium.
- The Outpost by Mike Resnick: The Fine Art of the Tall Tale and the Mystery of History, by John Teehan
(6/18/01)
- Mike Resnick's latest work, The Outpost, is a novel that explores how we tell stories, both about ourselves and others. This is not just a collection of tall tales, but a novel celebrating the fine art of storytelling.
- Can a TV Tie-In Novel Achieve Excellence? Jeanne Cavelos' The Passing of the Techno-Mages, by R Michael Harman
(6/11/01)
- It is a curious contradiction that a magician, while he may never reveal his tricks, can't show that he is a magician without revealing that he has tricks. In order to effectively mystify onlookers, he must not only perform feats that defy explanation, he must make his persona as enigmatic as any of his deeds.
- Der Dunwich Horror meets Der Führer: Richard Wadholm's Astronomy, by C. J. Czelling
(6/4/01)
- Richard Wadholm's first novel is a fast paced tale of occult warfare that mixes melodramatic fantasy with elements of a screwball comedy.
- Too Much of a Good Thing: Storm Constantine's The Crown of Silence, by Erin Donahoe
(5/28/01)
- While this book has an enjoyable story and a well-developed plot . . . the author delivers too much, cramming our heads with a plethora of information in order to make the story work.
- Claremont Tales by Richard A. Lupoff: An Eclectic Retrospective, by D. K. Latta
(5/21/01)
- Claremont Tales may not be an unqualified success, but with a range of stories from those that conjure up TV's Twilight Zone to bizarre visions of the distant future, from hard SF to a locked room mystery, the book is an agreeable tome to have on the shelf.
- The Reluctant Heroine: The Longest Journey by FunCom, by R Michael Harman
(5/14/01)
- April . . . has accidentally crossed the boundary between two Earths. She is native to Stark, a world where science and logic hold sway, where physical law is not subject to whimsy or fantasy. The dreamworld she enters is Arcadia, a realm where power can be channeled by the will of sorcerors, but machines are prone to breaking, and scientific study must always allow for magical exceptions.
- L. Warren Douglas's The Sacred Pool: Not your ordinary historical fantasy, by Heidi Elizabeth Smith
(5/7/01)
- The Sacred Pool is . . . a coming-of-age novel in the grand old tradition. It is a tale of spirituality and growth, love and desire, fear and ambition.
- Two Classics of Satirical Speculation: The Start of the End of It All and Carmen Dog by Carol Emshwiller, by Leslie What
(4/30/01)
- Carol Emshwiller is the writer I want to be when I never grow up. She's a satirist whose fiction examines the choices that characters must make when their lives take crooked turns that send them flying beyond the scope of a reader's radar.
- Discovering the Earth in Earthsea: Ursula K. Le Guin's Tales from Earthsea, by Christopher Cobb
(4/23/01)
- These tales . . . make plain Le Guin's magnificent ability to join together the commonplace and the arcane, finding images that make this complex world whole.
- A Delight of Fairies: Books on Fairy Lore and Art, by Faith L. Justice
(4/16/01)
- Barrie was not the first to write of fairies and the fair folk are still a staple of fantasy writers and artists.
- Sophisticated Renaissance Fantasy: The Astrology, Necromancy, and Phytomancy of Melissa Scott's and Lisa Barnett's Point of Dreams, by Rob Gates
(4/9/01)
- Point of Dreams is at times a fantasy of manners, at other times a mystery, at yet other times a swashbuckler, and yet still poetic through it all. Indeed, the setting of the theatre, where much of the key action occurs, brings a lofty, almost Shakespearian sense to the whole piece.
- The Circular World of Victor Pelevin's Life of Insects, by Leah Cutter
(4/2/01)
- In The Life of Insects . . . the characters metamorphose from human to insect and back from sentence to sentence, sometimes pausing in a human-insect combination to emphasize the absurdities of life. It's a funny, satirical trip through post-Communist Russia.
- The Kinder Side of Vampirism: Nightwalker: Midnight Detective, by Erin Donahoe
(3/26/01)
- [Nightwalker] is a story about human (and in-human) interaction in a dangerous and violent world, and about love and heartache.
- Andy Duncan's Beluthahatchie and Other Stories: Where Folklore and Fantasy Meet, by Christopher Cobb
(3/19/01)
- Fantasist and folklorist, he takes premises that are not made up, or at least are not made up by Andy Duncan . . . and creates new and strange stories out of them, which nevertheless tell the truth about the way things happened.
- Harrowing Urban Fantasy: Robert Charles Wilson's The Perseids and Other Stories, by John Aegard
(3/12/01)
- If you had to sort Robert Charles Wilson's The Perseids and Other Stories into a bookseller's bucket, you'd probably reach for the one marked 'urban fantasy' . . . . But Wilson doesn't quite fit snugly alongside the feypunk set. His speculative territory is vast and impersonal and often chilling; far closer to Lovecraft than to de Lint.
- Fearful Desire: Jonathan Carroll's The Marriage of Sticks, by Mary Anne Mohanraj
(3/5/01)
- If you buy books for their magic, then I assure you that Carroll will give you plenty of it—both fantasy-type magic, and the magic of an elegant style, an unpredictable, gripping storyline, and compelling characters who make you think.
- The Avengers: The Kree-Skrull War: A Comic Book Classic Returns, by D. K. Latta
(2/26/01)
- Though comic books have long been considered, at best, a minor diversion, or fit only for kids, Hollywood movies and TV barely acknowledged there had ever been a [House Unamerican Activities Committee] until a few years after this story first saw print.
- Eagle Sage: Climax of David Coe's LonTobyn Chronicle, by Christopher Cobb
(2/19/01)
- Eagle Sage begins with Jaryd's discovery that war is coming. Having been without a familiar since his first hawk died, he gets much more than he expected, or wanted, when he binds to an eagle. An eagle binds to a mage only when the land is in great need, in time of war.
- Carla Speed McNeil's Finder: Sin-Eater, by Jed Hartman
(2/12/01)
- "Can you kill my husband for me?" That was the one question she never asked me. If she had, everything would have been different.
- Shadow of the Vampire Honors Nosferatu and the Men Who Made It, by Danyel Fisher
(2/5/01)
- In another movie, we might have been expected to take sides—to root for the moviemaker to succeed, perhaps, or to cheer for the lonely vampire. Instead, we look up at these towering giants, and empathize with the film crew.
- Playing with Archetypes, Archetypes at Play: Howard Waldrop's Dream Factories and Radio Pictures, by Christopher Cobb
(1/29/01)
- Waldrop treats the characters of movies as the property of our collective unconscious, a set of archetypes that he freely and outrageously re-imagines, showing us, in ways we could not have predicted, some of the meanings of our shared dreams.
- Frank Herbert's Dune: It can be filmed! A Review of the Sci Fi Channel Miniseries, by Fred Bush
(1/22/01)
- The "money shot" for a Dune film is a sandworm erupting out of the ground, mouth agape. The miniseries pulls it off in grand style: all I could do was sit there and gape . . . as I got my first glimpse of a worm. The shots of a tribe of Fremen on board a worm vanishing into the distance are haunting.
- The Coen Brothers' O Brother, Where Art Thou?: A Magically Real Odyssey, by Danyel Fisher
(1/15/01)
- The movie starts off ambitiously—the opening scene invokes the first few lines of the Odyssey. It is the second-most audacious opening of the year, after Magnolia's introductory sequence of astounding coincidences. Few films can deliver on that sort of promise, but O Brother does.
- Hopeful Cyberpunk: Anne Harris' Accidental Creatures, by C. J. Czelling
(1/8/01)
- What is Accidental Creatures? It is cyberpunk. It's also an intrigue, a romance, and a labor movement saga. Harris draws together three coming-of-age stories, the obligatory evil corporation, bizarre science, and a tribute to the Arsenal of Democracy.
- Ursula K. Le Guin's The Telling: A Celebration of Daily Life, by Christopher Cobb
(1/1/01)
- From its opening sentences onward, Ursula K. Le Guin's The Telling juxtaposes the grandeurs of space travel . . . with the vivid but subtle beauties of everyday life: its colors, smells, sounds, and tastes, its little rituals through which people order their lives and learn to touch one another.
- Queer Fear: Gay Horror Fiction, edited by Michael Rowe, by Greg Wharton
(12/25/00)
- The horror genre has long been almost exclusively the province of heterosexual writers and themes, stereotypically involving a male antagonist and female victim. Though there has been more writing in recent years that blurs the sexual orientation boundaries, there has never been an anthology of horror with all gay protagonists until Queer Fear.
- Ambiguous Reparations: Iain M. Banks' Look to Windward, by John Aegard
(12/18/00)
- Challenged only faintly from within, the Culture has turned its gaze outwards . . . to meddle in the affairs of lesser civilizations. Such meddling is always altruistic, but the quality of the Culture's intentions . . . cannot guarantee that these interventions will produce desirable results.
Look To Windward is built upon such a failed intervention.
- Of Gods, Monsters, and Myths: The Stories of Graven Images, edited by Nancy Kilpatrick and Thomas S. Roche, by Greg Wharton
(12/11/00)
- The stories span the ages from ancient to modern. . . . They represent an all encompassing world of belief through history, and the symbols and myths they continue to provide.
- Speculative Surfing: A Visit to Science-Fiction and Fantasy Webzines, by Christopher Cobb
(12/4/00)
- Semiprofessional publication has a proud history in the speculative fiction fan community, which has long produced "'zines" devoted to the genre. The advent of the world-wide web has spurred new creativity in the design and content of 'zines and enabled them to develop more sophisticated formats and to reach wider readerships than ever before.
- Unbreakable, by M. Night Shyamalan: Solid Suspense, by R Michael Harman
(11/27/00)
- David Dunne . . . is the sole survivor of a violent train wreck. He is shocked by his luck, but it doesn't seem to affect him very deeply at first—he has been having trouble with his marriage, doesn't have any friends, and sleepwalks through his days on the job as a stadium security guard.
- Red Planet: Hackneyed but Mostly Harmless, by John Halbert
(11/20/00)
- There is some irony to be found in the fact that the year 2000, for so long a symbol of the future, has been witness to some of the worst science fiction movies ever made. Red Planet raises the overall quality of such movies made this year, but only because the average was so abysmally low.
- 'We must learn to bend, or we break': The Art of Living in Guy Gavriel Kay's Sarantine Mosaic, by Christopher Cobb and Mary Anne Mohanraj
(11/13/00)
- All the interest of plot, character, culture, and moral theme that Kay creates for the reader of the Mosaic come together as beautifully as they do because Kay creates it all with an unwearying spirit of love for the spectacle of the world that he records.
- Vampires, Witches, and The Fate of the Soul: The Obsessions of Anne Rice, Together At Last: A Review of Merrick, by Jen Larsen
(11/6/00)
- Louis, that beautiful and haunted protagonist of Rice's very first vampire novel, Interview with a Vampire, finally emerges from the long shadow of Rice's "dark lover" Lestat, and becomes a major character once more. His humanish vulnerability and his physical appeal are suddenly drawn once again in vivid colors.
- First Chapter of an Epic: Rebel Sutra, by Shariann Lewitt, by R Michael Harman
(10/30/00)
- Rebel Sutra can be seen from two points of view. First, it is a fine novel, presenting the harsh planet Maya, the interesting people who inhabit that world, and a fast-paced, engrossing plot. Second, it gives us a glimpse of a much larger setting and plot: the future of the interstellar Flower Empire, ravaged for decades by civil war, depends on the events taking place on Maya, a world which has been separated from its imperial heritage for generations.
- Too Large for Its Own Good: Robert Silverberg's Second Majipoor Series, by David Randall
(10/23/00)
- Silverberg apparently wants to describe every corner of Majipoor, and the descriptions can blur into bulk and tedium. . . . but Majipoor is nevertheless a notable entry in the register of fantastic lands. It echoes not only (and most obviously, in the names of its rulers) the world-state of Imperial Rome, but also America's vast and expropriated expanses.
- Moments of Enchantment: The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: Thirteenth Annual Collection, edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling, by Christopher Cobb
(10/16/00)
- Through many different forms, the fantasy stories and poems in The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror pursue the moment of enchantment. Readers who go along on these brief, exquisite vision quests may share in the capturing of that moment.
- Brightly Burning: A dazzling display of fantasy, by Valerie Frankel
(10/9/00)
- Lavan draws his readers into the story by his sheer reluctance to be a hero.
- The Legend of Dragoon: Thoughtful fantasy, beautiful graphics, and gratuitous monster-slaying, by R Michael Harman
(10/2/00)
- The game is set in a world where every few millenia, new species emerge from the Divine Tree. Dragons, the 105th race, were once lords of land, sea, and sky, but in the modern age, are known only through myth.
- The Irresponsible Captain Tylor, by J. Alexander Harman
(9/25/00)
- The Irresponsible Captain Tylor is a rather satirical variant on the space opera formula common in anime TV series, in which a heroic captain and crew must save the human race from an encroaching alien empire. It begins with Tylor's enlistment in the United Planets Space Force, which he sees simply as a way to get free room and board and, eventually, a pension.
- James Morrow's The Eternal Footman, by Michael J. Jasper
(9/18/00)
- Ever since God died, Nora Burkhart has been having a rough life. After the death of her parents and her husband's fatal heart attack she learns that her son has been stricken with a seemingly incurable disease called abulia. All the while, the skull of God grins down on her mercilessly high above Earth. She can't seem to get away from all the death that surrounds her.
- C. J. Merle's Of Honor and Treason, by Christopher Cobb
(9/11/00)
- Of Honor and Treason tells the story of the education of two beings, one human, one alien, as they come to understand their honor as unselfish love and as they struggle to uphold it in spite of corruption around them.
- Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, by Jen Larsen
(9/1/00)
- As she moves deeper into the story line, Rowling is necessarily moving from the laying of narrative groundwork into the meat and heart of the series. The entire book has a feeling of heat lightning in the air; there is the sense of impending climax, of new heights and twists. Harry's world opens up—physically and emotionally. As Rowling's plot expands, Harry's world widens, and he's growing up.
All material in Strange Horizons is copyrighted to the original authors and may not be reproduced without permission. Violators will be prosecuted.
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