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Friday 28 December 2007

•   Locus Magazine: Sample Reviews

Mark R. Kelly reviews Best American Fantasy

Locus Magazine features over two dozen reviews in its December 2007 issue. Here's Mark R. Kelly on Best American Fantasy, edited by Ann & Jeff VanderMeer.

baf

Best American Fantasy isn't your father's best-of-the-year fantasy anthology. At turns pretentious, baffling, and engaging, its nevertheless unique perspective on what fantasy is, and the scope of its sources, makes it a valuable new entry in the overcrowded field of annual surveys of fantasy and SF.

Rich Horton reviews Tesseracts Eleven

And here's Rich Horton on Tesseracts Eleven, edited by Cory Doctorow & Holly Phillips.

tesseracts 11

Tesseracts, of course, collects only new stories by Canadian writers (Canadian sometimes defined a bit loosely). Any such volume insists on the question: is there anything different, unique, about Canadian SF? Each editor suggests, tentatively, an answer. Cory Doctorow, after admitting a certain skepticism about the necessity for a separate Canadian (or, in context, Australian) SF, opines that Canadian SF gets other cultures right more often than American SF.

Wednesday 19 December 2007

•   Feature:

Yesterday's Tomorrows: James Tiptree, Jr.

Graham Sleight's "Yesterday's Tomorrows" column from Locus Magazine looks at classic works by James Tiptree, Jr.

james tiptree jr

So far as I can remember, I've always believed that James Tiptree, Jr. was a woman... I was in the position of seeing that Tiptree's gender had been problematic for others without having that problem myself. (Or so I thought.) I'm sure that almost everyone now reading Tiptree must be aware of who she really is; and for many, like me, it seems there never was a veil to be torn aside.

Sunday 16 December 2007

•   Feature:

Gary Westfahl reviews I Am Legend

i am legend

The protagonist of the latest film version of I Am Legend, Robert Neville (Will Smith), speaks for himself, for actor Smith, and for Hollywood in general when he says that "I don't like surprises," and there are none to be found in this entertaining but utterly predictable film.

Wednesday 5 December 2007

•   Feature Review:

Howard Waldrop and Lawrence Person review
Futurama: Bender's Big Score

futurama bbs

Now, at long last, Futurama is back in the form of Futurama: Bender's Big Score, the first of four direct-to-DVD movies. A lot of plot in this one depends on returning to the past while the pizza is still hot. Trust us.

Tuesday 27 November 2007

•   Locus Magazine: Sample Reviews

Gary K. Wolfe reviews Christopher Barzak

Locus Magazine features over two dozen reviews in its November 2007 issue. Here's Gary K. Wolfe on Christopher Barzak's debut novel One for Sorrow.

barzak

Christopher Barzak, in his elegant and moving first novel One for Sorrow, manages to avoid most of the pitfalls of the [ghostly romance] form while taking full advantage of its emotional energy and its potential for illuminating visceral real-world issues such as family, identity, and alienation. ...It's one of the strongest first novels I've seen this year.

Russell Letson reviews Richard K. Morgan

And here's Russell Letson on Richard Morgan's novel Black Man, published in the US as Thirteen.

morgan

Richard Morgan's fifth book is a blood-and-guts adventure that keeps pausing to ask questions about its characters' actions and motives and to make suggestions about the roots of human (or inhuman) violence and social connection.

Monday 26 November 2007

•   Feature Review:

Howard Waldrop and Lawrence Person review The Mist

the mist


Though this is only the third best of Frank Derbont's King adaptations, it is the best adaptation of a straight King horror work since Carrie. ...This is an exceptionally good and unusually disturbing horror film.

Sunday 25 November 2007

•   Editorial Review:

Mark R. Kelly reviews Jerome Bixby's The Man from Earth

man from earth

It's a decent little film, best seen as a play that happens to have been filmed -- it's a lot of talk, and mostly set inside a single room -- and the SFnal premise is identical to the secret-immortal theme of Bixby's Star Trek TOS episode "Requiem for Methuselah".

Thursday 8 November 2007

•   Locus Magazine: Cory Doctorow Commentary: Creative Commons


cory doctorow

Since 2003, the Creative Commons movement has ridden a worldwide revolution in creativity and sharing, inspiring the authors of over 160 million copyrighted works to adopt a "some rights reserved" approach that encourages sharing, remix, and re-use of their works.

Tuesday 6 November 2007

•   Feature:

Gary Westfahl reviews Martian Child

martian child


...a film that gives viewers both something to cry about and something to think about, a film that both science fiction fans and their mundane friends can thoroughly enjoy, albeit for different reasons.

Thursday 18 October 2007

•   Feature:

Yesterday's Tomorrows: Cordwainer Smith

Graham Sleight's "Yesterday's Tomorrows" column from Locus Magazine looks at classic works by Cordwainer Smith.

cordwainer smith

Strangeness, said John Gardner, is the one thing in fiction that cannot be faked. Strangeness is, famously, the defining characteristic of Cordwainer Smith's science fiction, and a good deal of ink is expended in the introductions of the books explaining where that strangeness comes from. (I may be about to do the same.)

Tuesday 2 October 2007

•   Feature:

Howard Waldrop & Lawrence Person review The Nines

The Nines

The film falls far short of its ambitions. However, perhaps the primary pleasure is the explication of those ambitions, of revealing what the film is actually about. Rather than spoil that, we're going to have to nibble around the edges in telling you what's wrong.

Wednesday 26 September 2007

•   Locus Magazine: Sample Reviews

Gary K. Wolfe reviews Robert Charles Wilson

Locus Magazine features over two dozen reviews in its September 2007 issue. Here's Gary K. Wolfe on Robert Charles Wilson's new novel Axis -- sequel to Hugo Award winner Spin.

wilson

Wilson has always been drawn in two directions at once: his concern with plausible, human-level dramas of community, family, and character on the one hand, and his attraction to whomping large-scale SF concepts on the other.

Faren Miller reviews Brian W. Aldiss

And here's Faren Miller on Brian W. Aldiss' novel HARM.

aldiss

The long-running battles of science vs. religion, tyranny vs. revolution, play out on Stygia as well as Earth, and HARM offers keen insights into human nature and the ways of the cosmos as a whole.

Sunday 23 September 2007

•   Feature: John Shirley looks back at Soylent Green

soylent green


It was fashionable to make fun of the film. Yet except for the tech, which was outdated within a few years of the movie, it was not far from our coming reality.

Tuesday 4 September 2007

•   Locus Magazine: Cory Doctorow Commentary

Free(konomic) E-books

cory doctorow

Can giving away free electronic books really sell printed books? I think so. The problem with reading off a screen isn't resolution, eyestrain, or compatibility with reading in the bathtub: it's that computers are seductive, they tempt us to do other things, making concentrating on a long-form work impractical.

Thursday 30 August 2007

•   Locus Magazine: Sample Reviews

Gary K. Wolfe reviews Connie Willis

Locus Magazine features over two dozen reviews in its August 2007 issue. Here's Gary K. Wolfe on Connie Willis' retrospective collection The Winds of Marble Arch and Other Stories.

willis

Connie Willis is, of course, the premier humorist working in SF today, possibly the premier humorist the field has ever produced. And her favorite subject is death.

Faren Miller reviews Brandon Sanderson

And here's Faren Miller on Brandon Sanderson's novel The Well of Ascension.

sanderson

What happens after you bring down the Dark Lord of the Evil Empire? That's the question Brandon Sanderson tackles in The Well of Ascension, middle book in what will be the Mistborn trilogy.

Tuesday 21 August 2007

•   Feature:

Yesterday's Tomorrows: Robert A. Heinlein

Graham Sleight's "Yesterday's Tomorrows" column from Locus Magazine looks at classic works by Robert A. Heinlein.

robert a. heinlein

Rereading Heinlein's stories now in conjunction with those of his contemporaries is to be struck by how much he was in command, right from the start. He somehow found, or brought into being, a language for describing the future so much more sophisticated than anything else that had been seen. How could you not pledge allegiance to it? Watching his emergence in those first few stories must have been like seeing an adult walking into a room full of children.

Sunday 19 August 2007

•   Feature:

Gary Westfahl reviews The Invasion

Invasion

One could reasonably expect that this latest version of the story will have something new to say about what contemporary people see as the greatest threat to their personal liberty. Clearly, that question was very much on the minds of screenwriter David Kajganish and director Oliver Hirschbiegel, and their consistently interesting film provides at least three answers for the attentive viewer.

Monday 13 August 2007

•   Feature:

Howard Waldrop & Lawrence Person review Stardust

Stardust

This is a nice, light romantic fantasy that's reasonably faithful to Neil Gaiman's original novel. You'll laugh in the right places, you'll tear up in the right places, and it's a good date movie. At this point in the dog days of summer, that's more than enough.

Monday 30 July 2007

•   Feature:

Howard Waldrop & Lawrence Person review The Simpsons Movie

simpsons

For all intents and purposes, this is a 90-minute Simpsons episode, specifically of the "Homer does something amazingly stupid and must do something even more amazing to atone for it" variety... Moreover, it's The Simpsons hitting on all cylinders circa seasons 4-9, rather than the more hit-or-miss nature of the recent years.

Sunday 29 July 2007

•   Locus Magazine: Sample Reviews

Gary K. Wolfe reviews Michael Chabon

Locus Magazine features over two dozen reviews in its July 2007 issue. Here's Gary K. Wolfe on Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union.

chabon

Chabon's setting is drawn from alternate-history SF, his plot from police procedurals, his dialogue and many of his characters from Chandleresque hard-boiled fiction, and much of his humor from the Jewish-American novel, and he even offers up bits of international conspiracy thrillers and endtime narratives.

Faren Miller reviews Emma Bull

And here's Faren Miller on Emma Bull's novel Territory.

bull territory

Emma Bull looks back at events leading up to the notable clash of Earps and Clantons in Tombstone, Arizona Territory, 1881. Her version is close enough to modern times, with its railroads, telegrams, daguerreotype photos, and serialized "penny dreadfuls," yet beneath the boomtown expansionism and familiar crises like shootings and stagecoach robbery lurk far older forces, occult powers for good or ill.

Monday 23 July 2007

•   Feature:

Gary Westfahl reviews Sunshine

sunshine

Sunshine is probably the most involving and exciting spacesuit film ever made, and even if you don't understand exactly what is going on (which, as will be discussed, may occur all too frequently), you'll keep watching attentively, eager to see what happens next.

Wednesday 18 July 2007

•   Feature Essay:

Revisiting The Twilight Zone, by Gary Westfahl

twilight zone

The Twilight Zone remains on the air today, forty-three years after its last original episode was aired. What, one must ask, is so special about this series? Why does it remain such compelling viewing for millions or people, many who were not even born when the series first aired? The answer, it occurred to me today, can be summed up in one word: tragedy.

Monday 16 July 2007

•   Locus Magazine: Cory Doctorow Commentary

The Progressive Apocalypse and Other Futurismic Delights

cory doctorow

Science fiction writers aren't the only people in the business of predicting the future. Futurists spill a lot of ink, phosphors, and caffeinated hot air in describing a vision for a future where we'll get more and more of whatever it is they want to sell us or warn us away from. There's a lovely neologism to describe these visions: "futurismic." Futurismic media is that which depicts futurism, not the future.

Tuesday 3 July 2007

•   Editorial Blog: Preview of Danny Boyle's SF film Sunshine

Like many a big-budget SF film before it, Sunshine is cinematically impressive but conceptually hollow. It's an SF film made by filmmakers who know SF only from other SF films.

Friday 29 June 2007

•   Locus Magazine: Sample Reviews

Gary K. Wolfe reviews The New Space Opera

Locus Magazine features over 40 reviews in its June 2007 issue. Here's Gary K. Wolfe on a new original anthology from editors Gardner Dozois and Jonathan Strahan.

new space opera

While The New Space Opera may not settle any arguments about definition — although the stories by McDonald, Egan, MacLeod, Daniel, Reynolds, and Simmons seem to me to provide the most valuable checkpoints and to make the most resonant use of the effects that NSO is capable of generating — it's by any measure a strong and provocative anthology and almost certainly one of the defining original anthologies of the year.

Nick Gevers reviews David Anthony Durham

And here's Nick Gevers on David Anthony Durham's novel Acacia: Book One: The War with the Mein.

durham acacia

What is striking about The War with the Mein is the expert precision with which Durham maps the so tangible "real world" of our present onto fantastic territory normally regarded either as escapist or as broadly allegorical.... [It's] a political novel of large impact, as radical a rewriting of Martin as Martin himself has performed on Tolkien. Rarely has medieval epic been quite this pertinent.

Monday 25 June 2007

•   Feature:

Howard Waldrop & Lawrence Person review 1408

1408

Howard Waldrop: Ever been scared by a Carpenters song? You will be.

Lawrence Person: Of all the haunted hotel novels based on a Stephen King story, this is easily the second best (or first, depending on your opinion of Stanley Kubrick's The Shining.)

Monday 11 June 2007

•   Feature:

Yesterday's Tomorrows: Isaac Asimov

Graham Sleight's "Yesterday's Tomorrows" column from Locus Magazine looks at classic works by Isaac Asimov.

isaac asimov

When I went back to Asimov in my 20s, I found his work pallid and unsatisfying next to the authors I had read since, in SF and outside. He seemed too hung-up on demonstrating a narrow kind of cleverness in his work, and too committed to that that kind of cleverness as a sufficient tool for understanding everything that humans might run into in their lives. So I approached re-reading him in 2006 with a certain amount of ambivalence. To put it crudely, if I thought his SF was so deficient, why do so many other people continue to find it satisfying?

Thursday 31 May 2007

•   Locus Magazine: Sample Reviews

Graham Sleight reviews John Crowley

Locus Magazine features over 40 reviews in its May 2007 issue. Here's Graham Sleight on John Crowley's new novel Endless Things...

crowley endless things

It goes without saying that Endless Things is gracefully written, beautifully characterised, moving, and thought-provoking. ... It's borderline fantastic, for those who mind about such things, in the same way its predecessors were. Indeed, one way of describing what it's about is that it's an enormously full description of how we make stories, and fantasies in particular.

Gary K. Wolfe reviews Ken MacLeod

And here's Gary K. Wolfe on Ken MacLeod's new novel The Execution Channel.

macleod execution channel

The British catastrophe tradition to which MacLeod refers has come a long way from the droughts and triffids and grass plagues of the 1950s, thanks in part to J.G. Ballard, and Ballard's decadent mediascape is also echoed in the grim conceit that gives MacLeod's novel its title — an anonymous satellite newsfeed that broadcasts nonstop executions and tortures from all over the world. (And how far is YouTube from that already?)

Saturday 26 May 2007

•   Feature Essay:

Gary Westfahl's Confessions of an Accidental Encyclopedist considers how SF and fantasy are different from other forms of literature, how the two genres are nevertheless the same, and how circumstances beyond an editor's control can shape the content and message of a work like The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy.

...Science fiction and fantasy are best regarded as the collective products of a group intelligence at work, not as sets of stories produced by isolated geniuses. In this respect, again, science fiction and fantasy are at odds with the characteristic approaches of other literary critics, who tend to select certain superior writers, designate them as the "canon," and devote their attention only to this chosen few....

Wednesday 16 May 2007

•   Locus Magazine: Cory Doctorow Commentary

In Praise of FanFic

cory doctorow

Culture is a lot older than art — that is, we have had social storytelling for a lot longer than we've had a notional class of artistes whose creativity is privileged and elevated to the numinous, far above the everyday creativity of a kid who knows that she can paint and draw, tell a story and sing a song, sculpt and invent a game.

Saturday 12 May 2007

•   Feature:

John Shirley reviews 28 Weeks Later

28 weeks later

28 Weeks Later assumes that the authorities are as dangerous as the monsters. The monsters represent unbottled emotion; the authorities represent cold, unmodulated logic. And it's no accident that the auxiliary bad guys in 28 Weeks Later are Americans. Clearly, in the minds of these European film makers, they're George Bush Americans.

Monday 7 May 2007

•   Tribute: Jamie's Hand Prints , by Jack Slay, Jr.

Saturday 5 May 2007

•   Letter from Michael Bishop

Saturday 28 April 2007

•   Letters: Reactions to Marleen Barr

Two final opinions on this matter, from Virginia Tech alumni Kathleen Ann Goonan and Carl Glover

Thursday 26 April 2007

•   Letters: Reactions to Marleen Barr

Two more letters, by USC neuroscientist Dr. Joe Miller and by David B. Williams, respond to Marleen Barr's letter about last week's Virginia Tech shooting massacre.

Tuesday 24 April 2007

•   Letters: Readers react to Marleen Barr

Mike Deckinger, Patrick Daly, T.M. Moore, and David Soyka react to Marleen Barr's "deliriously demented", "disturbing and bitter", "impassioned", and "refreshingly different perspective" letter about last week's Virginia Tech shooting massacre.

Sunday 22 April 2007

•   Feature: Letter from Marleen Barr

Marleen Barr, who taught at Virginia Tech for 14 years, writes passionately about last week's shooting massacre, about alienation and estrangement, and about the writing and teaching of extreme genre fiction.

Tuesday 17 April 2007

•   Anniversary

locus online, 1997
Today is the 10th anniversary of Locus Online. Here's a brief history of the website, with links to highlights from the past decade, and homepage captures from 21 October 1997, 1 April 2000, 28 May 2001, and 8 March 2005.

Monday 16 April 2007

•   Feature:

Yesterday's Tomorrows: Frederik Pohl & C.M. Kornbluth

Graham Sleight's "Yesterday's Tomorrows" column from Locus Magazine looks at classic works by Frederick Pohl & C.M. Kornbluth.

frederik pohl

Start as you mean to go on. Frederik Pohl & C.M. Kornbluth's The Space Merchants (1953) kicks off on a note of such breezy cynicism that it's impossible to resist: "As I dressed that morning I ran over in my mind the long list of statistics, evasions, and exaggerations that they would expect in my report."

Monday 9 April 2007

•   Feature:

Howard Waldrop & Lawrence Person review Grindhouse

grindhouse


This film is a hoot and a half, and accomplishes everything it sets out to do, which is to craft a loving homage to the look and feel of the "grindhouse" films of the seventies.

Monday 2 April 2007

•   Feature:

Howard Waldrop & Lawrence Person review The Last Mimzy

the host


This is a deeply frustrating film. The less you know about Lewis Padgett's (Kuttner and Moore's) story, the more this movie will work for you. Maybe.

Sunday 1 April 2007

•   Feature Stories:

Neil Gaiman One Step Closer to Sainthood

neil gaiman
The Roman Curia has completed the beatification of Neil Gaiman, reports L. Ron Creepweans.

Excellence in SF Awards to be Honored

The Organization of Award Recognition has announced the establishment of the Dimension Award, a prize for excellence in science fiction and fantasy awards, reports Marshal Gegith.

Re-Creative Makes Genre Writers Useful

Buffo Tuelth explains how Re-Creative, Inc. helps writers from Howard Waldrop to Gene Wolfe be productive and earn cash while writing.

K.J. Anderson's Hostile Bid

Veteran Locus Online reporter Paoli du Flippi explains Kevin J. Anderson's bid to take over Larry Niven's Known Space franchise.

Rejection Makes Writers Sexier

Rejection slips stimulate libido, according to nine-year study jointly funded by the Institute for the Study of Sexual Behavior and the Science Fiction Writers of America, reports C.J. Klempest.

News Roundup

Also in the news today: an ultimate Year's Best Anthology, Anna Nicole Smith, Judith Regan's new position at Tor Books, and Sci Fi Channel's real stargate.

Wednesday 28 March 2007

•   Locus Magazine: Sample Review

Russell Letson reviews Jack Vance

Locus Magazine features over 40 reviews in its March 2007 issue. Here's Russell Letson on The Jack Vance Treasury, edited by Terry Dowling and Jonathan Strahan.

jack vance treasury

It's long past time to rediscover Jack Vance — again. The selection showcases most of Vance's characteristic modes and moods: out-and-out fantasies, science-fantasy, relatively hard science fiction, and that hard-to-categorize variety of fantastic tale that can only be called "Vancean."

Monday 26 March 2007

•   Feature:

Howard Waldrop & Lawrence Person review The Host

the host

This is a solid monster movie that happens to have been made in Korea, nothing more, nothing less. The science is stupid (as it usually is), the government attempts to contain the monster are woefully incompetent (as they usually are), and the script and acting are above average (as they usually aren't).

Sunday 18 March 2007

•   Update -- Locus Magazine: Cory Doctorow Commentary

Readers respond to Cory Doctorow's essay You Do Like Reading Off a Computer Screen

Saturday 17 March 2007

•   Locus Magazine: Review by Faren Miller

Faren Miller reviews Patrick Rothfuss

Locus Magazine features over 40 reviews in its March 2007 issue. Here's Faren Miller on a first novel by Patrick Rothfuss.

patrick rothfuss

Reviewers swiftly acquire a healthy skepticism about pre-publication hype, but that needn't mean death to the sense of wonder. Even a doorstop-size debut from a familiar genre publisher, first in a high-fantasy trilogy with what seems to be the usual apparatus a Young Man of Destiny, a University for wizards, Words of Power, Magical Accessories, etc. -- can provide surprise and delight in equal measure. Not very often, maybe, but The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss turns out to be just as good as the galley blurb says it is.

Wednesday 14 March 2007

•   Locus Magazine: Cory Doctorow Commentary

You Do Like Reading Off a Computer Screen

cory doctorow

There's a persistent fantasy/nightmare in the publishing world of the advent of very sharp, very portable computer screens. In the fantasy version, this creates an infinite new market for electronic books, and we all get to sell the rights to our work all over again. In the nightmare version, this leads to runaway piracy, and no one ever gets to sell a novel again. I think they're both wrong.

Monday 12 March 2007

•   Feature:

Howard Waldrop & Lawrence Person review 300

300

This is a good, but not great, ancient war film, with just enough touches of the fantastic, including a demonic dire wolf, a prophetic oracle, and humans too grotesque looking (more on that latter) for even the most outlandish bits of pre-history (such as men not just with filed teeth, but actual fangs), to justify a review here.

Wednesday 28 February 2007

•   Features: Yesterday's Tomorrows: Graham Sleight

Graham Sleight's "Yesterday's Tomorrows" column from Locus Magazine looks at classic works by Philip K. Dick.

philip k. dick

No author in SF, not even James Tiptree, Jr, is as impossible to "just read" as Philip K. Dick. As much as reviewers or readers might like to think that they assess books on what's between the covers and nothing else, you can't be in SF's culture and not know some of the facts of Dick's life, or speculate about how they bore on his fiction....

Wednesday 21 February 2007

•   Locus Magazine: Review by Nick Gevers

Nick Gevers reviews Mary Gentle

Locus Magazine features over 40 reviews in its February 2007 issue. Here's Nick Gevers on Mary Gentle's novel Ilario: The Lion’s Eye.

mary gentle

The extraordinary gender sensitivity and flexibility Ilario embodies, novel shades of sexuality at every turn, and new angles on plain old heterosexuality in the bargain — factor all that in, and Ilario is the foremost SF/fantasy novel of gender in quite a while.

Gary K. Wolfe reviews Ian McDonald's Brasyl

ian mcdonald

"Tupinipunk," an amalgam of cyberpunk and the name of an indigenous tribe, [is] characterized by "iconoclasm, sensuality, mysticism, politicization, humanism, and a Third World perspective". With his very enjoyable Brasyl, McDonald may have given us the first tupinipunk novel to appear from outside the borders of Brazil itself.

Monday 19 February 2007

•   Feature:

Howard Waldrop & Lawrence Person review Ghost Rider

ghost rider

Ghost Rider did manage to reach the one very low threshold of hope we had for it going in: That it would be better than The Wicker Man, Nicolas Cage's last film. And it is. But beyond that, Ghost Rider is, at best, a stunning mediocrity.

Wednesday 7 February 2007

•   Update: Locus Index to SF Awards

The Locus Index to Science Fiction Awards is now updated with all awards results through the end of 2006, plus 2007 nomination lists so far announced. Also new this year:
» Sections for two additional awards -- Sir Julius Vogel (New Zealand fan awards), and Carl Brandon (for works by/about people of color)
» The first online listing of the complete 2006 Locus Poll results
» Fixed paginations, and permalinks, implemented in indexes for Literary nominees, Art nominees, and Film/TV nominees

Monday 29 January 2007

•   Features: Yesterday's Tomorrows: Graham Sleight

Graham Sleight's first "Yesterday's Tomorrows" column from Locus Magazine looks at two classic novels by Alfred Bester: The Demolished Man and The Stars My Destination.

alfred bester, 1953

These two novels by Bester are both admired and loved in the SF field, I think rightly. Re-reading them as an adult is, inevitably, not the same as when you first encounter them (as almost everyone seems to have) at the age of 14. But Bester's ceaseless tug of story remains unstoppable, a force of nature...

Wednesday 24 January 2007

•   Locus Magazine: Review by Faren Miller

Faren Miller reviews Joe Hill

Locus Magazine features over 40 reviews in its January 2007 issue. Here's Faren Miller on the first novel from Bram Stoker, British Fantasy, World Fantasy, and International Horror Guild Award winner Joe Hill.

joe hill

Heart-Shaped Box could be great movie fodder, but is this first novel also a good book? Though it becomes more lurid than my usual reading tastes, it eventually won me over again with a return to a less extreme view of both human and inhuman nature. When character development can survive a splashy gorefest, that's the sign of a work with staying power.

Friday 19 January 2007

•   Locus Magazine: Reviews by Gary K. Wolfe

Gary K. Wolfe reviews Stephen Baxter and Alastair Reynolds

Locus Magazine features over 40 reviews in its January 2007 issue. Here's a sample by reviewer and Hugo Award-nominee Gary K. Wolfe

stephen baxter


Here are the two most important things to keep in mind about future histories: they aren't histories, and they aren't about the future.

Monday 15 January 2007

•   Claude Lalumière's Best SF, Fantasy, and Horror of 2006

gene wolfe
Claude Lalumière selects titles by Alan Moore & Melinda Gebbie, Gene Wolfe, Mike Mignola, John Arcudi & Guy Davis, Paul Malmont, Carla Speed McNeil, Azhar Abidi, and Garry Kilworth.

Wednesday 10 January 2007

•   Locus Magazine: Cory Doctorow Commentary

Blogging Without the Blog

cory doctorow

When you want to update your website, you should be able to just update it. Set yourself up right, and changing your site will take about as much work as emailing your webmaster to ask her to update it. The big difference is you don't have to pay to update your site by yourself and you don't have to wait for the updates to go live.

Sunday 7 January 2007

•   Feature: Jeff VanderMeer's 2006: Twelve Overlooked Books

jon farmer Twelve books you may not have discovered in your journeys through the literary world in 2006 — by Conrad Williams, Ngugi Wa Thiong'o, John Clute, Jon Farmer, Wendy Walker, Gene Wolfe, Ben Peek, Therese Littleton, Don Webb, Art Spiegelman & Francoise Mouly, Kate Bernheimer, and Tove Jansson.

 

2006 Features Archive