Reviews and Articles in General Publications

§ The Onion's A.V. Club Nov 11
Keith Phipps reviews Neil Gaiman and Yoshitaka Amano's The Sandman: The Dream Hunters (DC/Vertigo): ''Yoshitaka Amano's illustrations, a seamless combination of the contemporary and the traditional, perfectly complement the graceful prose, itself a similar combination.'' On the same page, Tasha Robinson reviews Al Sarrantonio's anthology 999 (Avon). Earlier Joshua Klein reviewed Jonathan Lethem's Motherless Brooklyn (Doubleday); the review is archived on this page.

§ CNN, Nov 10
Michael Crichton is profiled.

(Fri 12 Nov 1999)

§ CNN, Nov 9
L.D. Meagher reviews The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction: The Fiftieth Anniversary Anthology (Tor), edited by Edward L. Ferman and Gordon Van Gelder, with the latter's name misspelled ''Van Vetter'' in the text of the review.

§ Salon Nov 8
Fay Weldon's five great novels about exploitation include Philip K. Dick's The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch and Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale.

§ Washington Post Book World Nov 7
Adam Mazmanian reviews Jonathan Lethem's Motherless Brooklyn (Doubleday).

§ London Times Nov 7
Peter Ingham reviews Terry Pratchett's The Fifth Elephant (Doubleday UK). ''Above all, it is a cracking comic thriller.''

Nonfiction reviews this week:
§ Washington Post Book World: Edwin M. Yoder Jr. reviews Robert Crowley's anthology of counterfactual essays What If? (Putnam), and James Reston Jr. reviews Dava Sobel's Galileo's Daughter (Walker).
§ New York Times: Robert Osserman reviews Simon Singh's The Code Book; and Michiko Kakutani reviews Neil Postman's Building a Bridge to the 18th Century: How the Past Can Improve Our Future (Knopf): ''Such flaky ideas, combined with Postman's patronizing tone and often irrational pronouncements, undermine the few common-sensical things he has to say in this book about the unreckoned consequences of technology and the virtues of skeptical intelligence -- things he has said before and said better in earlier books.''

(Tue 9 Nov 1999)

Bestseller Watch, 9 November

William Gibson's All Tomorrow's Parties (Putnam) rises one to #7 on the San Francisco Chronicle list but drops one to #9 on Amazon's hardcover fiction list. It leads Amazon's SF bestsellers, and is among NYT hardcover fiction also-rans at #25.

Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson's Dune: House Atreides (Bantam Spectra) drops one to #13 at NYT, drops off the LAT and SFC lists, but rises nine to #6 on Amazon's hardcover fiction list. It's #2 on Amazon's SF bestseller list.

Stephen King's Hearts in Atlantis remains solidly on the NYT (#9), WP (#9), and Amazon (#10) lists, but has dropped off the LAT list. Kurt Vonnegut's Bagombo Snuff Box has reappeared on the LAT list at #11 after two weeks off.

Amazon's SF bestsellers, after Gibson and Herbert/Anderson, are by R.A. Salvatore, Michael Crichton, Neal Stephenson, and Orson Scott Card.

Barnes & Noble's SF bestsellers are led by Crichton, followed by Herbert/Anderson, Salvatore, and Card.

This week's WP list is confusing; it ranks the Harry Potter books in positions 2-3-6 (nearly as high as they rank on most other lists), with ''weeks on list'' for each as 2, 4, and 3 (for the second, third, and first books respectively); yet none of them appeared on last week's list. Is ''weeks on list'' not consecutive? Or does WP keep changing its rules about whether or not to count YA books on the hardcover fiction list? In a remarkable numerological coincidence, the Harry Potter books occupy the same places, 1-2-4, on the NYT, LAT, SF Chronicle, USA Today, and Amazon Hot 100 lists when checked (though not in the same order, and with different books in 3rd place); they're 2-3-5 on Barnes & Noble's Top 100 (Amazon and B&N as of Tuesday morning).

Links to the Bestseller lists:

LAT | NYT | SF Chronicle | USAT | WP | PW
Amazon | Amazon UK | B&N | Borders

(Tue 9 Nov 1999)