Reviews and Articles in General Publications

§ Salon, December 23, 1999
Polly Shulman profiles Connie Willis -- ''Connie Willis, curmudgeon, book addict and philosopher, writes with a devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other'' -- with reviews of Bellwether, Miracle and Other Christmas Stories, Doomsday Book, and To Say Nothing of the Dog. Apparently this is the first of a monthly column on science fiction, alternating with columns on cookbooks, poetry, and mysteries.

§ Denver Post, December 12, 1999
Connie Willis's latest book is reviewed by Candace Horgan.

§ CNN December 23
L.D. Meagher reviews Neil Gaiman and Yoshitaka Amano's The Sandman: The Dream Hunters (DC Comics). ''Readers who have followed Gaiman's work may be surprised by the turn he takes in 'The Sandman: The Dream Hunters'. They should also be delighted. The format allows him to beef up his prose and frees him from the constraints of the panel-by-panel structure imposed by comics. And the Amano illustrations breathe new life into the character of the Sandman while providing an appropriate context for the story.'' [Aside: artist Amano can be seen, playing a nonspeaking but crucial role, in the recent film version of William Gibson's ''New Rose Hotel''.]

Monday Meagher reviewed Les Daniels's Batman: The Complete History (Chronicle Books), and on December 7 reviewed John Baxter's Mythmaker: The Life and Work of George Lucas (Morrow).

§ Mythmaker
Other reviews: one by Peter McCarthy in the Washington Post, December 20; and one by David Ehrenstein in the San Francisco Chronicle, December 19.

§ San Francisco Chronicle, December 19, 1999
Michael Berry reviews two YA anthologies: Second Sight: Stories for a New Millennium (Philomel), and Tomorrowland: 10 Stories About the Future compiled by Michael Cart (Scholastic).

§ Film Score Monthly, December 7, 1999
A DVD holiday buyer's guide includes Universal's new edition of Tod Browning's 1931 Dracula. This is the version with the Philip Glass score, but of greater genre significance are two other features of the DVD: a documentary, ''The Road to Dracula'', by David J. Skal, and the complete Spanish-language version of the film, shot on the same sets but with a different cast and director, a version some scholars regard as superior to Browning's. The review notes that the Spanish version ''runs longer, is generally more explicit, and features sexier women!''

§ Amazon.com
Amazon asked several prominent SF & Fantasy authors about their favorite books of the year (not limited to SF/F, or even 1999). Authors are David Brin, Ben Bova, Anne McCaffrey, Terry Pratchett, Kathleen Ann Goonan, and Mercedes Lackey.

§ Hrdy
One of David Brin's picks, Sarah Blaffer Hrdy's Mother Nature: A History of Mothers, Infants, and Natural Selection, which re-examines the notion of the 'maternal instinct', was the subject of profiles recently in Salon and New Scientist.

§ January Magazine
If you're not already tired of best-of-century lists, check out the selections of several dozen authors in this Our Readable Century feature. Among Piers Anthony's choices: G. Legman's Rationale of the Dirty Joke: Analysis of Sexual Humor (1968).