Author: LocEditor

Those Beyond the Wall, Micaiah Johnson (Del Rey ‎ 978-0593497500, hardcover, 384pp, $28.99) March 2024

It seems safe to say that the evergreen SF trope of a high-tech city or culture besieged by low-tech outsiders or “barbarians” goes back at least to H. G. Wells’s The Time Machine (1895) with its depiction of the Eloi and the Morlocks. Of course, Wells had myriad historical examples to inspire his conception, ...Read More

The Morningside, Téa Obreht (Random House 978-1984855503, hardcover, 304pp, $20.00) March 2024

Is the New Weird still a going concern? Dating roughly from the turn of the century (China Miéville’s Perdido Street Station is the Monolith that enlightened the hominid readers), with the term itself harking to the year 2002 (courtesy of M. John Harrison), the subgenre with famously leaky borders and hazy definitions is approaching its 25th birthday. ...Read More

The Stars Turned Inside Out, Nova Jacobs (Atria 978-1668018545, hardcover, 320pp, $27.99) March 2024

With the loss (hopefully not permanent) of Gregory Benford’s talents to a medical incident a bit over a year ago, the SF field was deprived of perhaps the most accomplished voice in depicting the reality of “doing science.” His masterpiece, Timescape, is of course the most salient example of that mode, but the steeped-in-the-academy-and-the-laboratory ...Read More

Tomorrow’s Children, Daniel Polansky (Angry Robot 978-1915202857, trade paperback, 384pp, $18.99) February 2024

Postapocalypse tales don’t get any grimmer or funnier, more slambang or more nuanced, more hopeful or more despairing, than Daniel Polansky’s Tomorrow’s Children. If that catalog of virtues sounds oxymoronic, please restrain your doubts. Polansky’s accomplished novel is large and contains multitudes, and foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of a small mind.

This is my ...Read More

Equimedian, Alvaro Zinos-Amaro (Hex 979-8988082712, hardcover, 326pp, $31.99) February 2024

I would venture to guess that most SF fans know Alvaro Zinos-Amaro as one of our best critics and interviewers. Case in point is his recent volume, Being Michael Swanwick, which I reviewed on this platform just a short time ago. But like Green Arrow or Hawkeye, the man has more than one arrow in his quiver. (I ...Read More

Beggar’s Sky, Wil McCarthy (Baen 978-1982193188, hardcover, 320pp, $28.00) February 2024

Wil McCarthy has had an atypical career that is almost neatly bifurcated. He came out of the gate strong with a duology, Aggressor Six, from 1994-1996. With the dawn of a new century, he delivered an even better, more mature and inventive series, Queendom of Sol (2000-2005). But then, for whatever reason, he fell more or less ...Read More

Exordia, Seth Dickinson (Tordotcom 978-1250233011, hardcover, 544pp, $29.99) January 2024

Seth Dickinson’s Baru Cormorant trilogy, known collectively as The Masquerade, was a splashy debut, earning him many accolades and fans. So when his next book, “a gonzo space opera and alien techno-thriller” titled Exordia, was announced in 2018, excitement grew. Six years later, after some public wistful wondering as to when the book would actually appear, Exordia finally ...Read More

The Best Horror of the Year: Volume Fifteen, edited by Ellen Datlow (Night Shade 978-1949102727, trade paperback, 432pp, $19.99) January 2024

“Curation” is an overworked word these days, when, on the internet, everything from a collection of Pez dispensers to an Instagram stream of dinner photos is deemed to be “curated.” And yet there’s really no better term to be applied to an assemblage of art put together by ...Read More

The Glass Box, J. Michael Straczynski (Blackstone 979-8212007795, hardcover, 350pp, $25.99) January 2024

We are lucky that Mr. Straczynski—hereafter, the familiar JMS—has taken some time off from his comics and television work to gift us with a fine new novel. Considering also his heavy duties administering the estate of Harlan Ellison—I for one eagerly await the reprinting of Dangerous Visions and Again, Dangerous Visions, and the birth of ...Read More

Short, Michael Blumlein (Subterranean Press 978-1645241522, hardcover, 424pp, $45.00) December 2023

Long, Michael Blumlein (Subterranean Press 978-1645241539, hardcover, 360pp, $45.00) December 2023

For many years, I saw Michael Blumlein regularly at Readercon. We had pleasant chats, for he was congenial, simpatico, funny, and smart. Then one year I asked him if he were returning to the West Coast immediately after the con. “No, we’re going to Rhode Island ...Read More

HIM, Geoff Ryman (Angry Robot 978-1915202673, trade paperback, 366pp, $18.99) December 2023

The subgenre of SF that deals with religion is a copious, healthy, and growing one, albeit not as large as some branches of fantastika. From del Rey’s “For I Am a Jealous People!” to Blish’s A Case of Conscience; from Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land to Russell’s The Sparrow; from Bishop’s “The Gospel According ...Read More

Collected Ogoense and Other Stories, Rebecca Ore (Aqueduct Press 978-1619762480, trade paperback, 222pp, $20.95) November 2023

Aqueduct Press reaches its twentieth anniversary in 2024. Helmed for all these years by the talented and dedicated L. Timmel Duchamp, the firm has—under the rubric of “Bringing challenging feminist science fiction to the demanding reader”—offered a wide range of stellar fiction and nonfiction that any of the Big Five would have been ...Read More