Author: LocEditor

The Grand Dark by Richard Kadrey (Harper Voyager 978-0-06-267249-0, $26.99, 432pp, hardcover) June 2019

The history, culture, folklore, politics and superstitions of Middle Europe — otherwise Central Europe or, more exotically, Mitteleuropa, countries including Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic, Austria, Slovakia, Slovenia, Hungary, Switzerland, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro, Serbia, the Republic of Macedonia, and Albania — offer a rich mine of narrative and thematic possibilities. The same goes for the lands ...Read More

Recursion by Blake Crouch (Crown 978-1-5247-5978-0, $27, 336pp, hardcover) June 2019

It’s easy to recognize a certain kind of technothriller bestseller, even one that’s skillfully done. The characters are not necessarily flat, but, for easy readerly absorption, they spring from readily identifiable societal niches: cop, businessman, housewife, general, terrorist. The language is pared down and highly cinematic, with lots of scenes plainly intended for the big screen. Not much introspection ...Read More

Million Mile Road Trip by Rudy Rucker (Night Shade Books 978-1-59780-992-4, $24.99, 504pp, hardcover) May 2019.

It’s been a highly productive year or so for Rudy Rucker. In August of 2018 he self-published the excellent Return to the Hollow Earth (review here). Now, only nine months later, from his new publisher Night Shade, comes Million Mile Road Trip, along with reissues of nine of his classics. Who says life ...Read More

Children of Ruin by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Orbit 978-0316452533, $15.99, 608pp, trade paperback) May 2019.

Adrian Tchaikovsky’s opener in this series, Children of Time, snapped up the Clarke Award for its year of publication, and it’s easy to see why. The book combines Stapledonian vistas with intimate human dramas, along with top-notch conceptualizations of an alien civilization. Toss in an Armageddon-extinction scenario, a generation starship, and a half-bonkers AI-posthuman godling, ...Read More

General Strike by Norman Spinrad (Self-published 978-1091528574, $7.00, 61pp, trade paperback) March 2019.

Outside the Gates by Molly Gloss (Saga Press 978-1534414983, $24.99, 128pp, trade paperback) January 2019.

Too Fat to Go to the Moon by Rob McCleary (Zero Books 978-1785352317, $13.95, 160pp, trade paperback) April 2019.

More Walls Broken by Tim Powers (Subterranean 978-1596068865, $25.00, 136pp, trade paperback) February 2019.

The widespread interest in—and production of—novellas continues apace. Large ...Read More

The Science Fiction Fanzine Reader: Focal Points 1930-1960, edited by Luis Ortiz (Nonstop Press 978-1933065670, $30.00, 406pp, tp) February 2019.

Luis Ortiz is editor and publisher at NonStop Press, which had its origins many years ago as NonStop magazine. He has compiled several valuable studies of various artists of the fantastic — Lee Brown Coye, Ed Emshwiller. Jack Gaughan — and brought us such goodies as the two-volume assemblage ...Read More

Finder, Suzanne Palmer (DAW 978-0-7564-1510-5, $26, 400pp, hardcover) April 2019.

The tropes and tools and furnishings of hardcore classical science fiction, as established and refined over the past hundred years or so, have proven remarkably durable, productive and adaptable. Humans colonizing the galaxy via FTL ships; robots and AIs; aliens; heroes and villains of operatic dimensions; new sciences and technologies; cosmic vistas. The apparatus and favored narrative strategies of ...Read More

The Man Who Walked Through Cracks: The Collected Short Fiction, Volume Five, R.A. Lafferty (Centipede Press 978-1613472026, $75, 360pp, hardcover) March 2019.

I last checked in with this essential series upon the release of Volume Three, reviewed at this very locale. All my praise, issued then, for sheer production values — and all my quibbles about the limited availability of such a fine series — still obtain, as does ...Read More