Paul Di Filippo

Weird Tales: 100 Years of Weird, edited by Jonathan Maberry (Blackstone 979-8200687992, hardcover, 200pp, $27.99) October 2023

I have yet to read any individual issue of the revived Weird Tales magazine, piloted by editor Jonathan Maberry. But I already know that this new periodical incarnation must be a class act, fully worthy of bearing forward into the future the celebrated name and lineage. My appraisal comes from enjoying this ...Read More

Being Michael Swanwick, Alvaro Zinos-Amaro (Fairwood Press 978-1958880142, trade paperback, 328pp, $20.95) November 2023

Consider the case of author Fran Leibowitz. Essentially the creator of a one- or two-book oeuvre, and featuring an absence of new publications over several decades, she is still sought-after for frequent interviews, and even had a recent documentary made about her by none other than Martin Scorsese: Pretend It’s a City (2020). Justifiably or ...Read More

The Whole Mess and Other Stories, Jack Skillingstead (Fairwood Press 978-1958880128, trade paperback, 334pp, $20.95) November 2023

Reading Jack Skillingstead’s second story collection drives home two things:

One: short stories remain the essential mode whereby fantastika can experiment and develop, while delivering exquisitely compact and powerful aesthetic experiences, much more so than the vast majority of novels, however competent and enjoyable the longer, baggier works might be. (If one ...Read More

This Island Earth: 8 Features from the Drive-In, Dale Bailey (PS Publishing 978-1786368973, hardcover, 266pp, $36.00) April 2023

When I first became lucky enough to find a publisher for my early story collections—the much-missed Four Walls Eight Windows, under John Oakes—I decided to make each volume a thematic assemblage. I had by then accumulated enough stories with prior magazine appearances to make such picking and choosing possible. The Steampunk ...Read More

The Wolfe at the Door, Gene Wolfe (Tor 978-1250846204, hardcover, 480pp, $29.99) October 2023

Arriving just a few months after the publication of The Dead Man and Other Stories (my Locus Online review here), this mammoth compilation from Tor Books also helps to ensure—by its high-quality catholic selection (pun entirely intentional)—that Gene Wolfe’s reputation will continue to be justifiably burnished for future generations. There can be no legacy without ...Read More

Jewel Box: Stories, E. Lily Yu (Erewhon 978-1645660484, hardcover, 336pp, $27.00) October 2023

Recently I had the good fortune to acquaint myself for the first time with a classic of fabulism: Japanese Fairy Tales, by Yei Theodora Ozaki. Witty, elegant, timeless yet timely, these stories aim straight at the human heart, mind and soul, and lodge therein like arrows variously tipped with balm and bane. And now, encountering ...Read More

Starter Villain, John Scalzi (Tor 978-0765389220, hardcover, 272pp, $28.99) September 2023

Graham Greene was fond of labeling some of his books as “entertainments,” implying that they were lighter, less serious, more pop-culture-oriented than his “novels.” Other artists have made similar distinctions, either implicitly or explicitly, switching from solemn works to less weighty ones and then back again. For instance, after the gravitas-laden Nebraska album, Bruce Springsteen chose to release ...Read More

Creation Node, Stephen Baxter (Gollancz 978-1473228955, hardcover, 448pp, £25.00) September 2023

Stephen Baxter’s latest foray into mind-blowing cosmic speculation, a truly satisfying “done in one,” features an enchantingly real cast of characters exploring our solar system (and beyond), commencing in the year 2255, and extending for decades of future history afterwards. However, the book is almost two different beasts in one skin. Up to Chapter 33, it’s one type ...Read More

Exadelic, Jon Evans (Tor ‎ 978-1250877734, hardcover, 448pp, $29.99) September 2023

The neologism that constitutes the title of Jon Evans’s mind-blowing new book (it’s the name of an all-powerful corporation) is certainly meant to conjure up echoes of “psychedelic,” and that allusiveness is substantiated by the over-the-top, enjoyably gonzo story itself. This off-the-rails, generously overstuffed, continuously surprising tale is what you might have gotten if Greg Egan had written ...Read More

Lessons in Birdwatching, Honey Watson (Angry Robot 978-1915202536, trade paperback, 312pp, $17.99) August 2023

In what appears to be her flying-out-of-the-gate debut novel, Honey Watson has essentially taken the territory that C. J. Cherryh staked out so brilliantly—humans and aliens communicating and miscommunicating across exotic scrims of politesse—and imbued it with New Weird stylings and gonzo action sequences to create something truly fresh and arresting. So if you anticipate ...Read More

A Second Chance for Yesterday, R.A. Sinn (Solaris 978-1786188274, hardcover, 320pp, $24.99) August 2023

This provocative, assured, compelling debut novel proves to be the work of two collaborating authors hiding very traceably behind a publisher-disclosed pseudonym. They are Rachel Hope Cleves and Aram Sinnreich, who also happen to be siblings. While SF has boasted many intrafamilial partnerships, I cannot recall a previous brother-sister duo, and I stand in awe ...Read More

The Great Transition, Nick Fuller Googins (Atria 978-1668010754, hardcover, 352pp, $27.99) August 2023

This debut novel from Nick Fuller Googins, whose previous fictional outings have occurred in The Paris Review and other literary journals, is a cli-fi, hopepunk romp jampacked with ideas, energy, attitude, and action. Its themes are urgent and vital, and all the parts of its realtime future hang together cohesively and ingeniously. But before you can ...Read More

The Best of Michael Swanwick, Volume Two, MIchael Swanwick (Subterranean Press 978-1-64524-112-6, hardcover, 536pp, $50) July 2023

Is it too soon to assess the career magnitude of those writers who debuted in the 1980s? That era, after all, close as it seems to some of us, is forty years gone, offering us long track records of publication to peruse and also a certain lofty vantage from the year 2023. ...Read More

Jackal, Jackal, Tobi Ogundiran (Undertow Publications 978-1988964430, trade paperback, 318pp, $19.99) July 2023

Well do I recall the birth of Undertow Publications in 2009. Right from the start, they manifested themselves as a classy, uncompromising, smartly curated firm. Now, scores of books later, that presentation remains a reality. (Curiously enough, they have published only one original novel since then—Mary Rickert’s The Shipbuilder of Bellfairie, in this manner concentrating ...Read More

Ready When You Are and Other Stories, Barry N. Malzberg (Stark House Press 979-8886010473, trade paperback, 164pp, $14.95) July 2023

This accomplished, provoking, and masterful new collection from the legendary Malzberg is comprised of twenty stories not previously featured in any of his other dozen or so assemblages. With many another writer, this remit might signal a kind of barrel-scraping maneuver. But in a writer of Malzberg’s stature and ...Read More

The Dead Man and Other Horror Stories, Gene Wolfe (Subterranean Press 978-1-64524-120-1, hardcover, 400pp, $50.00) June 2023

It is so thrilling and rewarding to have a new book from the death-lost pen of Gene Wolfe. The man passed away in 2019, and soon thereafter left us a last posthumous novel (Interlibrary Loan [2020]), but even the recency of those occurrences is beginning to seem like distant ages past. ...Read More

Airside, Christopher Priest (Gollancz 978-1399608831, hardcover, 304pp, £22.00) May 2023

By my rough count, Airside is Christopher Priest’s twentieth novel, all accumulated since 1966, when his first short story “The Run” saw print in Impulse magazine. Incredibly, it appears less than a year after the previous sterling example, Expect Me Tomorrow (which I reviewed in these same pages). More incredibly—but still living up to my expectations—it’s a major work ...Read More

The Woods of Arcady, Michael Moorcock (Tor 978-0765324788, hardcover, 496pp, $32.99) June 2023

I have always thought that, considered purely as a phrase, William Maxwell’s Time Will Darken It is one of the most poetically philosophical titles in literature. Surely it would be a fitting rubric for Michael Moorcock’s ongoing series The Sanctuary of the White Friars. At age 83, Moorcock is looking down from a ruminative vantage ...Read More

Pennies from Heaven, James P. Blaylock (PS Publishing 978-1786368843, trade paperback, 304pp, $21.00) December 2022

I find it incredibly hard to believe that so many years have passed. But databases don’t lie. The Internet Science Fiction Database informs me that PS Publishing issued its first title in 1999—and since then has produced nearly one thousand more! That is some kind of dramatic major milestone for any small press, as ...Read More

Dual Memory, Sue Burke (Tor ‎ 978-1250809131, hardcover, 352pp, $29.99) May 2023

A small plucky polity full of rebellious freethinkers, under siege by outside aggressors, is led to victory by a quirky Artificial Intelligence eager to assist its humans, using asymmetric warfare. Of course, that’s Heinlein’s The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, right? Right, but not in today’s particular case. Because we are talking about Sue Burke’s fourth ...Read More