How to Live Safely In a Science Fictional Universe
I read about this book awhile ago. It was a story about a time machine repairman, who owns a non-existent dog. It also happens that his mom is stuck in a one-hour time loop, living the same Sunday dinner over and over and over. Also the protagonist’s (who just happens to be named Charles Yu just like the author) dad may have invented time travel. Oh, and Charles also killed his future self, so he’s wondering when his present will catch up to the past, where he gets shot. I read that premise and thought, wow, that sounds like a book full of great fun ideas. It looked like a fun book. I need to read that.
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Sword of Fire and Sea
I, like any decent purveyor of story critiques, am an author-hopeful. Once, about ten years ago and near the beginning of my writing “career”, I came up with the idea of evil monsters that could travel through shadows to get where they wanted. I thought at the time how creepy and cool something like that could be, and that I might actually use these shadow beasts in a story someday. That is, until a good friend of mine suggested that doing so might not be such a great idea because the bad guys could just wait until night time (or ANY time/place that it got dark) pop in on our heroes, slaughter the lot of them, and then take over the world. End of story. I’ve moved on since then. This novel felt like it hadn’t.
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The Magician King
Many people have strong feelings about Lev Grossman’s 2009 book THE MAGICIANS (Amazon). It’s inspired no small amount of passion—both for and against. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the book, it tells the tale of Quentin Coldwater, a young man who’s about as diehard of a Narnia fan as you can get. (Except of course Narnia isn’t actually Narnia. It’s called Fillory—but the parallels are too strong for there to be any doubt in the reader’s mind.) He’s a genius, extremely gifted, and kind of a major self-obsessed jerk. You know—like a lot of teenagers you know, except Quentin really is a genius. But he hates his life, and he wishes more than anything that Fillory were real, and that he lived there, instead.Read the rest of this review »
Midsummer Night
Gill, former Olympic track hopeful, ends her running career after a life-changing car accident as well as a relationship with her trainer-boyfriend. Julianna, world-famous sculptor, is on the verge of bankruptcy as the result of not having sold a single work for the last fifteen years. It’s at Julianna’s remote British estate where their stories merge. Gill rents the little cottage on the grounds with the intent to recover in some peace and quiet. At the same time Julianna is hosting a summer art school, and plans to muddle through somehow and keep the creditors at bay.
It’s during a stroll through Cairndonan Estate’s extensive grounds that Gill inadvertently walks into the Otherworld—and a man follows her out.
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All the Lives He Led
Frederik Pohl’s GATEWAY (Amazon) is one of my favorite Science Fiction books from the Golden Years. I read it during a stint of trying to find out what made a good Science Fiction story. That was a tough row, let me tell you, but I definitely liked that book and remember it from all the rest. So, when I saw a new Pohl book pop up on our list of those available, I took on it—hoping that I’d find another instance of good Science Fiction.
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Variant
Ever since we started this lovely little blog we’ve found our horizons broadened. Out of necessity–and due to our unwavering commitment to be being completely awesome–we read a pretty much everything that is sent to us. If we had to point at one area where our appreciation has grown significantly, it would be with YA novels.
That brings us to Robison Wells and his first major novel, VARIANT (Amazon). It is completely awesome. Why? Because we said so.
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Perfect Shadow
Brent Weeks‘ immensely popular Night Angel Trilogy (Amazon) was published in quick succession. Readers had all three of his debut books on hand, devoured them, and then had to wait for his next novel. While imperfect, it was easy to see Weeks’ potential for spinning a good yarn. THE BLACK PRISM (EBR Review) has been released since then, but Weeks did take a little time to go back to the world he started out with, and gives us a novella about the assassin Durzo Blint.
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Vortex
VORTEX (Amazon) is the latest novel by author Robert Charles Wilson. I’ve been a rabid fan of Wilson’s ever since his Hugo-winning SPIN (Amazon). After that novel I went out and read four or five of his previous novels and I’ve read everything he’s written since. He doesn’t always hit it out of the park, like he did in SPIN, but he never fails to be entertaining.
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2011 Hugo Ballot
Well, this Sunday (the 31st of July) is the deadline for Hugo voting. We cast our individual ballots (well, those of us eligible anyway), but we figured we should let you all know what we picked, why we picked them, and where there were differences of opinion if there were any. If you don’t see a category on here, it’s because we didn’t vote in that category.
Here we go!
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Never Knew Another
When you read a lot of novels, there comes a time when you need something… different. No farmboys who are destined to become the savior of the land. No elves or dwarves. No schools of wizards. No epic stories that plod along for 82 bajillion pages. Typically when the menu calls for something like this, Subterranean Press is the best place to go. But lately, it seems like Night Shade Books has the kind of story that is needed.
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