Previous SFF Author: Samantha Shannon
Nisi Shawl is a writer of science fiction and fantasy short stories and a journalist. She is the co-author (with Cynthia Ward) of Writing the Other: Bridging Cultural Differences for Successful Fiction. Her short stories have appeared in Asimov’s SF Magazine, Strange Horizons, and numerous other magazines and anthologies.
CLICK HERE FOR MORE STORIES BY NISI SHAWL.
I admired Nisi Shawl’s alternate history fantasy Everfair (2016) more than I loved it, and I admired it a lot. Shawl creates an African country at the turn of the 20th century, a country that could have existed, and gives it challenges, troubles, and magic.
Everfair starts in 1889. In Europe, the Fabians negotiate with the king of Belgium, Leopold II, to purchase land in Africa adjacent to Leopold’s personal colony, the so-called Congo Free State.
Marion Deeds´s rating: 4.5 | Nisi Shawl | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 5 comments |
“Report” by Donald Barthelme (1967, originally published in the New Yorker, free at Jessamyn.com (reprinted by permission), also collected in Sixty Stories)
“Our group is against the war. But the war goes on. I was sent to Cleveland to talk to the engineers. The engineers were meeting in Cleveland. I was supposed to persuade them not to do what they were going to do.”
“Report,” by Donald Barthelme,
Magic City: Recent Spells edited by Paula Guran
Things you should know:
1. This is a reprint anthology. If you read a lot of anthologies in the field, you will probably have read some of these before. I had read three, though two of them were among the best ones, and I enjoyed reading them again.
2. It still has some worthwhile stuff in it, especially if you’re a fan of the big names in urban fantasy (Jim Butcher, Carrie Vaughn, Patricia Briggs) and haven’t read these stories before.
Mike Reeves-McMillan | A.C. Wise, Alan Dean Foster, Amanda Downum, Angela Slatter, Caitlín R. Kiernan, Carrie Vaughn, Catherynne M. Valente, Charles De_Lint, Christopher Barzak, Delia Sherman, Diana Peterfreund, Elizabeth Bear, Emma Bull, Holly Black, Jim Butcher, John Shirley, Jonathan Maberry, Nancy Kress, Nisi Shawl, Nnedi Okorafor, Patricia Briggs, Scott Lynch, Simon R. Green | Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Previous SFF Author: Samantha Shannon
I might say "formulaic" actually.
Your review made me curious, so I looked this book up. Sure enough: Tor. Tor seems to specialize in these…
It's a tightrope act for sure.
[…] Stuart (2 December 2015). “Roadside Picnic: Russian SF classic with parallels to Vandermeer’s Area X | Fantasy Lit…. fantasyliterature.com. Retrieved 8 […]
yes, I mean, there are certainly lots of good sci-fi/fantasy novellas out there, so they aren't impossible to do, but…