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Thoughtful Thursday: What’s the best book you read last month?

It’s the first Thursday of the month. Time to report!

What’s the best book you read in May 2023 and why did you love it?

It doesn’t have to be a newly published book, or even SFF, or even fiction. We just want to share some great reading material.

Feel free to post a full review of the book here, or a link to the review on your blog, or just write a few sentences about why you thought it was awesome.

And don’t forget that we always have plenty more reading recommendations on our Fanlit Faves page and our 5-Star SFF page.

June 1st, 2023. FanLit | Giveaway!, Thoughtful Thursday | no comments |

WWWednesday: May 31, 2023

Neil Clarke, publisher and editor of Clarkesworld, is developing a Statement of Beliefs around the use of AI and LLMs in the world of writing. Here are his thoughts.

I’m sure it’s been at least a couple of weeks since I’ve published someone Best Of Something list, so here’s one; the 100 “best children’s books.”

Variety takes a moment to break down the costuming of Andor.

Karen Gillan “smuggled” her iPad into filming of GOTG3 and created an “unfiltered” behind-the-scenes video.

May 31st, 2023. Marion Deeds | World Wide Wednesday | 1 comment |

The Way Home: Beagle remains one of our most elegant of fantasists

The Way Home by Peter S. Beagle

This is a glorious month for Peter S. Beagle fans, with The Way Home (2023) offering up two novellas set in the same world as The Last Unicorn, and not one but two retrospective collections of stories: The Essential Peter S. Beagle: Volumes I and II. Even better, one of those two novellas is brand new and serves to show that Beagle remains one of our most elegant of fantasists.

The Whispering Gorilla & Return of the Whispering Gorilla: Attack of the 400-pound plumbutter

The Whispering Gorilla by Don Wilcox & Return of the Whispering Gorilla by David V. Reed

By my rough count, the publisher known as Armchair Fiction currently has, in its constantly expanding catalog, something on the order of 317 “double-novel” volumes for sale, not to mention its “single-novel” and short-story volumes. But of all those many two-novel volumes, which usually incorporate an unrelated pair of shortish but full-length pieces under one cover, the potential buyer would have to look long and hard to find a wackier pairing than is to be found in the publisher’s D-119: The Whispering Gorilla and Return of the Whispering Gorilla.

May 30th, 2023. Sandy Ferber´s rating: 4 | David V. Reed, Don Wilcox | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |

Sunday Status Update: May 28, 2023

Marion: I’m about one third of the way through Matthew Pearl’s 18-year-old novel The Bookaneer, which I’m liking more now that our narrator has arrived in Samoa and we’ve met Robert Louis Stevenson and his family.

Bill: Since our last update I read:

The Book That Wouldn’t Burn by Mark Lawrence: sure to be on my Best of ‘23 list
The Essential Peter S. Beagle: Volumes I and II by Peter S. Beagle: an excellent (no surprise) collection of Beagle’s short stories
Witch King by Martha Wells: A good fantasy with an intriguing set of characters
The Malevolent Seven by Sebastien de Castell: admittedly a bit disappointing though enjoyed parts
For the Love of Mars by Matthew Shindell: an interesting look at our changing thoughts about the Red Planet over time
The Ugly History of Beautiful Things,

May 28th, 2023. Tim Scheidler | Status Update | 1 comment |

Revival (Volume Two): Live Like you Mean It: The Small-town horror continues

Revivial (Volume Two): Live Like You Mean It by Tim Seeley (writer), Mike Norton (artist), Mark Englert (colors), and Crank! (letters)

Wasau, a small town in Wisconsin, is our locale for strange happenings in Revival: The dead are coming back to life. And not in some zombie-like fashion, either. In fact, if you did not know they were dead to begin with, and they had died fairly recently, you would not even know that they were dead watching them move around. There are also ghost-like figures in the woods,

May 27th, 2023. Brad Hawley´s rating: 4.5 | Comics | SFF Reviews | no comments |

The Malevolent Seven: Bitterness needs nuance

The Malevolent Seven by Sebastien de Castell

Sebastien de Castell’s 2023 antihero novel The Malevolent Seven has good magical action and lots of sarcastic banter. It has an emotionally tortured male main character in a world that is filled with suffering, death, betrayal and a sense of hopelessness that swamps every action. Generally, I enjoy de Castell’s work, but while this book had enough to keep me reading, ultimately, it doesn’t rank among my favorite works of his.

I say, “enough to keep me reading,” because I very nearly put this book down during the first 50 pages.

May 26th, 2023. Marion Deeds and Bill Capossere´s rating: 2.5, 3 | Sebastien De-Castell | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |

WWWednesday: May 24, 2023

Cora Buhlert shares her thoughts on the Nebula winners. Like me, she hasn’t read many of them. Unlike me, she’s probably going to.

The universe might be bigger on the inside.

There is a Dyson Sphere science fiction writing contest, hosted by the SciFiIdea Writing Center of Singapore. The deadline for submissions is August 31. The word count is 30,000 to 100,000. Yes, that’s what it says. Read the part about publication rights carefully. (Thanks to File770.)

Writer Beware shares another scam,

May 24th, 2023. Marion Deeds | World Wide Wednesday | 2 comments |

King Bullet: The monster finds his way

King Bullet by Richard Kadrey

With 2022’s King Bullet, Richard Kadrey brings the novel series about Hellion wizard James Stark, AKA Sandman Slim, to a conclusion. As Kadrey once said, Stark is a monster who wonders if he can become human. We readers figured out that answer a while ago, but in King Bullet, Stark faces the answer himself, along with an adversary who may defeat him once and for all.

L.A. (if not the USA and/or the world—we don’t know) is hunkering down in the throes of a devastating virus,

Deadly Memory: Walton writes the best dinosaurs

Reposting to include Bill’s new review.

Deadly Memory by David Walton

In 2023’s Deadly Memory, by David Walton, the challenges humanity faces have never been higher. A virus so deadly it can kill nearly every species on the planet is loose, and a pheromone-based drug that allows the wearer to dominate everyone who smells it is in the hands of authoritarians from more than one global power. The source of the substance, and the possible antidote to it, is hidden away,

May 22nd, 2023. Marion Deeds and Bill Capossere´s rating: 4.5 | David Walton | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |

All the Traps of Earth: Nine Expertly Told Stories From a Sci-Fi Grand Master

All the Traps of Earth by Clifford D. Simak

Looking back, it strikes me with some surprise that, up until very recently, I had not read any of sci-fi Grand Master Clifford D. Simak’s shorter work in over 40 years. Oh, I had read any number of the author’s novels during those four decades, but since reading his 1968 collection So Bright the Vision back in 1981, none of his work of a shorter length. Coming to my rescue in this regard was the Wisconsin-born writer’s All the Traps of Earth,

WWWednesday: May 17, 2023

SFWA announced the 2023 Nebula winners on Sunday. R.F Kuang took home Best Novel for Babel; C.L. Polk’s Even Though I Knew the End won for Best Novella; Jon Chu won the Best Novelette award for “If You Find Yourself Speaking to God, Address God with the Informal You.” “Rabbit Test,” by Samantha Mills, won for Best Short Story.

I think I’ve posted about the origin of the word “blurb” before, but LitHub’s article is so engaging I’m including it here.

You know what I was not remotely interested in?

May 17th, 2023. Marion Deeds | World Wide Wednesday | 2 comments |

The Book That Wouldn’t Burn: If you’re a reader, you’re bound to love it

The Book That Wouldn’t Burn by Mark Lawrence

A topical, deeply thoughtful, and wonderfully written love letter to books, to libraries, to the power of storytelling, to fantasy, and to epigrams, The Book That Wouldn’t Burn by Mark Lawrence will be appearing on my best of 2023 list at the end of this year. That’s not to say it’s perfect. After all, I now have to wait for book two in this new series. And, well, I don’t wanna wait. Me want. Me want now.

At nearly 600 pages,

May 16th, 2023. Bill Capossere´s rating: 5 | Mark Lawrence | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |

Corpus Earthling: Book vs. Film

Corpus Earthling by Louis Charbonneau

As revealed in David J. Schow and Jeffrey Frentzen’s essential reference book The Outer Limits: The Official Companion (1986), that TV series’ producer and co-creator, Joseph Stefano, was laboring with some pretty serious concerns before the airing of Season 1’s ninth episode, “Corpus Earthling.” To quote from the book: “’When “Corpus Earthling” was finished and the music added, I sat there wishing I could say don’t air this,’ said Joseph Stefano. ‘I had never thought it could be that scary,

The Ferryman: Recommended for everyone

The Ferryman by Justin Cronin

Justin Cronin burst onto the big scene with his apocalyptic vampire doorstopper The Passage (first of a trilogy), a fantastically harrowing blockbuster of a novel that still maintained amidst its action/thriller/horror aspects the quietly intimate elements of his earlier literary novels. His newest, The Ferryman, while not quite as strong and despite having a few more noticeable issues, shares some of the same strengths that made The Passage so successful, as I imagine this one will be.

The story takes place on an archipelago isolated from the rest of the world by something known as The Veil,

WWWednesday: May 10, 2023

File 770 asked SFWA to expand on the qualifications for the Infinity Award, and Rebecca Gomez responded. It seems clear to me but there is still plenty of room for discussion apparently.

The MTV Movie Awards were not live this year because of the WGA strike, but several performances “of genre interest” were nominated.

The Hollywood Reporter has an article about the strike and the issue the writers face with the studios. (Thanks to File 770.)

Guardians of the Galaxy 3 introduces a new character,

May 10th, 2023. Marion Deeds | World Wide Wednesday | 2 comments |

Darkness Below: A romp through dark academia with tentacles

Darkness Below by Barbara Cottrell

2023’s Darkness Below is the first book in Barbara Cottrell’s new THE SHADOWS OF MISKATONIC series. We’re heading into warmer weather, with the promise of road trips and vacations. Here’s a shivery tentacle-horror story for fans of Lovecraftia, complete with a sprinkle of dark academia on top, that’s perfect for the road or that lounge chair by the pool.

Ellen attends Miskatonic University and lives in the town of Arkham with her guardian, Uncle Joshua (who probably isn’t her uncle.) Ellen is a strong psychic whose past is a mystery.

G.O.G. 666: Taine’s Cold War Swan-Song Novel

G.O.G. 666 by John Taine

When famed Scottish mathematician Eric Temple Bell released his first novel, 1924’s The Purple Sapphire, no one could have foreseen that his literary career would extend 30 more years and encompass 15 books of very high-quality science fiction. Looking back on the eight books by Bell that I have read so far – all of them written under his pen name, John Taine – the thing that strikes me first is how very different each one is from the others.

Sunday Status Update: May 7, 2023

Apologies for a late update this week! We’re in the midst of some site maintenance and it was harder than usual to get the necessary tasks done.

Marion: I’ve been re-reading both Greg van Eekhout and Daryl Gregory; The CALIFORNIA BONES series, and Afterparty, which I think would make a great streaming series. Now I’m finally settling in with Simon Singh’s 1999 book The Code Book, which dumbs down a lot of fascinating mathematical information enough that even I can understand it.

May 7th, 2023. Tim Scheidler | Status Update | 3 comments |

The Possibility of Life: Science, Imagination, and Our Quest for Kinship in the Cosmos

The Possibility of Life: Science, Imagination, and Our Quest for Kinship in the Cosmos by Jaime Green

In The Possibility of Life, journalist Jaime Green takes us on an expansive and open-minded exploration of whether or not life may have formed elsewhere in the universe and if so, what that life might be like. If this were only that book, it would be well worth reading. But Green makes two choices that elevate her work beyond a good exobiology book easily recommended and into a fantastic medley of science,

May 5th, 2023. Bill Capossere´s rating: 5 | Non-fiction | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |

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Sandy Ferber on The Night Land: Quite grippingJune 1, 2023
COMMENT Experiencing this book, of all books, in an audio format would indeed be interesting! I can only imagine, Olle....
Olle Skogren on The Night Land: Quite grippingJune 1, 2023
I recently listened to the Libravox audiobook version of this one and completely agree with your assessment. The strange language…
Paul Connelly on WWWednesday: May 31, 2023May 31, 2023
I wish the media organizations publishing Best Of lists would commit to not including any works appreciably less than twenty…
Marion Deeds on The Whispering Gorilla & Return of the Whispering Gorilla: Attack of the 400-pound plumbutterMay 31, 2023
It IS pretty hard to bee Fuzziman.
Sandy Ferber on The Whispering Gorilla & Return of the Whispering Gorilla: Attack of the 400-pound plumbutterMay 30, 2023
Hey, they had ME at Roland Fuzziman! 😂

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