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Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

Month: April 2015

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Norstrilia: The only novel set in the “Instrumentality of Mankind” universe

Norstrilia by Cordwainer Smith

I’ve always wanted to read the work of Cordwainer Smith (pen name of Paul Linebarger, a scholar and diplomat who was an expert on East Asia and psychological warfare), who also moonlighted as a quirky SF author who wrote a number of short stories mainly in the 1950s and 60s set in the Instrumentality of Mankind, a full-fledged galaxy-spanning far-future universe.

Smith has something of a cult following, but really only has a few books to his credit: the collected short stories that can be found in The Instrumentality of Mankind (1974),


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April 13th, 2015. ´s rating: | | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |

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Herland: A very fine feminist utopian novel with some real fantasy elements

Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Charlotte Perkins Gilman‘s Herland is a lost-world fantasy in the Haggardian tradition with a decided twist: It functions primarily as a discourse on the supposed but not necessarily actual differences between the two sexes, and as a feminist screed in the utopian genre. Written in 1915, the novel was initially serialized in the pages of Gilman’s own monthly magazine, The Forerunner, a publication whose main agenda was to further Gilman’s ideas of feminism and socialism.


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April 13th, 2015. ´s rating: | | SFF Reviews | 5 comments |

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The Quillan Games: Another exciting PENDRAGON story

The Quillan Games by D.J. MacHale

The Quillan Games is the seventh novel in D.J. MacHale’s PENDRAGON series. Bobby is now on Quillan, one of the most unappealing places we’ve been to so far. Here a large corporation called BLOK (think Wal-Mart) has price-busted everyone else out of business until BLOK basically owns and operates the entire territory. Everyone is poor (BLOK pays low wages) and they are merely surviving. But there is a way to get money. Kids who are willing to risk it, or who are sold off by their families,


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April 13th, 2015. ´s rating: | | , | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |

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Fifth Annual FOGCon + Giveaway!

Last month Marion and I attended FOGCon 5 in Walnut Creek, California (in the San Francisco Bay area) where I served on a panel called “When the Setting is a Character.” FOGCon, which stands for Friends of the Genre Convention, has a literary bent. Marion and I are going to discuss our experience here, and we’ve got a book to give away to a commenter.

Marion, what did you think of your first FOGCon?

Terry, I expected FOGCon to be fun because you recommended it, but this conference exceeded my expectations! From the Walnut Creek Marriott Hotel staff – consistently helpful,


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April 10th, 2015. and | , , | Giveaway! | 4 comments |

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Dandelion Wine: A perfectly-distilled small-town summer

Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury

Can you be nostalgic for a place you never lived in, for a time long gone before you were born? I certainly never lived in Waukegan, Illinois in the summer of 1928 as a 12-year old boy named Douglas Spalding, but Ray Bradbury has perfectly evoked a magical world of a long-lost Midwest small town as seen from the eyes of a bright, energetic young boy.

You would think small town life is fairly boring and uneventful, but in the lyrical hands of Bradbury,


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April 10th, 2015. ´s rating: | | | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |

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The Rivers of Zadaa: MacHale gets this series back on track

The Rivers of Zadaa by D.J. MacHale

With The Rivers of Zadaa, the sixth book in his PENDRAGON series for young adults, D.J. MacHale gets the series back on track after a disappointingly preachy fifth book. If you haven’t read the previous books, but plan to, I advise you to read no further in this review. It’s impossible to talk about The Rivers of Zadaa without spoiling some of the plot of the previous books.

This time Bobby and Saint Dane are battling it out on Zadaa,


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April 10th, 2015. ´s rating: | | , | SFF Reviews | no comments |

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SFF Speed Dating

In celebration of Kate‘s Saturday wedding, let’s cast a romantic eye toward our favorite fantasy/science fiction characters… Imagine a speed dating night… Picture a room filled with some of your favorite characters zipping from table to table, conversing a moment or two, then moving on at the ring of a bell to the next ever-hopeful romantic spirit. If we could eavesdrop on a conversation or two, what might we hear?

Feel free to give us one conversation or several.
I’ve started you off with one possibility below.

[Seated at the table:  Arwen]

Ding!


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April 9th, 2015. | Thoughtful Thursday | 9 comments |

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The Buried Giant: I Enjoyed It. Others Might Not.

The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro

I enjoyed it. Others might not. I suppose I could put that title on a lot of my reviews without sacrificing much for accuracy, but I mean it to be suggestive here that The Buried Giant is going to be a bit divisive. It’s a well-crafted book, certainly, and it has as much thematic heft to keep anyone happy, but whether or not it’s an appealing book may be a bit less cut-and-dried.

The story, in brief, is as follows: sometime in early British history,


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April 9th, 2015. ´s rating: | | , | SFF Reviews | 4 comments |

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Midnight Blue-Light Special: Distant relatives and dancing mice

Midnight Blue-Light Special by Seanan McGuire

Midnight Blue-Light Special (2013), book two in Seanan McGuire’s INCRYPTID series, wraps up some plot points, deepens some characters and expands the world of the stories. McGuire takes the expected “The Covenant Strikes Back” plot, but incorporates a few nice twists along the way.

The Covenant of St. George is a group dedicated to a “scorched earth” policy toward magical creatures, working hard to exterminate any cryptid race, no matter how harmless or,


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April 9th, 2015. and ´s rating: | | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |

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Slaves of Sleep: Not an E-Meter in sight

Slaves of Sleep by L. Ron Hubbard

Potential readers of L. Ron Hubbard‘s Slaves of Sleep who might be put off by the author’s association with the cult of Dianetics and Scientology need not be concerned here. This novel first appeared in Unknown magazine in 1939, more than a decade before Hubbard’s first Dianetics article was published (in Astounding Science Fiction) in May 1950. Thus, in Slaves of Sleep, there’s not a mention of “auditors,” “clears” or “E-meters” to be found.


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April 9th, 2015. ´s rating: | | | SFF Reviews | 6 comments |

Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

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