Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

Month: October 2015

The Monstrous: You can’t go wrong with Datlow

The Monstrous edited by Ellen Datlow

Whenever I see Ellen Datlow’s name as editor on the cover of an anthology, I know I’m in good hands. Datlow has a made a thirty-plus year career of choosing good stories and developing collections that take different aims at the theme. The theme of The Monstrous is monsters, and Datlow makes sure to explore all facets of that word with this mostly-reprint anthology from Tachyon Press.

There are twenty stories in the book. One is original to the anthology.

October 12th, 2015. Marion Deeds´s rating: 4 | A.C. Wise, Caitlín R. Kiernan, Carole Johnstone, Ellen Datlow, Gardner Dozois, Gemma Files, Glen Hirshberg, Jeffrey Ford, John Langan, Peter Straub, Sofia Samatar | Horror, Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |

Two Years, Eight Months, and Twenty-Eight Nights: Magical realism with folktale feel

Two Years, Eight Months, and Twenty-Eight Nights by Salman Rushdie

From the moment I started listening to Salman Rushdie’s new book, Two Years, Eight Months, and Twenty-Eight Nights, I was enchanted. I wasn’t sure what to expect, not ever having read a Rushdie book before, but his leisurely, indirect storytelling style reminded me of a fairy or folk tale, like the 1001 Nights that Rushdie cleverly takes his title from.

Two Years, Eight Months, and Twenty-Eight Nights tells the story of the jinnia Dunia,

Who Goes There?: An influential, entertaining novella

Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell, Jr.

Three mad, hate-filled eyes blazed up with a living fire, bright as fresh-spilled blood, from a face ringed with a writhing, loathsome nest of worms, blue, mobile worms that crawled where hair should grow…

John W. Campbell’s novella Who Goes There?, first published in 1938 in the magazine Astounding Science Fiction, formed the foundation for the thrice-made movie The Thing. John Carpenter directed the 1982 film starring Kurt Russell and it holds a significant place in my childhood memories as it was the first horror movie I was able to watch all they way through.

The Undying Monster: Film vs. Book

The Undying Monster by Jessie Douglas Kerruish

It was around five years ago that I had the pleasure of watching the 1942 horror thriller The Undying Monster on DVD. I was moderately impressed with the film, enough to write the following:

“B material given A execution” is how film historian Drew Casper describes 20th Century Fox’s first horror movie, 1942’s The Undying Monster, in one of the DVD’s extras, and dang if the man hasn’t described this movie to a T. The film,

GIVEAWAY! Ten copies of City of Blades by Robert Jackson Bennett

We are excited to announce a super Giveaway!

Fantasy Literature is working with Penguin Random House to give ten lucky winners with a US mailing address a copy of Robert Jackson Bennett’s newest fantasy novel, City of Blades, which will be released to the public in January.

2014’s City of Stars generated lots of buzz, making the short list of the Locus Awards among other honors. We loved it!

Now, Bennett returns to the world of Shara and Sigrud with a sequel set in another of the god-built cities.

October 10th, 2015. Marion Deeds | Giveaway! | 3 comments |

The Expanded Universe: Casual Othering and Literature of the Fantastic, Part 2

Welcome to another Expanded Universe column where I feature essays from authors and editors of fiction, poetry, and non-fiction, as well as from established readers and reviewers. My guest today is Gabrielle Bellot. Gabrielle Bellot grew up in the Commonwealth of Dominica. She has contributed work to Guernica, Autostraddle, Prairie Schooner’s blog, The Missouri Review’s blog, the JFR, and other journals, and she was featured on The Butter’s ‘This Writer’s On Fire’ column. Her work is forthcoming in the Caribbean Review of Books.

October 9th, 2015. Kate Lechler | Expanded Universe, Giveaway! | 3 comments |

Journey to the Center of the Earth: On the Edge

Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne

Et quacumque viam dederit fortuna sequamur
– And whatever route fortune gives, we shall follow

This IS your great-great-great-grandfather’s adventure story, so reader beware. There’s a lot of walking, a lot of exposition, and quite frankly, not a lot of action. But keep in mind… this is an original. Our modern day sensibilities expect high action out of our adventure stories: monsters, critters, thrill-a-minute. But in a much different time when society was in a much different state,

The Fifth Head of Cerberus: Three novellas about identity, memory, and colonization

The Fifth Head of Cerberus by Gene Wolfe

I don’t think I’m the only reader drawn to Gene Wolfe’s books — hoping to understand all the symbolism, subtleties, oblique details, unreliable narrators, and offstage events — and finding myself frustrated and confused, feeling like it’s my lack of sophistication and careful reading ability to blame. Wolfe is most famous for his amazing 4-volume THE BOOK OF THE NEW SUN dying earth masterpiece, which has a 1-volume coda called The Urth of the New Sun,

The Rim of the Morning: Great old school cosmic horror

The Rim of the Morning: Two Tales of Cosmic Horror by William Sloane

New York Review Books Classics has just packaged two novels by renowned author, editor and teacher William Sloane into a single offering, The Rim of the Morning: Two Tales of Cosmic Horror. Sloane is not an author I’d previously known, probably due to the fact that these stories are two of only three novels that he ever published. Stephen King contributes a short but impeccable introduction,

Dreams of Shreds and Tatters: Gradually, my suspension of disbelief eroded away

Dreams of Shreds and Tatters by Amanda Downum

I’m giving this book a lower rating than I expected to. Usually a 2.5-star rating from me means I found serious structural, character or writing problems with the book, and that’s not the case here. My low rating of Amanda Downum’s Dreams of Shreds and Tatters reflects the gap between my expectations and my experience. The writer did do a few things that jarred me out of the book, though, and I am going to discuss those.

Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

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