Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

Month: December 2015

The Voice From the Edge Volume 1: I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream

I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream: The Voice From the Edge Vol. 1 by Harlan Ellison

Probably everyone who knows anything about Harlan Ellison knows he’s a jerk (please don’t sue me, Mr. Ellison). I had to consciously put aside my personal opinion of the man while listening to him narrate his audiobook I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream: The Voice From the Edge Vol. 1. I was disgusted by some of these stories, but I have to admit that even though I suspect Ellison delights in trying to shock the reader with his various forms of odiousness (mostly having to do with sex),

Moon Called: A vulnerable, believable urban fantasy heroine

Moon Called by Patricia Briggs

Mercy Thompson is an anomaly: a female automobile mechanic who owns her own shop, half Native American, and ― in a world with werewolves, vampires, fae and other supernatural beings ― she is one of a very few “walkers,” or skinwalkers, able to easily shapeshift into a coyote at will, without regard to phases of the moon. When Mercy surprised her human mother by turning into a coyote pup when she was three months old, her mother, not knowing what else to do, turned her over to be raised by a werewolf pack.

Fantastic Romantics, Byron Edition

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 Terry Weyna, who has been on our staff since December 2010. Terry would rather be reading than doing almost anything else. She longs to be a full-time reviewer, critic, scholar and writer, but nonetheless continues to practice law as a civil litigator in California. Terry lives in Northern California with her husband, professor emeritus and writer Fred White, the imperious but aging Cordelia Louise Cat Weyna-White,

December 11th, 2015. Kate Lechler | Expanded Universe, Giveaway! | 7 comments |

A Stir of Echoes: Matheson’s first supernatural outing

A Stir of Echoes by Richard Matheson

Richard Matheson is an author who never seems to let me down. The first two novels that I read by the man, I Am Legend (1954) and The Shrinking Man (1956), are superb and highly original sci-fi creations, and both have been memorably filmed. (I seem to be in the distinct minority in preferring the 1964 U.S.-Italian coproduction The Last Man on Earth, starring Vincent Price, over 1971’s The Omega Man,

The Spine of the World: Never mind, bring back Drizzt

The Spine of the World by R.A. Salvatore

R.A. Salvatore’s The Spine of the World tries so hard that I actually feel a bit bad for giving it low marks. It’s akin to how I imagine a judge at a dog show must feel when sizing up that one dog who’s a bit too flaky for the event. It won’t stand on the podium or heel properly and it gets singed going through the fiery ring (this might be a good time to own up to the fact that I’ve never actually watched a dog show),

December 11th, 2015. Tim Scheidler´s rating: 2 | R.A. Salvatore | SFF Reviews | 8 comments |

Zombie Strippers: A surprisingly fine zombie comedy

Zombie Strippers directed by Jay Lee

Indulge me for a moment, please, as I quote myself from a recent review: “It can be a tricky balancing act, coming up with the perfect film in the genre known as the horror comedy; a picture that is hilariously funny while at the same time being truly scary. And while there is no shortage of films with a decidedly uneven ratio of horror::comedy — such as 1960’s The Little Shop of Horrors, 1974’s Young Frankenstein and 1975’s The Rocky Horror Picture Show — such films usually come off as pure comedies,

December 11th, 2015. Sandy Ferber´s rating: 4 | Film / TV, Horror | SFF Reviews | 8 comments |

Ink and Bone: Is a life worth more than a book?

Ink and Bone by Rachel Caine

Imagine a world in which the Library of Alexandria still existed, a world in which all of that accumulated knowledge and human history was still accessible to any literate person. That sounds pretty amazing, right? What most people might not take into account, however, is how drastically different that world would be from our own with the benefit of said knowledge and the attendant power given to its keepers. Ink and Bone, the first volume of a planned YA series by Rachel Caine,

WWWednesday: December 9, 2015

Awards

Is there some award or other every single week of the year? It sure seems like it. Here are some results from the Goodreads Best Of 2015. Trigger Warning by Neil Gaiman is Goodreads Best Fantasy of 2015. Golden Son by Pierce Brown is the best science fiction read, and Brian K. Vaughan’s SAGA won for best graphic novel.

Books and Writing

Kat mentioned that the audio-version of Lightspeed’s Women Destroy Science Fiction did not contain Kameron Hurley’s essay,

December 9th, 2015. Marion Deeds | World Wide Wednesday | 6 comments |

The Madonna and the Starship: Giant blue lobster aliens with a side dish of logical positivism

The Madonna and the Starship by James Morrow

Blue logical positivist lobster aliens give a prize to a writer of a scientific-minded kid’s show and plan to wipe out 2 million religious people from the face of the Earth. And don’t forget to drink your Ovaltine and eat your Kellogg’s Sugar Corn Pops, with the sweetenin’ already on it.

James Morrow‘s novella, The Madonna and the Starship, manages that delightful act of being a laugh out loud funny story at the same time that it intelligently deals with serious issues.

A Knot in the Grain: An engaging collection of five fantasies

A Knot in the Grain by Robin McKinley

I’m not sure if I bought this fantasy short story collection by Robin McKinley when I first saw it in the mid-1990s because McKinley was one of my favorite fantasy authors or because I was entranced by the cover art on the paperback, with the colorful contrast between the girl in a brilliant sapphire dress and the bright gold background of buttercups. Actually, at that time I was pretty much automatically buying everything McKinley wrote. Regardless, I very much enjoyed the collection of five fantasy short stories,

Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

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