Month: March 2016

WWWednesday, March 23, 2016

Today’s word for Wednesday is one many of you already know. It’s incunabulum (in-cuh-nab-u-lum), a noun, meaning a printed book that was made before 1501. The word originates from the Latin noun incunabula, which meant swaddling clothes, from the words for “into” and “cradle.” The idea is that the cradle represents infancy, or the beginnings, of a thing. Thanks to the Oxford Dictionary site and Wikipedia.

Awards

Sir Terry Pratchett has been awarded the Kate Wilhelm Solstice Award by SFWA. The award is given to people who significantly influenced the science fiction or fantasy landscape.

March 23rd, 2016. Marion Deeds | World Wide Wednesday | 3 comments |

Adulthood Rites: Butler gives us plenty to think about

Adulthood Rites by Octavia Butler

Adulthood Rites (1988) is the second book in Octavia Butler’s XENOGENESIS trilogy. It continues the story of Lilith in Dawn (1987), a human woman revived by the alien Oankali centuries after humanity has mostly destroyed itself with nuclear weapons. The Oankali offered humanity a second chance, but at a price — to merge its genes with the Oankali, who are ‘gene traders’ driven to continuously seek new species in the galaxy to combine their DNA with,

The Best of Planet Stories, #1: A marvelous collection from an underappreciated pulp magazine

The Best of Planet Stories, #1: edited by Leigh Brackett

Beginning in 1937 and continuing on for a good dozen years, the pulp magazine Astounding Science-Fiction, under the editorship of John W. Campbell, was the most dominant and influential publication in its field. But that is hardly to say that it didn’t have competition for readers’ attention (and their 20 cents) at the newsstands. Planet Stories, which published its first issue in 1939 and folded in ’55 after 71 issues, was one such,

Dawn: Impressive and disturbing

Dawn by Octavia Butler

Dawn (1987) is the first book in Octavia Butler’s XENOGENESIS trilogy, written after her PATTERNIST series. By this point she had been writing challenging science fiction novels for a decade, and her writing craft and ideas had reached a high level.

Dawn is a very impressive book. Imagine that mankind has largely destroyed itself and the planet — it’s a fairly common doomsday scenario. But instead of the survivors scrabbling for survival,

Marion reports on FOGCon 2016

A few things make FOGCon different from other SFF conventions. One is its size; it’s a small convention, with probably not many more than 200 participants. FOGCon is very participatory, in the style of Wiscon; participants recommend panels, choose the final panels and volunteer as panelists. FOGCon is also unusual in that it always has a posthumous guest of honor, or as some folks say, “Ghost of Honor.” It’s held in Walnut Creek, California, in the San Francisco East Bay, close enough to Silicon Valley to be cool, and far enough away from it to be comfortable.

This year’s Ghost of Honor was Octavia Butler;

March 22nd, 2016. Marion Deeds | SFF Reviews | 4 comments |

Word Puppets: This entertaining collection shows the development of the writer

Word Puppets by Mary Robinette Kowal

Word Puppets is a collection of Mary Robinette Kowal’s short fictions. Fans of her GLAMOURISTS series will find not a single one in its pages, and many of these tales are science fiction, with several stories set on Mars. Patrick Rothfuss provides a humorous introduction, and tells us that these nineteen works are in chronological order. This gives the reader a chance to see Kowal’s development as a story-teller.

I am not going to review all nineteen.

Mossflower: Woodland creatures rebel against a cruel tyrant

Mossflower by Brian Jacques

Martin, a traveling warrior mouse, is accidentally caught up in a war between the wildcat Tsarmina, who rules over Mossflower Wood, and the gentle woodland creatures starving under her rule. The creatures have formed a resistance group, but most of them are farmers or weavers who lack the experience needed to fight Tsarmina’s army of stoats, weasels, and other assorted nasties. Once Martin joins the resistance, they may finally have a chance to win their freedom and drive Tsarmina out.

I loved Brian Jacques’ REDWALL series as a child,

The Hollow City: Complex, but still accessible

The Hollow City by Dan Wells

Love it or hate it, The Hollow City is a fast, whirlwind read that will completely devour your time.

Having not read any other of Wells’ books, I can’t say if having an untraditional lead character is normal for him, but following a protagonist who has been diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic is not normal for me. This divergence from the norm was incredibly welcome. Michael’s diagnosis brings another level of depth and confusion to the plot and helps push The Hollow City from interesting to fascinating as Wells seamlessly blends fantasy (Michael’s hallucinations) with reality.

SHORTS: Poe, Rinehart, MacDonald, Lien

Here are some of the short fiction works we read this week that we wanted to share with you.

“The Black Cat” by Edgar Allen Poe (1843, free online at Poe Stories, Kindle version)

I recently stumbled upon PoeStories.com and am pleased with the find. A Poe a day may well keep boredom at bay. The website helpfully gives descriptions of each story. I chose this one for the enticing simplicity of the summary: “a horror story about a cat”.

This is indeed a horror story about a cat,

Foundation: Psychohistory is a brilliant sci-fi concept

Foundation by Isaac Asimov

Hari Seldon is remembered for combining principles from psychology and history into “psychohistory,” a discipline that projects humanity’s course for thousands of years into the future. Psychohistory cannot very accurately predict the actions of individuals, but large groups are less random in their behavior. Unfortunately, Seldon’s calculations predict that the Galactic Empire will soon fall—and its dissolution will give way to thousands of years of barbarism.

Seldon is not cynical: he turns his attention to manipulating a course of events that will condense the coming Dark Ages and give rise to a reborn empire.

March 21st, 2016. Ryan Skardal and Kat Hooper´s rating: 4 | Isaac Asimov | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |

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