Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

Month: December 2016

Night Train Murders: Stunning horror, and the darkest Christmas movie ever made

Night Train Murders directed by Aldo Lado

Since watching Wes Craven’s The Last House on the Left (1972) more than 30 years ago, I have abided by my promise to never see this film again, it being truly one of the most repugnant that I’ve ever sat through. And yet, I didn’t as much mind Aldo Lado’s homage/remake/pastiche of three years later, Night Train Murders. As in the original, the film deals with the brutal rape and murder (inadvertent, in the Italian picture) of a pair of college girls by a trio of brutish thugs (in the latter film,

December 16th, 2016. Sandy Ferber´s rating: 4 | Film / TV, Horror | SFF Reviews | no comments |

Thoughtful Thursday: What’s your favorite fictional midwinter holiday celebration? (Giveaway!)

Even though he was born on a planet in a distant galaxy, and traveled billions of years and visited thousands of planets, Doctor Who manages to spend quite a few Christmases on Earth, usually near London. Whether it is the emergence of the 10th doctor (and the destruction of Harriet Jones’s political career), a fight with an arachnid queen from the center of the earth, or a retelling of A Christmas Carol on a planet where sharks fly, Doctor Who nearly always delivers a Christmas-themed episode.

The Doctor isn’t the only one.

December 15th, 2016. Marion Deeds | Giveaway!, Thoughtful Thursday | 12 comments |

The Glass Universe: How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars

The Glass Universe: How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars by Dava Sobel

Dava Sobel has long done great work in giving major events and people in science a compelling and engaging narrative, whether it be Nicolaus Copernicus in A More Perfect Heaven, Galileo and his daughter Suor Maria Celeste in Galileo’s Daughter, or John Harrison in Longitude. In her newest work, The Glass Universe: How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars,

December 15th, 2016. Bill Capossere´s rating: 4.5 | Non-fiction | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |

The Squares of the City: Addresses racism with a chess metaphor

The Squares of the City by John Brunner

In 1892, Wilhelm Steinitz and Mikhail Chigorin squared off in the finals of the World Chess Championship in Havana, Cuba. One of the deciding matches, so original in gamesmanship and rife with strategically interesting play, it has become one of the more well-known matches in history. (The game can be replayed virtually here and with analysis here.) Picking up on its nuances and seeing the potential, John Brunner decided to use the match to structure a novel.

WWWednesday: December 14, 2016

Only two more days until Rogue One; a Star Wars Story opens nationwide.

Giveaway:

I will announce the winner of the Giveaway from last week’s column on Sunday, December 18, in the comments section of that column. Thanks to everyone for your suggestions!

Awards:

You can vote here for the best digital comic of 2016. Thanks to File 770 for the link.

Stephen King thinks it’s just fine that Bob Dylan got the Nobel Prize,

December 14th, 2016. Marion Deeds | World Wide Wednesday | 2 comments |

Everfair: A history of a country that could have existed, with problems, power, magic

Everfair by Nisi Shawl

I admired Nisi Shawl’s alternate history fantasy Everfair (2016) more than I loved it, and I admired it a lot. Shawl creates an African country at the turn of the 20th century, a country that could have existed, and gives it challenges, troubles, and magic.

Everfair starts in 1889. In Europe, the Fabians negotiate with the king of Belgium, Leopold II, to purchase land in Africa adjacent to Leopold’s personal colony, the so-called Congo Free State.

The Dark Talent: The penultimate ALCATRAZ book

The Dark Talent by Brandon Sanderson

This review may contain mild spoilers for the previous books in the ALCATRAZ series.

Fans of Brandon Sanderson’s ALCATRAZ VS THE EVIL LIBRARIANS series have been waiting for six years for book five, The Dark Talent (2016), which was finally published a couple of months ago by Starscape (Tor’s children’s imprint). Recorded books brought back Ramon de Ocampo for the audio version that was released at the same time. As I mentioned in my review of the previous book,

The Shattered Lens: Metafiction for middle graders

The Shattered Lens by Brandon Sanderson

This review may contain mild spoilers for the previous books in the ALCATRAZ series.

The Shattered Lens (2010) is the fourth book in Brandon Sanderson’s hilarious middle-grade series called ALCATRAZ VS THE EVIL LIBRARIANS. The first four books were originally published by Scholastic but Starscape (Tor’s young readers imprint) has recently re-issued the series in lovely hardback editions illustrated by Hayley Lazo. The long-awaited fifth volume, The Dark Talent,

The Chessmen of Mars: Fun and lively

The Chessmen of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs

Editor’s note: This title can be purchased free on Kindle.

The Chessmen of Mars, Edgar Rice Burroughs’ fifth JOHN CARTER novel out of eleven, first appeared in serial form in the magazine Argosy All Story Weekly from February to April 1922. It is easily the best of the Carter lot to this point; the most detailed, the most imaginative, and the best written. Carter himself only appears at the beginning and end of the tale.

Arcanum Unbounded: A must-have for Sanderson fans

Arcanum Unbounded: The Cosmere Collection by Brandon Sanderson

Brandon Sanderson’s Arcanum Unbounded: The Cosmere Collection (2016) is a collection of stories that, save for one, have all been published elsewhere, and are here rebundled in one easy-to-find collection. Adding value beyond convenience, the collection adds illustrations and mini-prologues (written by a familiar character) offering up details for each of the planetary system settings in Sanderson’s fictional universe, and each story is followed by a short essay by Sanderson explaining the story’s provenance. Usually with collections,

Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

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