This week’s word for Wednesday is a verb; to slounge. It is old Scots and means to hang about in the hope of getting some food. It can also be a noun, someone who is slounging can be called “a slounge.” Now I have a word for the squirrels in my backyard.
Books and Writing:
This article from Quartz looks at the prolific Isaac Asimov, who, it states, wrote 500 books in his lifetime, and tries to tease out writing lessons for all of us. Thanks to Ryan for this one.
January 25th, 2017. Marion Deeds | World Wide Wednesday | 9 comments |
The Silver Metal Lover by Tanith Lee
It’s unfortunate that Tanith Lee had to pass away for me to get the jolt of interest needed to read her work. The Silver Metal Lover (1981), one of her most loved works, is a story about an immature love that blossoms into a fully realized one, and about an immature girl who cries too often and falls in love too easily but blossoms into a strong-willed, independent woman. It’s a story about Jane, and her relationship with her robot lover,
January 25th, 2017. João Eira and Rebecca Fisher´s rating: 4 | Tanith Lee | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
Four Ways to Forgiveness by Ursula K. Le Guin
Ursula K. Le Guin is hardly afraid to tackle difficult topics. In fact, she delves into them with a fearless but controlled approach that forces us to look at painful subjects we may prefer not to. This time she is going straight for the jugular, exploring the sensitive subjects of freedom, slavery, oppression, sexual politics, and revolution. In the wrong hands this could easily become a heavy-handed polemic that might be unreadable.
However, Le Guin is far too skilled a writer to wield a cudgel — instead,
January 25th, 2017. Stuart Starosta´s rating: 4 | Ursula K. Le-Guin | Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
The Rising by Heather Graham & Jon Land
In The Rising (2017), Alex Chin is a rising star, the handsome blond quarterback of his high school football team, dating the head cheerleader. His Chinese adoptive parents are concerned about his grades not being good enough, and his nerdy tutor Samantha, a classmate with plans for a career at NASA, hounds him to work harder at school, while nursing a secret and seemingly hopeless crush on Alex. He also has strange dreams that cause him to fill a drawing pad with detailed drawings of a world filled with menacing machines.
January 24th, 2017. Tadiana Jones´s rating: 3.5 | Heather Graham | Young Adult | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
Nine of Stars (2016), Laura Bickle‘s dark and fantastical tale of an alchemist’s daughter in Wyoming, is attempting to cast a wide net as far as its readership goes. It is billed as both the third instalment of the DARK ALCHEMY trilogy, as well as the first book in the WILDLANDS series, which readers can jump straight into. What’s more, it’s a fantasy-cum-crime-cum-romance, so it should in theory be ticking a lot of boxes for a lot of readers.
January 24th, 2017. Jana Nyman and Ray McKenzie´s rating: 3 | Laura Bickle | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
Our weekly sampling of free or inexpensive short fiction available on the internet. Here are some great stories that caught our eyes this week:
“A Kiss With Teeth” by Max Gladstone (2014, free at Tor.com, 99c Kindle Version)
Within the first two paragraphs “A Kiss With Teeth” has outlined an unusual premise: a vampire masquerades as human in order to be an ordinary husband and father. He isn’t blending in to feast on blood or evade capture, but simply to give his wife and especially his son a fighting chance at normalcy.
January 23rd, 2017. Skye Walker and Tadiana Jones | Carrie Vaughn, E.K. Johnston, Max Gladstone, Michael Swanwick, Ted Chiang | Horror, Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
The Gates of Evangeline by Hester Young
The Gates of Evangeline (2015) by Hester Young is a domestic thriller set in Louisiana. I’m reviewing it here because it has a supernatural element: Charlotte, the main character, who goes by Charlie, starts having dreams or visitations from children. At least one of the children is dead; others are, or were, in danger. These visitations lead Charlie, whose young son died suddenly, to the plantation house called Evangeline, and the thirty-year-old mystery of the disappearance of two-year-old Gabriel Deveau.
January 23rd, 2017. Marion Deeds´s rating: 3 | Hester Young | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
The Tempestuous Voyage of Hopewell Shakespeare by Sophie Masson
I’ve always enjoyed Sophie Masson‘s books; to put it simply, her stories are imaginative and her prose is elegant. The Tempestuous Voyage of Hopewell Shakespeare is no exception, (though it’s not one of my favourites of hers) inspired by Shakespeare’s The Tempest and Twelfth Night, and containing all that those titles imply: adventure, romance, mystery, magic, mistaken identity, and of course — a voyage that ends in a shipwreck upon the shores of an exotic island.
January 23rd, 2017. Rebecca Fisher´s rating: 3 | Sophie Masson | Stand-Alone, Young Adult | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The Time Museum, by Matthew Loux, is a graphic story with a nice premise, but neither the text nor the graphics fully exploited that premise, leaving me more than a little cold toward the final result.
The premise is relatively simple. Sometime in the far future, the Earth Time Museum was founded as “the most complete collection of the planet Earth’s geology, biology, art, culture, and history all under one big roof . . . To chronicle and preserve all the important things about this great planet.” That’s in the words of the museum’s founder and creator Lyndon Beckenbauer,
January 21st, 2017. Bill Capossere´s rating: 2 | Comics | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
Vulcan’s Hammer by Philip K. Dick
According to Philip K. Dick authority Lawrence Sutin, in his well-researched biography Divine Invasions, by 1959, although Dick had already had some 85 short stories as well as half a dozen novels published, his interest in creating more sci-fi had reached a low point. The future Hugo winner was at this point hoping to become more of a mainstream author, having by this time already written nine such novels, none of which had been published … yet.
January 20th, 2017. Sandy Ferber´s rating: 3.5 | Philip K. Dick | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 4 comments |
so you're saying I should read it? :)
As a native New Yorker, I love the idea of the city being filled with canals and no skyscrapers! And…
How did I miss this? Thanks for bringing it to my attention!
I guess that is true, Marion. And when it comes to "You Only Live Twice," I saw the movie TWICE…
You managed to work in your two loves; vintage fiction and films!