Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

Month: April 2020

Forgotten Worlds: A fantastic adventure

Forgotten Worlds by Howard Browne

I’ve always thought that if I were ever fortunate enough to get a novel written, and then even more fortunate to actually get it published, then that hard-created piece of work would most certainly – and proudly – appear under my own name. But there are any number of reasons why authors today choose to use pseudonyms for their work, and more reasons still for the creators of pulp fiction material 70 to 100 years ago. For example, an author might have used a pen name for fiction and reserved his given name for his main occupation (such as mathematician Eric Temple Bell,

Warrior Genius: Raises the stakes

Warrior Genius by Michael Dante DiMartino

Warrior Genius (2018) is the sequel to Rebel Genius, the second in a planned trilogy by Michael Dante DiMartino, one of the co-creators of Avatar: The Last Airbender. There are plenty of similarities between the two tales: a gang of four precocious kids and their exotic pets, a richly imagined historical/fantasy setting (though one based on Renaissance Italy instead of Medieval Asia) and a complex set of rules that makes up a quasi-magical system of power wielded by a chosen few.

Thoughtful Thursday: The 2019 Nebula Awards: Novelettes & Short Stories

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America’s 55th Annual Nebula conference (May 29-31) will be held online this year and the 2019 Nebula Awards will be announced on Saturday, May 30, 2020.

Today let’s talk about the finalists for Best Short Story and Best Novelette. We’ll talk about other categories in future columns.

Here are the finalists in these categories. Click the links to read our reviews and get the links to the stories.

BEST SHORT STORY:

“Give the Family My Love” by A.T.

April 23rd, 2020. FanLit | Nebula Award | Giveaway!, Thoughtful Thursday | 8 comments |

The City & The City: Dumbing down & Fridging hamper this adaptation

The City & The City (TV Adaptation)

The City & The City is one of my favorite China Miéville books. I love the conceit of the nested cities, Beszel and Ul Qoma, and I love the voice of our narrator, the smart, world-weary and not-always-so-honest Tyador Borlu.

Amazon Prime offers a four-part adaptation of the book. All four episodes are directed by Tom Shankland, with Tony Grisoni, who was also credited as a writer, as one of the producers.

A Plague of Giants: Epic fantasy with a modern sensibility

A Plague of Giants by Kevin Hearne

Displaying his versatility, Kevin Hearne turns his pen to epic fantasy in A Plague of Giants (2017), the first novel in his SEVEN KENNINGS series. It follows a large cast of characters who live in different kingdoms on a continent that has just been invaded by a race of strange-looking people who are tall, thin and white-skinned. These Bone Giants, as they come to be called, came from across the water in ships and landed in several seaside towns.

SHORTS: Anderson, Osborne, Wilde, Pinsker

SHORTS: Our column exploring free and inexpensive short fiction available on the internet. In this week’s column, we review more of the current crop of 2019 Nebula nominees in the short story and novelette categories.

“A Strange Uncertain Light” by G.V. Anderson (2019, Fantasy & Science Fiction Magazine). 2019 Nebula Award nominee (novelette).

Anne and Merritt have just been married, practically on impulse. Each of them has a problem: Merritt is a drunk, but Anne sees the ghosts of strangers at the moment of their death. As prosaic an activity as looking out a train window can give her a vision of a man caught between the rails and the wheels,

WWWednesday: April 22, 2020

It’s wonderful how many talented people out there are willing to educate us during these difficult times. In this video, Kay shows us that anyone can sew a simple facial covering. Stay with it, trust me.

Awards:

The Tolkien Society Awards are announced for 2020.

The International Thriller Award finalists have been announced too.

The Bram Stoker Award winners were announced via livestream April 18, 2020.

San Diego ComiCon is cancelled, but the Eisner Awards will go forward.

April 22nd, 2020. Marion Deeds | Giveaway!, World Wide Wednesday | 11 comments |

The Last Emperox: The finale to a compulsively readable SF series

The Last Emperox by John Scalzi

A few thousand years in the future, one branch of humanity, comprised of billions of people, lives on a set of planets called the Interdependency. Their star systems are many hundreds of light years apart but tied together by the Flow, a sort of hyperspace river that connects these planets. The problem is that the Flow is gradually collapsing, one stream at a time, and all of the Interdependency worlds except one (called End) are completely incapable of sustaining human life without the constant importing of food and goods from other worlds — hence the term “Interdependency.” In fact,

April 22nd, 2020. Tadiana Jones´s rating: 4.5 | John Scalzi | SFF Reviews | 6 comments |

Rebel Genius: The start of a new imaginative trilogy

Rebel Genius by Michael Dante DiMartino

I’ll admit that I picked this up from the library shelf because I knew the author was Michael Dante DiMartino, the co-creator of Avatar: The Last Airbender, one of the greatest animated shows of all time. Naturally I was curious to see what he would do in another storytelling format, and Rebel Genius (2016) certainly had a compelling blurb.

Young Giacomo Ghiberti lives in a world where artists — whether they’re painters, sculptors or musicians — have bird-like creatures who help channel their creative powers.

The Cerulean Queen: Takes a step backwards

The Cerulean Queen by Sarah Kozloff

In my review of The Broken Queen, the penultimate chapter of Sarah Kozloff’s NINE REALMS tetralogy, I said I was going to need a “slambang ending” to be able to recommend the series. Unfortunately, after finishing the series’ concluding novel, The Cerulean Queen (2020), I can’t say I got the close I was hoping for.

The final novel picks up where the last one finished (warning,

April 21st, 2020. Bill Capossere´s rating: 2 | Sarah Kozloff | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |

Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

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