Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

Month: September 2024

Bruce Wayne: Murderer? by Various Authors (an Oxford College Student Review!)

In this column, I feature comic book reviews written by my students at Oxford College of Emory University. Oxford College is a small liberal arts school just outside of Atlanta, Georgia. I challenge students to read and interpret comics because I believe sequential art and visual literacy are essential parts of education at any level (see my Manifesto!). I post the best of my students’ reviews in this column. Today, I am proud to present a review by Lixin (Lareina) Yan:

Lixin (Lareina) Yan is a first-year student at Oxford College and is considering majoring in Visual Arts and Psychology.

September 28th, 2024. Brad Hawley´s rating: 4.5 | Comics | SFF Reviews | no comments |

Facial Justice: Jael Bait

Facial Justice by L.P. Hartley

It was Anthony Burgess, writing in his 1984 overview volume 99 Novels: The Best in English Since 1939, who first made me aware of L.P. Hartley’s truly remarkable creation Facial Justice. In his essay in that volume, Burgess tells us that Hartley’s novel is “a brilliant projection of tendencies already apparent in the post-war British welfare state.” It is one of the very few sci-fi novels that the Clockwork Orange author chose to spotlight in his book,

WWWednesday: September 25, 2024

Per Locus, it’s official that F&SF has gone quarterly. I don’t know what this means for the magazine, but I don’t think it’s good.

Locus also reviewed Abigail Nussbaum’s new collection of reviews.

One of the smartest and most thoughtful writers in the SF field is Ted Chiang, and in the New Yorker he writes with intelligence and thought about AI as a maker of art.

Continuing with the intelligent and thoughtful writer theme, here’s Richard Powers being interviewed by the U.K.

September 25th, 2024. Marion Deeds | World Wide Wednesday | 1 comment |

The Last Dangerous Visions: Disappointing

The Last Dangerous Visions edited by Harlan Ellison & J. Michael Straczynski

Short story collections by their nature are hit and miss. The classic, almost unavoidable go-to review is calling a collection a “mixed bag” or noting only “some of the stories hit.” Honestly, I wish I could go that far with The Last Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison (kind of) and J. Michael Straczynski (kind of), but the disappointing reality is that most of these stories rather than some “didn’t hit” for me,

September 24th, 2024. Bill Capossere´s rating: 2.5 | A.E. Van_Vogt, Adrian Tchaikovsky, Cory Doctorow, Dan Simmons, David Brin, Harlan Ellison, J. Michael Straczynski, James S.A. Corey, John Morressy, Max Brooks, P.C. Hodgell, Robert Sheckley, Ward Moore | Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |

The Feast of Bacchus: It’s Greek to me

The Feast of Bacchus by Ernest G. Henham

Tenebrae (1898), by the London-born writer Ernest G. Henham, had turned out to be one of my favorite reading experiences of 2023, and I had been wanting to read another book from this same author ever since. A Gothically inflected tale dealing with fratricide, madness, and a 20-foot-long spider monstrosity, Tenebrae was a deliciously morbid treat; one that had been rescued from over a century’s worth of oblivion by the fine folks at Valancourt Books.

The Adventure Zone: Here There Be Gerblins: A D&D graphic novel

FanLit welcomes a new guest reviewer: Serena Labrecque! Find out more about Serena at the bottom of this post.

The Adventure Zone, Here There Be Gerblins by Clint, Griffin, Justin, and Travis McElroy & Cary Pietsch

The Adventure Zone, Here There Be Gerblins (2018) is the first in an ongoing graphic novel series based on the McElroy family’s D&D campaign. It’s a convenient way to enjoy the story without listening to 69 podcast episodes: over 82 hours of content.

Magnus Burnsides (human fighter),

September 20th, 2024. Serena Labrecque´s rating: 4 | Comics | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |

The Wind That Sweeps the Stars: Often utterly fascinating

The Wind That Sweeps the Stars by Greg Keyes

Greg Keyes’ The Wind That Sweeps the Stars (2024) is a book that while it has its issues I’d say with pace and structure, is often utterly fascinating thanks to the underlying mythos that serves as the sub-structure of the story. That mythos, combined with several action-packed fight scenes and several engaging and likable characters makes it an easy recommendation despite my few quibbles.

The story itself is relatively simple. We open in a tall tower in the center of an Empire’s fortress capital,

September 17th, 2024. Bill Capossere´s rating: 4.5 | Greg Keyes | SFF Reviews | 4 comments |

The Naming Song: I absolutely loved this premise

The Naming Song by Jedediah Berry

The Naming Song (2024), by Jedediah Berry, is an ambitious work with a thoughtful and thought-provoking premise, and if (for me at least), it didn’t fully carry through on that ambition or premise, I’ve got to give credit to Berry for the reach. Certainly, given both that ambition and the level of writing here, I’ll look forward to what comes next from them (and also check out some prior work).

The story is set in world that developed after a great cataclysm that seemingly erased all language (amongst more tangible losses;

September 16th, 2024. Bill Capossere´s rating: 4 | Jedediah Berry | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |

Thistlefoot: I can’t wait to read it again

Thistlefoot by GennaRose Nethercott

2023’s Thistlefoot, by GennaRose Nethercott, is one of my favorite reads of 2024. This literary fantasy draws from Jewish and Eastern European folktales, with a concretely modern setting, a gloss of mythic American West (hobos and tumbleweeds), and sentences that sing with poetry.

Isaac Yaga is a street performer and a con artist. He can impersonate almost anyone, and he is always on the run, either from the people whose pockets he’s picked, or from his own guilty memories, accompanied only by a small black cat named Hubcap.

No Night Without Stars: Likeable heroes, poor pacing

No Night Without Stars by Andre Norton

No Night Without Stars (1975), by Andre Norton, is a post-apocalyptic adventure set in a world where civilization has collapsed, and all that’s left are scavengers and warring factions.

The hero of the story is an ambitious and curious young man named Sander who has left his tribe, where he feels disrespected, to search for lost knowledge from the past. Sander hopes to discover the secrets of creating a particular alloy that smiths used to use.

Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

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