In a Lonely Place by Karl Edward Wagner
In any number of my book reviews here on FanLit, I have had cause to refer to editor Karl Edward Wagner’s famous Wagner 39 List. This three-part list, which originally appeared in the June and August 1983 issues of Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone Magazine, enumerated the editor’s choices for the 13 Best Supernatural Horror Novels of all time, the 13 Best Nonsupernatural Horror Novels of all time, and the 13 Best Sci-Fi Horror Novels of all time;
The Great White Space by Basil Copper
For those of you who have read everything written by the great H. P. Lovecraft but are still hankering for another solid dose of cosmic horror and tentacled monstrosities, hoo boy, have I got a doozy for you! Although written four decades after the so-called “Sage of Providence” dominated the field of weird fiction in the 1930s, this book – Basil Copper’s The Great White Space – is such a convincing pastiche that all fans of the genre should be left happily grinning nevertheless.
The Horror Writers Association has announced its scholarship winners.
Bruce Sterling was, and still is, an influential writer in the field of SF, most notably in the days of futurism and cyberpunk. What’s he doing now? This interview with Worldbuilding Agency gives us an idea.
Gamergate lurches on, this time in a lawsuit reaching the Brooklyn, New York courts last week. A woman who was forced to resign from game-review site Kotaku is suing a self-styled “gamergate” gamer in California. She alleges he led a concerted hate campaign against her and made false statements.
The Lost Bookshop by Evie Woods
In the aftermath of the pandemic, fantasy caught the midtown bus and moved into the suburbs of women’s fiction. There, it’s set up shop and seems to be doing quite well, if paperbacks like The Lost Bookshop, by Evie Woods, are any indication. This pleasant story, following three characters and an elusive, magical bookshop, is enjoyable even if it didn’t fully satisfy this fantasy reader.
Set in modern day Dublin, the story follows Martha, a woman fleeing an abusive relationship,
Wen Spencer’s Tinker (2003), the first book in her ELFHOME series, presents a unique mix of urban fantasy and science fiction. The premise, which is the series’ best feature, is imaginative — due to a glitch with an interdimensional gate, the city of Pittsburgh (but not the rest of the United States) exists in Elfhome, an alternate dimension inhabited by elves. Once a month the gate is powered down and Pittsburgh returns to Earth for one day to get resupplied. Pittsburgh is so weird that it doesn’t really interact with the rest of the U.S.
Ruthana Amrys and Anne M. Pillsworth review “The Only Writing Advice You’ll Ever Need to Survive Eldritch Horrors.” This article is funny!
These “22 Chilling Winter Reads” are literally chilly, it turns out—books set during winter.
According to File770, Montreal is now the only contender for WorldCon 2027. Tel Aviv withdrew its id due to the situation in Isreal.
Dorothy’s ruby slippers recently sold at auction for $28 million. After all, they are the first known portkey.
The Guardian UK lists its candidates for Best Graphic Novel of 2024.
Bury Him Darkly by John Blackburn
Although it’s been almost 18 years since I last read English author John Blackburn’s first novel, A Scent of New-Mown Hay (1958), I still vividly recall several segments of the book, mainly due to the forcefulness of the writing therein. And really, with its plot conflating a female ex-Nazi scientist, deserted Russian villages, and a fungoid mutation that is slowly spreading across Europe, the book is inherently hard to forget.
Sunburn by Andi Watson (story) and Simon Gane (art)
Sunburn by Andi Watson and Simon Gane is a beautiful graphic novel that tells the coming-age-story of a girl named Rachel Collingwood, who is invited to Greece by acquaintances of the family. The story is unexpected, and the visuals are stunning.
The graphic novel starts off quietly in England as Rachel, complaining about her soggy toast, has breakfast with her family. Their meal is interrupted by a call from Dianne, wife of Peter Warner,
Pippin’s Journal by Rohan O’Grady
“A spellbinding Gothic page-tuner,” the folks at Valancourt Books tell us on the back cover of their new edition of Rohan O’Grady’s novel entitled Pippin’s Journal, and happily, this blurb tells it just the way it is. The book was one that I had never even heard of up until a few months ago, and yet it has suddenly and surprisingly become one of my favorite reads of this year. Simply stated, I just loved this one!
Here’s a McSweeney’s column, mocking Amazon and our attempts to order goods that are made sustainably. Enjoy.
Rupert Grint owes over $2 million in back taxes.
Clarion’s 2025 faculty list is stellar. (Thanks to File 770.)
Nerds of a Feather reviews Lavanya Lakshiminarayan’s Interstellar Chef.
The Walt Disney Company announced that Moana 2 broke box office records last weekend.
Over at Reactor, Judith Tarr examines the origins of “Canada’s Nessie,” named Nhaatik by the First Nations,
Reposting to include Marion’s new review.
Assassin’s Quest by Robin Hobb
FitzChivalry Farseer’s life keeps getting worse. He has once again barely — and I mean just barely — survived Uncle Regal’s machinations. As Assassin’s Quest, the third book in Robin Hobb’s FARSEER trilogy, opens, Fitz’s situation seems hopeless. Only a couple of people know he still lives and Molly is not one of them. She’s gone, and it seems safest for Fitz to let her live in ignorance.
The Insect Epiphany: How Our Six-Legged Allies Shape Human Culture by Barret Klein
In The Insect Epiphany: How Our Six-Legged Allies Shape Human Culture (2024), Barret Klein explores the impact of insects on human society, an impact both broad and deep. The text is almost always fascinating and offers up more than enough representative examples of his points, while the numerous included illustrations and photographs add a wonderful enhancement to the text.
After a preface which offers a personal touch, and an introduction that gives us some foundational sense of context and numbers (sixty percent of identified animal species are insects,
Cahokia Jazz by Francis Spufford
Cahokia Jazz is a detective novel, set in 1922 in the city and state of Cahokia, USA. Police detective Joe Barrow and his partner Phineas Drummond are called up onto the roof of the Cahokia Land Building in the middle of the night, where they find the mutilated corpse of a takata—a European-American–posed like an Aztec sacrifice, its heart removed. In most cities, this would simply be bizarre, but in Cahokia, this makes the murder a flashpoint for unrest in a city and state governed largely by the takouma,
Typically I write a summary in my own words about a book I’m reviewing, but I would like to start this review by sharing the publisher’s description because it plays an important role in how I initially perceived Fourth Wing (2023) by Rebecca Yarros:
Enter the brutal and elite world of a war college for dragon riders from USA Today bestselling author Rebecca Yarros.
Twenty-year-old Violet Sorrengail was supposed to enter the Scribe Quadrant, living a quiet life among books and history.
Your Shadow Half Remains by Sunny Moraine
2024’s Your Shadow Half Remains provides a seductive and disturbing journey of psychological horror, as we visit the mind of an isolated young woman in a post-apocalyptic world, where one look into another human’s eyes can kill both of you.
Your Shadow Half Remains is plainly inspired by Josh Malerman’s Bird Box, only in Moriane’s work, the thing you must not look at is a human face.
The Scarlet Boy by Arthur Calder-Marshall
In the mood for an offbeat haunted-house novel to keep you company during this fall season … or during any season; a beautifully written tale of supernatural horror that you have most likely never heard of before? Well, then, I have a doozy of a suggestion for you … namely The Scarlet Boy, by the British author Arthur Calder-Marshall! The book has been unfortunately neglected for over six decades now, and a quick look at its sporadic publishing history will help explain why it might be an unknown quantity for you and the general reading public today,
Do we Do we need a remake of Forbidden Planet?? Doesn’t matter—we’re getting one.
BBC released a trailer of the Doctor Who Christmas special. Reactor doesn’t have it, but they saw it.
This is a plug for a local southeastern anthology. The proceeds go to families in Appalachia who lost businesses and homes during the recent hurricanes. I may or may not have a story in it. I’m not being coy; I sent in a story but I haven’t seen the complete TOC yet.
In the weeks following the election,
These f—-ing people complaining about this f—-ing book. What the f—-ing f? Sure it’s f—ing weird, sure you don’t get any f—-ing answers, but if you f—-ing read the first three f—-ing books, what the f—- did you expect? Goodnight f—-ing Moon? The Very F—-ing Hungry Caterpillar? If you’re gonna f—-ing buy a Jeff Vanderf—-ingMeer book, then you better expect a f—-ing Vanderf—ker.
Sorry, sorry. Got a little too immersed in the final section of Absolution, and I’ve seemingly picked up the voice of that section’s narrator,
The Navigator’s Children by Tad Williams
A long, long time ago in a world far, far away (otherwise known as 1988), a younger me picked a heavy (like really heavy) book titled The Dragonbone Chair off the shelf in the bookstore. If you had told that younger, thinner, more-haired me that I’d still be reading about those characters almost 40 years later in 2024, I would have laughed at the absurdity. But here I am, just putting down The Navigator’s Children (2024),
Doctors Wear Scarlet by Simon Raven
The British film Bloodsuckers, from 1970, was easily one of the worst cinematic experiences I’ve sat through in recent memory; a confused and confusing mess of a movie, made even more disappointing for me by dint of the fact that the two lead actors whose participation induced me to watch the film in the first place – namely, Peter Cushing and Patrick Macnee – don’t even appear on screen together once! And yet, I thought, the central premise of the film,
Oh, Marion, you say "but dark" as if it were a bad thing! 😂
Hammer Studios is... reborn? I only ever read the "Kane" stories, which I found good but dark. It's a little…
Oh...and the men used the name "The Great Northern Expedition" to throw people off as to their actual destination, even…
Oh, it IS, Marion! It is!
Sorry if I mislead you in this detail, Paul...the voyage by ship was only the first leg of the quintet's…