The Futurological Congress by Stanislaw Lem
Numerous are the stories in science fiction in which populations have been brainwashed to believe an ideal, most often the opposite of what we hold dear. A sub-genre in itself, advertisements have been used (The Space Merchants), narcotics (The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch), propaganda (We), technology (Brave New World), emotions (The Giver),
June 30th, 2016. Jesse Hudson and Kat Hooper´s rating: 4 | Stanislaw Lem | Film / TV, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
The Cyberiad by Stanislaw Lem
“Mighty King, here is a story, a nest of stories, with cabinets and cupboards, about Trurl the constructor and his wonderfully nonlinear adventures.”
I can think of no better introduction to Stanislaw Lem’s 1967 The Cyberiad (Cyberiada in the original Polish) than the line above taken from the text. Capturing the atmosphere of storytelling, the quirky, entirely singular imagination behind it, and the meta-human perspective suffusing every word, thought, and concept innate to the stories,
June 24th, 2016. Jesse Hudson and Kat Hooper | Stanislaw Lem | Audio, Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 7 comments |
The history, legends, and myths surrounding the man known as King Arthur are some of the most enduring and inspirational material in the English language. Like Robin Hood, Arthur’s name resonates in modern history. The number of books, fiction and non-fiction, which have been spun off the man is increasingly difficult to quantify. Appearing in such a wide variety of Western media and culture, most people, in fact, have only a hazy idea of who he was or might have been (including this reviewer), Disney being as much a teacher as high school history class.
June 21st, 2016. Jesse Hudson´s rating: 3.5 | C.J. Cherryh | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Like drugs for techno-action junkies, Richard K. Morgan did the futuristic, world-weary warrior story well in his TAKESHI KOVACS series. With a Wild West-style of justice continually seeping through the scenes of blood and gore, Morgan also indicated there may be a little more on his mind than just action. The nihilism was left without an explicit voice, so Morgan set out to rectify this in his 2007 Thirteen (Black Man in the UK*).
May 26th, 2016. Jesse Hudson | Richard K. Morgan | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
Ash: A Secret History by Mary Gentle
I have long had a debate in my mind about the place of the woman warrior in fiction, particularly the type most often presented in epic fantasy/sword & sorcery. Robert E. Howard, Joe Abercrombie, George R.R. Martin, David Gemmell, and Tobias Buckell, for example, have all included the undaunted, sword-wielding, occasionally bra-defying warrioresses in their tales of adventure and battle. But in these stories, the women are most often just men with breasts.
May 18th, 2016. Jesse Hudson´s rating: 5 | Mary Gentle | BSFA Award | SFF Reviews | 6 comments |
The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks
Perusing bookshops in Poland one finds fiction is categorized along the same genre lines as America or Britain. They have horror, fantastyka, science fiction, kryminalny — all of which are readily recognizable to the English speaker. There is one additional category, however, that I’d never seen before: sensacyjny. Neither ‘sensual’ or ‘sensation,’ the word, in this context, translates to ‘sensational.’ Not in the ‘amazing’ or ‘magnificent’ sense of the word, rather ‘sensationalist’ or ‘suddenness’,
May 12th, 2016. Jesse Hudson´s rating: 3 | Iain M. Banks | Horror, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
The Fall of the Towers by Samuel R. Delany
Not yet out of his teens, Samuel Delany had his first short stories published in science fiction magazines around 1962. Moving on to works of greater length, he shortly thereafter published two novellas, the second of which was called Captives of the Flame. Seeing the story’s greater potential, he expanded the novella (to Out of the Dead City) and tacked on two additional novels, The Towers of Toron and City of a Thousand Suns to create a series.
April 29th, 2016. Jesse Hudson | Samuel R. Delany | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
Fifty Degrees Below by Kim Stanley Robinson
Forty Signs of Rain identified the themes and mode for Kim Stanley Robinson’s SCIENCE IN THE CAPITOL series. As is expected for the middle novel of a trilogy, Fifty Degrees Below (2006) further unpacks the ideas while escalating the story to new heights of excitement. Salting what was a rather tasteless opening, the second novel improves upon the first while launching the story into the third and conclusory volume,
April 21st, 2016. Jesse Hudson | Kim Stanley Robinson | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Forty Signs of Rain by Kim Stanley Robinson
With the quality of special effects improved exponentially, the blockbuster disaster movie appeared in the 90s and hasn’t looked back. Tornadoes (Twister), meteors (Deep Impact and Armageddon), seismic activity (The Core), volcanoes (Dante’s Peak), massive weather events (The Perfect Storm), and, who can forget, Sharknado, have in one way or another tried to capitalize on the potential power of nature to earn a dollar.
April 6th, 2016. Jesse Hudson´s rating: 3.5 | Kim Stanley Robinson | SFF Reviews | 5 comments |
Blood Music (1985) by Greg Bear is a novel that, in its day, was well lauded, but has since had its profile reduced by books which have taken its central premise further. One of, if not the first, major novel to utilize the idea of nanotechnology, the wave of related sci-fi digging deeper into the potential for nanotech that has followed has perhaps drowned out the book, leaving it to be found by those looking back into the history of the genre.
March 21st, 2016. Jesse Hudson | Greg Bear | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
Thanks for the kind words, Marion! Coming as they are from a professional writer, they are much appreciated!
Wonderful review, Sandy.
The "body count" bothered me a bit less because being dead seemed more like an inconvenience than anything else... unlike…
Detailed, thoughtful review, Bill. I'm going to read it for two reasons. First, Karen Russell wrote it, and second, it…
this sounds like a fun one