Author: Marion Deeds

WWWednesday: Lost, Season 1: By the Numbers

4,8,15,16,23,42

Lost opens in the immediate aftermath of an airliner crash on a deserted jungle island. The first character we see is a wounded Jack Shepherd, a spinal surgeon with a Messiah complex, but very soon the canvas of the Survivors of Oceanic flight 815 will be spread out before us, and what a broad canvas it is.

Filmed entirely, or nearly so, in the state of Hawaii, mostly on Oahu, Lost was beautiful, but it required some conscious suspension of disbelief to accept Honolulu as every other single city represented in the show.

May 15th, 2024. Marion Deeds | Film/TV, Giveaway!, World Wide Wednesday | 7 comments |

Ghost Station: A dead-planet creepfest

Ghost Station by S.A. Barnes

Ghost Station, by S.A. Barnes (2024), is a mix of haunted-house and The-killer-is-among- us horror, with a generous ladling of body horror to round it out. The standout of this space-horror novel is the setting, a deserted habitat on a dead and snowy planet, where psychologist Dr. Ophelia Bray is supposed to be observing the Reclamation and Exploration Team who had a team member die mysteriously on an earlier assignment. Bray’s specialty is Eckhart-Reisner Syndrome (ERS),

WWW: Lost, the Island of Terrible Dads

(Giveaway: One commenter will get the hardcover edition of Ghost Station by S.A. Barnes.)

Like the show itself, this is a very long column. Unlike the show, it’s only about one thing.

Lost aired on ABC from 2004-2010, six enigmatic seasons that left a vocal and devoted fanbase, and a larger audience whose reaction seemed to be more like, “Huh? What?” when they watched the final season—especially the final episode.

Lost can be purchased via Youtube or Amazon Prime. I stopped watching the show early in its original run,

May 8th, 2024. Marion Deeds | Film/TV, Giveaway!, World Wide Wednesday | 16 comments |

Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands: Complications abound and danger stalks our heroes

Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands by Heather Fawcett

This review of Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands contains spoilers for Book One, Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries. Heather Fawcett’s second book, published in 2024, advances the adventures of scholars Emily Wilde and Wendell Bamblely as they prepare to embark on a perilous quest. It also introduces some new characters to the mix, and I’ll be interested to see if they appear again in the third book of the series.

May 7th, 2024. Marion Deeds´s rating: 4.5 | Heather Fawcett | SFF Reviews | no comments |

WWWednesday: May 1, 2024

Alan Brown reviews the collected short stories of Vernor Vinge.

Coincidence time: I’d never heard of From, but I’m currently re-watching an old ABC show called Lost which featured Harold Perrineau, and so does From, which includes staff talent from Lost… which means it could go any number of ways.

Since I have been watching Lost, I wondered where Matthew Fox got to, and here’s the answer.

I didn’t know The Lazarus Project was still on,

May 1st, 2024. Marion Deeds | World Wide Wednesday | 2 comments |

Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries: A roller-coaster of a romantic romp

Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett

The first book in the EMILY WILDE series is a lively, lovely romp through an alternate Europe, with faeries, magic, lost kingdoms, irascible scholars and their irritating colleagues. Though completely different in tone and subject matter, Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries (2023), by Heather Fawcett, reminded me a bit of Marie Brennan’s LADY TRENT series. Both series feature a woman scientist and a story transmitted via reports or journal entries. There the similarities end,

April 25th, 2024. Marion Deeds´s rating: 4.5 | Heather Fawcett | SFF Reviews | no comments |

WWWednesday: April 24, 2024

Primary endosymbiosis is rare, but it’s happening right now with an algae and a cyanobacterium, which are merging to form an organelle that can fix nitrogen directly from the air.

Among other events, BaltiCon will feature an SFF-themed short film festival. (Thanks to File 770.)

Fallout has been renewed for another season on Amazon.

Nerds of a Feather interview Cheryl Ntumy about Mothersound, a science-fantasy anthology based on African folklore, and the Sauutiverse collective.

Reactor offers an excerpt of James Logan’s new epic fantasy novel The Silverblood Promise.

April 24th, 2024. Marion Deeds | Giveaway!, World Wide Wednesday | 6 comments |

Someone You Can Build a Nest In: Can a monster and a monster hunter find love?

Someone You Can Build a Nest In by John Wiswell

Relationships are hard. They may be even harder when one person’s definition of love is implanting their eggs in the beloved, so that the hatchlings eat their way out of their parent. For Shesheshen, the protagonist of John Wiswell’s Someone You Can Build a Nest In (2024), this is how her species defines it. Now that she’s fallen in love with Homily, a human woman, the egg-implantation issue isn’t the only obstacle on their road to happiness.

Shesheshen is a protoplasmic creature,

WWWednesday: April 17, 2024

The Tolkien Awards were announced on Saturday, April 13.

The Writers Guild announced their awards as well, and there are some genre-related winners here.

Here’s a fun article on an amateur, non-profit Doctor Who film being filmed in Wales (because where else?) (Thanks to File770.)

Molly Templeton asks the question; “Can a Book Really Be for Everyone?” and proceeds to answer it. I’m not sure I completely agree, but it’s a great essay.

I’m not disappointed in this article,

April 17th, 2024. Marion Deeds | World Wide Wednesday | no comments |

City of Bones: A revised edition of Wells’s first novel

City of Bones by Martha Wells

Tordotcom Books has reissued Martha Wells’s 1995 fantasy novel City of Bones, updated and expanded. In an interview, Wells explained that she took a few opportunities to make the writing better but didn’t change the book substantially for this edition.

I knew who Martha Wells was, but until the MURDERBOT series I hadn’t read anything by her. This is the second fantasy novel of hers I have read. City of Bones is a pleasing read,

Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

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