Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

Author: Terry Weyna

Magazine Monday: Nightmare Magazine, January and February 2014

The January 2014 of Nightmare Magazine opens with “The Mad Butcher of Plainfield’s Chariot of Death” by Adam Howe. Gibbons is the proud owner of Eddie Gein’s car, a genuine relic of the murder on which Alfred Hitchcock based his movie Psycho. Gibbons has a carnival show built around the car, a regular “Disneyland from hell,” and he can’t figure why it isn’t the huge success he expected when he spent his inheritance from his mother on the thing. But not only don’t people flock to see his show with a two-bit carnival traveling from town to town;

Magazine Monday: Apex Magazine, Issues 55 and 56

The most recent two issues of Apex Magazine give us a chance to say goodbye to one editor and hello to the next, and offer an interesting contrast between two strong voices.

Issue 55 is Lynne M. Thomas’s last issue of the 26 she has edited. It is a strong issue, with stories that are beautifully angry — at disease, at societal expectations, at clichés.

The first story, “What You’ve Been Missing” by Maria Dahvana Headley, is about the losses everyone suffers when a man is stricken with Alzheimer’s Disease.

Magazine Monday: Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, January/February 2014

“In Her Eyes” by Seth Chambers is the novella in the January/February 2014 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and it’s a doozy. It’s one of a number of stories and movies I’ve seen lately that address the question of what it is we love when we love someone. Do we love a mind? A body? Both together? Must they be unchanging? They can’t, really, can they, because we all age and grow; change is actually the only constant. And the question goes deeper, to the nature of the mind as an organic,

Dark Duets: A horror anthology

Dark Duets edited by Christopher Golden

Christopher Golden explains in his introduction to Dark Duets that writing is a solitary occupation right up until that moment an alchemical reaction takes place and a bolt of inspiration simultaneously strikes two writers who are friends. Golden has found that the results of collaboration are often fascinating and sometimes magical, as when Stephen King and Peter Straub teamed up to write The Talisman. Writing is an intimate,

January 21st, 2014. Terry Weyna´s rating: 3 | Amber Benson, Carrie Ryan, Cassandra Clare, Charlaine Harris, Christopher Golden, Gregory Frost, Holly Black, Joe R. Lansdale, Jonathan Maberry, Kevin J. Anderson, Rachel Caine, Rick Hautala, Robert Jackson Bennett, Sarah Rees Brennan, Sherrilyn Kenyon, Tim Lebbon | Horror, Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |

Magazine Monday: Subterranean Magazine, Winter 2014

The Winter 2014 issue of Subterranean Magazine was edited by guest editor Jonathan Strahan, the editor of a popular year’s best anthology and a number of other anthologies. He has good taste, as the stories chosen for this issue demonstrate — with the exception of the longest and last piece, a snarky bit of irreligious, virtually plotless prose by Bruce Sterling (about which more below).

“The Scrivener” by Eleanor Arnason is structured as a fairy tale often is, with three daughters each setting out on an errand prescribed by their father.

The Resurrectionist: The Lost Work of Dr. Spencer Black

The Resurrectionist: The Lost Work of Dr. Spencer Black by E.B. Hudspeth

The first 65 pages of The Resurrectionist: The Lost Work of Dr. Spencer Black by E.B. Hudspeth is a fascinating “biography” of the titular doctor, a man who believed that the creatures of mythology actually existed at one time and could be reborn into our world with the proper surgical technique. It’s a tragic tale of a medical prodigy who had already completed medical school with high honors at the age of 20. Black was a man of intense curiosity who reveled in dissecting every type of animal,

January 10th, 2014. Terry Weyna´s rating: 2.5 | E.B. Hudspeth | SFF Reviews | no comments |

A Dance of Cloaks: Strong plotting

A Dance of Cloaks by David Dalglish

Thren Felhorn is the master of the Spider Guild, the supreme collective under which Thren has united all the thieves’ guilds in the city of Veldaren. In the prologue of A Dance of Cloaks, author David Dalglish has given Thren two sons, Randith and Aaron, and placed the guilds on the brink of war with the Trifect, three wealthy families that wield most of the political power in a land where the king is young, foolish and easily manipulated.

January 8th, 2014. Terry Weyna´s rating: 3 | David Dalglish | SFF Reviews | no comments |

Magazine Monday: Asimov’s, February 2014

The first of three novelettes in the February 2014 issue of Asimov’s is Derek Künsken’s “Schools of Clay,” a space opera that is almost incomprehensible. It concerns a race of beings that is modeled on bees, apparently, with queens, workers and new generations of princesses. These beings mine asteroid belts and seem to be partly machine and partly organic (though their nature is never spelled out, one of the serious shortcomings of this story). Some of these beings have souls, and some do not, though what “soul” means in this context is unclear.

Magazine Monday: Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Issues 134-137

Issue 134 of Beneath Ceaseless Skies opens with “A Death for the Ageless” by Margaret Ronald. Swift, the narrator of this story is a sort of police detective in a world filled with many species. The world is torn by war, and the city in which the narrator lives is a refuge for many from another land known as Poma-mél. Elariel of the Ageless has died, which humans had thought was impossible up until this murder; stab wounds to the Ageless would normally close with no more effect than an annoyed expression from the one stabbed,

December 30th, 2013. Terry Weyna | Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | no comments |

Dark Visions: A Collection of Modern Horror, Volume I

Dark Visions: A Collection of Modern Horror, Volume 1 edited by Anthony Rivera & Sharon Lawson

Dark Visions: A Collection of Modern Horror, Volume One, is a publication of Grey Matter Press, a small publisher of all genres of horror. The anthology has no theme — something of a rarity these days, when most anthologies are restricted to a particular type of monster (zombie, werewolf, vampire; you know the drill). Few of the writers who contributed stories to this anthology are known to me, though there are a few big names.

Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

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