Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

Author: Terry Weyna

Magazine Monday: Granta 117, Horror

Granta strikes me as an unusual place to find horror fiction; it normally is home to the toniest of literary fiction. But Issue 117 is entitled “Horror,” so I thought I’d see what a literary magazine’s vision of this genre is.

As it turns out, the issue is a lot more about horror in real life than it is about the type of horror that is more safely tucked away in my imagination. Tom Bamforth’s nonfiction essay about war in Sudan, “The Mission,” presents a picture one wishes were only imagined,

Magazine Monday: The Empress of Mars

The Empress of Mars is a new quarterly production of Dreadnought Press. The inaugural issue of January 2012 is a lovely glossy magazine with good art, starting with the cover image of a trio of idealized spaceships by Martin Rotherham. Alas, the fiction within rarely matches the promise of the cover. And the magazine desperately needs a copy editor, one who can fix the run-on sentences, sentence fragments, and the many instances where “it’s” was used when “its” was meant. Perhaps, as with many magazines, these are merely labor pains, and future issues will be better;

Magazine Monday: Unstuck, Volume I

I love fantastic literature with a literary bent. Give me a good Italo Calvino novel, a Jorge Luis Borges short story, or any of Steven Millhauser’s work, and I’m a happy camper. So the new periodical, Unstuck, should be perfect for me. It states its mission this way:

“We emphasize literary fiction with elements of the fantastic, the futuristic, the surreal, or the strange — a broad category that would include the work of writers as diverse as Borges, Ballard,

December 12th, 2011. Terry Weyna | Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 5 comments |

Killing Rites: Full of action and ideas

Killing Rites by M.L.N. Hanover

M.L.N. Hanover’s series, THE BLACK SUN’S DAUGHTER, gets better with every book. The latest, Killing Rites, advances the story of Jayné Heller’s growth, but it also continues to build the world in which she operates. Metaphysical questions about the existence of God and the nature of the demons start to become integral to Heller’s life. Furthermore, Hanover refuses to ever take the easy way out, always choosing the most difficult — and most interesting — plot twists over the development that a reader in the urban fantasy genre would expect.

November 29th, 2011. Terry Weyna´s rating: 4.5 | M.L.N. Hanover | SFF Reviews | 7 comments |

A Book of Tongues: A strong talent is at work here

A Book of Tongues by Gemma Files

A western horror story full of gay gunslingers and the Pinkerton men they seduce – sometimes you can understand why people ask writers where they get their ideas, because Gemma Files sure has a humdinger of one with this first novel. Throw in some Mayan mythology and a lot of magic, and you’ve got a plot that comes at you so fast and furiously that you have to put the book down just to catch your breath.

A Book of Tongues is Volume One of the HEXSLINGER Series,

Magazine Monday: Interzone 236 (September-October 2011)

Interzone is a periodical I find delightful as much for its excellent nonfiction as its terrific fiction. David Langford’s “Ansible Link,” for instance, reports what’s going on in the speculative fiction community. It also provides information on how that community is viewed from outside in a section entitled, “As Others See Us,” usually pointing to something stupid said in the mainstream media about science fiction, fantasy or horror. My favorite bit has always been the section entitled “Thog’s Masterclass,” pointing out silly sentences in published fiction.

“The Book Zone”

Mr. Gaunt and Other Uneasy Encounters: An elegant horror collection

Mr. Gaunt by John Langan

We are living in a Golden Age of the short story of the fantastic, as is ably demonstrated by John Langan in his first collection of short stories, Mr. Gaunt and Other Uneasy Encounters. Langan writes the sort of psychological horror that reminds one of both Henry James and M.R. James, as Elizabeth Hand points out in her introduction to this collection. Each story is elegantly written, with craft evident in every sentence.

Magazine Monday: Black Static, Issue 24

We thought that Halloween was the perfect occasion on which to combine Magazine Monday with Horrible Monday and bring you a review of a horror magazine. Black Static is a British horror magazine notable not only for the high quality of its fiction, but also for its great commentary and extensive reviews of horror films and books. This was my first experience reading the magazine, but my plan is now to subscribe, because this is great stuff.

Simon Bestwick’s story,

World Fantasy Convention 2011: Day Three

I spent most of the morning today in the dealers’ room, which was a disaster for my wallet but a boon for my library. As has become my habit of late, I spent more time picking up titles from small presses, like Prime, Night Shade and EDGE, than from the big boys. Some of that was simply because the big boys weren’t there in force; even Tor, which hosted a party last night, didn’t have a table full of books. But mostly it was because I’m of the firm belief that the small presses are where it’s happening these days,

October 30th, 2011. Terry Weyna | Ellen Datlow, Neil Gaiman, Victoria (V.E.) Schwab | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |

World Fantasy Convention 2011: Day Two

I’m reporting about Day 2 today. Read about Day One here.

There were lots of interesting panels today, and it was frustrating to try to boil them down into the ones I wanted to see.

My first choice was “Retelling Old Stories: The New Fairy Tales.” I’ve got all the modern fairy tale collections edited by Terri Windling and Ellen Datlow and many other rewritings, so I was eager to hear this discussion, and it didn’t disappoint. The first question addressed by the panel was the obvious one: why rewrite fairy tales?

October 29th, 2011. Terry Weyna | Charlaine Harris, Connie Willis, Elizabeth Bear, Graham Joyce, Jessica Day George, John Connolly, Kate Elliott, Louise Marley, Malinda Lo, Melinda Snodgrass, Neil Gaiman | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |

Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

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