Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

Author: Terry Weyna

Cyberabad Days: Science fiction at its very best

Cyberabad Days by Ian McDonald

Cyberabad Days is a fully realized vision of a near-future India — indeed, of a near-future world in which India is a major player, even more so than today. Ian McDonald’s prose sparkles, the plots of the stories are uniformly tight, but it is the imagination, the picture of the future, that really works here. If you want that “sense of wonder” that science fiction is most famous for, this is the place to find it.

Cyberabad Days is set in the same universe as McDonald’s River of Gods,

Haunted Heart: A biography of Stephen King

Haunted Heart by Lisa Rogak

It must be difficult to write a biography of someone who is still living, who has not donated his papers to a library where one can get access to them, who is still active in his career, and who has a healthy sense of privacy. Even when the subject agrees to an interview, a biographer has to be aware that the subject is telling what he wants to tell and leaving out that which he does not care to discuss. If the interviewee is sufficiently charming, or is completely forthright on a particular subject that casts him in a poor light,

Downpour: A competent addition

Downpour by Kat Richardson

Kat Richardson’s GREYWALKER novels reached a crescendo with Labyrinth, the 2010 entry in the series. It is not surprising, then, that Downpour, Richardson’s newest novel, feels anticlimactic. How does an author top killing and resurrecting her main character? It’s especially difficult when the character comes back a bit less than she was in the last book; Harper Blaine’s connection to the Grey in this book is considerably weaker than it was. But Richardson has surprises in store for her readers,

September 9th, 2011. Terry Weyna´s rating: 3.5 | Kat Richardson | SFF Reviews | 4 comments |

Magazine Monday: LCRW, 3 Cubed

The arrival of a new issue of Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet is always an event. There is no set publishing schedule, so a subscriber is never quite sure when an issue will arrive. No. 27 landed in my mailbox just last week, full of amazing fiction. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find a couple of these stories on awards ballots next year.

Three stories in particular struck me as special. The first is “Music Box” by David Rowinski. Rowinski’s protagonist, Patrick Sutton,

Ilario: Fantasy with a heart and a mind

Ilario by Mary Gentle

For pure storytelling, don’t-want-to-stop-reading-it fun, Mary Gentle’s two Ilario books, Ilario: The Lion’s Eye: A Story of the First History, Book One and Ilario: The Stone Golem: A Story of the First History, Book Two, are among the best I’ve read. I lived in Gentle’s world even when I wasn’t actively reading the books. I dreamt of her Mediterranean Renaissance. I fretted about Ilario. I couldn’t wait to get back to the books when I’d set them down.

August 24th, 2011. Terry Weyna´s rating: 4.5 | Mary Gentle | SFF Reviews | no comments |

Magazine Monday: Asimov’s, September 2011

The September 2011 issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction is a mixed bag, with a couple of amazing stories and a few not so amazing. One of the former is “The Observation Post,” by Allen M. Steele. A recurring motif in science fiction is visitors from the future watching hot points in history, and for this story that hot point is the Cuban Missile Crisis. The story begins with a voyage in a blimp that seems fictional, like something out of a steampunk story, until one realizes that the Navy really did use a few blimps until November 1962,

Magazine Monday: Bull Spec #5

Bull Spec is a print and electronic science fiction and fantasy glossy magazine named for its home of Durham, North Carolina. The word “Bull” seems to have become associated with Durham because of a tobacco factory in the city, which itself took the name from the picture of a bull that appeared on the label of a mustard that the tobacco factory owner believed was manufactured in Durham, England; it’s all very complicated, but at least we know that the magazine’s name is based on where it is published. The publisher, Samuel Montgomery-Blinn,

Great Bookstores: The Strand, New York City

Manhattan used to be a book-shopping mecca for me, with independent and used bookstores every other block. Alas, that is no longer the case, as I learned to my regret a few years ago when my husband and I tried to track down a few beloved stores. Said husband had printed out a list of Manhattan bookstores from the Internet, failing to note that the list was published ten years earlier. We walked from the West Side to the East Side and back again, discovering either that stores no longer existed or were mere shadows of their former selves.

August 9th, 2011. Terry Weyna | SFF Reviews | 5 comments |

Magazine Monday: Weird Tales, Summer 2011

The nonfiction in the Summer 2011 issue of Weird Tales is interesting and informative, telling readers a good deal about a number of diverse topics. Genevieve Valentine offers “A Sweet Disorder in the Dress,” the title taken from a Robert Herrick poem, about the fashion of Alexander McQueen, and especially his Spring 2010 collection, Plato’s Atlantis. This collection was famous, or perhaps infamous, for the huge shoes — a foot high! — that looked like lobster claws, and much of the fashion on display fell into the “who would wear that?!” category (the answer: Lady Gaga,

Great Bookstores: Powell’s, Portland Oregon

We’re starting a new feature in which we highlight great bookstores for speculative fiction readers. We welcome your input! If you’ve been to a great bookstore recently, please send us a photo (the SFF section would be great!) and a paragraph or two about why you love that store. I’m kicking us off today with Powell’s in Portland Oregon.

What’s better for booklovers than a good bookstore? As we watch Border’s extinguish itself, having itself already extinguished hundreds of independent bookstores (with help from Amazon and Barnes & Noble), those of us who still love physical books and brick-and-mortar bookstores fear the passing of an era.

August 2nd, 2011. Terry Weyna | SFF Reviews | 7 comments |

Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

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