Turnabout by Thorne Smith
It has been a good number of years since I last read Thorne Smith’s ribald fantasy classic entitled The Night Life of the Gods (1931), but I can still recall how thoroughly enjoyable and hilarious the book was for me. In this wonderful romp, a NYC-based scientist, Hunter Hawk, invents a device that can turn people to stone. He soon meets Megaera, one of the Little People, who has the converse ability to turn statues into living people,
August 18th, 2022. Sandy Ferber´s rating: 4.5 | Thorne Smith | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
The Birth of a New Republic by Jack Williamson & Miles J. Breuer
In his 1966 novel The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, author Robert A. Heinlein gave his readers a tale of a penal colony on the Moon that rebels and declares its independence from Earth. The book went on to win the coveted Hugo Award and probably didn’t hurt Heinlein’s chances of being named sci-fi’s very first Grand Master, in 1974. But, as it turns out, this was not the first time that a writer had presented his fans with such a literally revolutionary scenario.
August 30th, 2021. Sandy Ferber´s rating: 4 | Jack Williamson | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
The Stone From the Green Star by Jack Williamson
As I mentioned recently in my review of Edmond Hamilton’s 1930 novel The Universe Wreckers, this Ohio-born author was just one of three writers who helped to popularize the genre now known as “space opera,” the other two being E.E. “Doc” Smith and Jack Williamson. I’d recently experienced Smith’s seminal six-book LENSMAN series, written between 1934 and ’48, but it had been a good number of years since I’d read anything by Williamson,
June 18th, 2021. Sandy Ferber´s rating: 3.5 | Jack Williamson | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
In the 1956 sci-fi “B movie” Indestructible Man, hardened criminal Butcher Benton, played by the always wonderful Lon Chaney, Jr., is put to death by the state, but is later revivified by a mad scientist using 300,000 volts of electricity. Benton becomes not only possessed of superhuman strength but is also, as events show, impervious to bullets. But if a certain novel of 25 years earlier can be believed, this was not the first time that a human being was subjected to a massive dose of juice,
August 27th, 2020. Sandy Ferber´s rating: 4 | John Taine | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The Face in the Abyss by Abraham Merritt
Abraham Merritt’s The Face in the Abyss first appeared as a short story in a 1923 issue of Argosy magazine. It would be another seven years before its sequel, “The Snake Mother,” appeared in Argosy, and yet another year before the book-length version combined these two tales, in 1931. It is easy to detect the book’s provenance as two shorter stories, as the first third of the novel is pretty straightforward treasure-hunting fare, while the remainder of the book takes a sharp turn into lost-world fantasy,
June 24th, 2014. Sandy Ferber´s rating: 3.5 | Abraham Merritt | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
What a fascinating exploration of Edwige Fenech's contributions to the giallo genre! I love how the post highlights her unique…
Pretty challenging book. Cut by half, speed up the cadence. Trying to figure out the plot, the main point of…
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…