Beyond the Barrier by Damon Knight
In Damon Knight’s 1953 novel entitled The Rithian Terror, the author presented his readers with a vaguely octopuslike menace, the titular Rithian; a spy with the ability to hide itself inside the body of any Earthling. But this was not the last time that the Oregon-born writer would give us a tale featuring a hideous, nonhumanoid alien hiding in plain sight! More than a decade later, Knight, in his novel Beyond the Barrier,
February 15th, 2023. Sandy Ferber´s rating: 2.5 | Damon Knight | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Night of Masks by Andre Norton
Nik Colherne lives in the Dipple, a planet-side slum that serves as the opening setting for a few of Andre Norton’s novels. Nik survived a fiery crash that left him orphaned and with a disfigured face that others find abhorrent. Rejected and friendless, Nik is targeted by the Thieves’ Guild who promise him a new (and handsome) face if he’ll impersonate the hero of a young boy that they are trying to find. The boy, Vandy, is the son of a powerful warlord and the thinking is that if Nik poses as the boy’s hero,
November 5th, 2021. Kat Hooper´s rating: 2.5 | Andre Norton | Audio, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The Valley Of Creation by Edmond Hamilton
One of the crowning events in the sci-fi/fantasy year 1948 was most assuredly the release of Jack Williamson’s 1940 novella Darker Than You Think as an expanded, full-length novel; it has since gone on to be acclaimed one of the greatest fictional books on the subject of lycanthropy ever written. In it, reporter Will Barbee learns that he is a primordial shapeshifter and, in one memorable sequence, runs through the night in the form of a wolf,
April 12th, 2018. Sandy Ferber´s rating: 4.5 | Edmond Hamilton | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
The Invincible by Stanislaw Lem
Stanislaw Lem was a Polish SF author, one of the most famous and successful writers outside the English language world, selling over 45 million copies in 40+ languages over five decades from the 1950s, but mainly in Eastern European communist bloc countries such as Poland, Germany, and the Soviet Union. However, despite his success he had a rocky relationship with the United States SF community, having a fairly low opinion of American SF fiction writers other than Philip K Dick’s works,
March 8th, 2018. Stuart Starosta´s rating: 4 | Stanislaw Lem | Audio, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Fully believing that “the catastrophe story, whoever may tell it, represents a constructive and positive act by the imagination rather than a negative one, and an attempt to confront a patently meaningless universe by challenging it at its own game,” J.G. Ballard set about writing his third of four disaster novels. The first featuring a world inundated with water, for the third he went the opposite direction: drought. The Burned World (1964) its apposite title, human reaction to extreme environmental conditions is once again the subject under examination.
November 19th, 2017. Jesse Hudson´s rating: 3.5 | J.G. Ballard | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The Mindwarpers by Eric Frank Russell
For his ninth novel out of what would ultimately run to 10, English sci-fi author Eric Frank Russell pulled a bit of a switcheroo on his readers. The book in question was initially released in the U.K. in 1964 in a hardcover edition by British publishing house Dennis Dobson, sporting the title With a Strange Device. A year later, it was released here in the U.S. as a 50-cent Lancer paperback (the edition that I was fortunate enough to acquire at Brooklyn bookstore extraordinaire Singularity),
April 13th, 2017. Sandy Ferber´s rating: 4 | Eric Frank Russell | Edge, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges
An appropriate title for any Jorge Luis Borges collection, Labyrinths is that selected by Penguin for their ‘best of’ printing of the author. Containing short stories, essays, and parables, each selection takes the reader on a winding path of ideas that seems to branch off infinitely into the wonder of reflective thought. Surreal in concept rather than imagery, it’s no surprise many of the most intelligent writers of fantasy and science fiction cite Borges as one of their significant influences. Erudition is on full display,
October 25th, 2016. Jesse Hudson | Jorge Luis Borges | Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 5 comments |
It is truly remarkable how much work pulp author Robert E. Howard managed to accomplish during his brief 30 years of life. Indeed, a look at his bibliography, on a certain Wiki site, should surely flabbergast any reader who knows the Texan writer only as the creator of Conan the Cimmerian, King Kull, Bran Mak Morn, Solomon Kane and, essentially, the entire genre known as Sword & Sorcery. Hundreds upon hundreds of titles can be found there, in such variegated categories as boxing,
October 12th, 2016. Sandy Ferber and Greg Hersom´s rating: 4 | Robert E. Howard | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
The Dark Light Years by Brian Aldiss
It had been a good 30 years since I last read anything by British sci-fi author Brian Aldiss. Back in the mid-‘80s, spurred on by three highly laudatory articles in David Pringle’s Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels, I had eagerly read Aldiss’ classic novel of a generational starship, Non-Stop (1958); his equally classic tale of an Earth billions of years hence, Hothouse (1962); and his underrated novel of an Earth gone sterile due to fallout radiation,
August 11th, 2016. Sandy Ferber´s rating: 3.5 | Brian W. Aldiss | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The Secret of Sinharat & People of the Talisman by Leigh Brackett
Leigh Brackett, the so-called “Queen of Space Opera,” would have turned 100 years old on 12/7/2015, and to celebrate her recent centennial in my own way, I have resolved to read five novels featuring her most well-known character: Eric John Stark. Brackett, of course, was already something of a well-known commodity before her first Stark story appeared in 1949; she had already placed no fewer than 32 short stories and novelettes,
January 22nd, 2016. Sandy Ferber´s rating: 4.5 | Leigh Brackett | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 6 comments |
Don't know how to answer that, Andrew; I've only read the long. But when it comes to REH, more is…
Would you recommend the long or the short version of Three Bladed Doom?
"A Gent From Bear Creek," originally a collection of short stories later cobbled together to make a novel, and "Three-Bladed…
What were the 4 novels we wrote? Two were Almuric and Hour of the Dragon, what's the other 2?
He has a new one just out (or being released soon) called DRILL. I'm interested, but I may need to…