In a Lonely Place by Karl Edward Wagner
In any number of my book reviews here on FanLit, I have had cause to refer to editor Karl Edward Wagner’s famous Wagner 39 List. This three-part list, which originally appeared in the June and August 1983 issues of Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone Magazine, enumerated the editor’s choices for the 13 Best Supernatural Horror Novels of all time, the 13 Best Nonsupernatural Horror Novels of all time, and the 13 Best Sci-Fi Horror Novels of all time;
December 23rd, 2024. Sandy Ferber´s rating: 5 | Karl Edward Wagner | Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
Hoka! Hoka! Hoka! by Poul Anderson & Gordon R. Dickson
Hoka! Hoka! Hoka! (1998), by Poul Anderson & Gordon R. Dickson, has been on my TBR list for years and, thanks to Tantor Media, which just released the first audio edition, it has finally landed in my audiobook player. As I anticipated, this collection of stories about the cute fuzzy aliens known as the Hoka, were really entertaining.
The Hoka are creatures that look like large teddy bears and they’re known throughout the universe as being “the most imaginative race of beings in known space.” They have a fascination with human culture and they love to mimic it,
April 2nd, 2021. Kat Hooper´s rating: 3.5 | Gordon R. Dickson, Poul Anderson | Audio, Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Winter Lord by Jean Brooks-Janowiak
Winter Lord (1983) was an impulse Alibris buy for me. Under a different name, Jean Brooks-Janowiak wrote a Tudor romance that’s been one of my comfort reads since I first read it in high school. That book had an eerie little vein of the supernatural running through it, so when I learned that Brooks-Janowiak had also written a fantasy novel, I decided to check it out. What with it being an earlier book, in a different genre, and sporting a rather uninformative cover,
July 31st, 2020. Kelly Lasiter´s rating: 3.5 | Jean Brooks-Janowiak | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 6 comments |
Blackwater: The Complete Saga by Michael McDowell
Michael McDowell originally published the BLACKWATER horror series in six volumes (The Flood, The Levee, The House, The War, The Fortune, and Rain) in 1983. Some of the installments go for a pretty penny on the Internet these days, so it’s great that Valancourt Press released an omnibus edition, Blackwater: The Complete Saga (2017).
June 12th, 2020. Kelly Lasiter´s rating: 4.5 | Michael McDowell | Horror, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
The Woman in Black by Susan Hill
So what does a young actor do after starring in one of the most lucrative franchises in cinema history? That was the precise dilemma facing the 22-year-old Daniel Radcliffe in 2011, upon the completion of his 8th and final Harry Potter film. The Potter series had brought in a whopping $7.7 billion worldwide over its 10-year run, firmly establishing Radcliffe as an international star. And so, the question: What next? Wisely, the young actor’s follow-up project was another in the supernatural/fantasy vein, and one that was also based on an already well-loved source.
November 26th, 2018. Sandy Ferber, Rebecca Fisher and Ray McKenzie´s rating: 4 | Susan Hill | Horror, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 7 comments |
The Gates of Eden by Brian Stableford
Lee Caretta is a geneticist who has been sent, along with a xenobiologist, to the newly discovered planet of Naxos to investigate the mysterious deaths of the first exploratory team to arrive on the planet. As far as anyone knows, there are no sentient species on Naxos, but Lee and his colleagues will learn that there is life on Naxos, and it is strange and dangerous.
But it’s not only the new planet that is hostile. There is some political and personal intrigue going on,
November 6th, 2018. Kat Hooper´s rating: 3 | Brian Stableford | Audio, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
Sidney’s Comet by Brian Herbert
A lot of Brian Herbert‘s bibliography consists of collaborations with other authors. There is Man of Two Worlds, written in collaboration with his father Frank Herbert, the Dune sequels, written with Kevin J. Anderson, and a couple of books written with Marie Landis. I haven’t read Man of Two Worlds yet, although I do own a copy signed by Brian Herbert. I have read a stack of the Dune sequels,
July 23rd, 2018. Rob Weber´s rating: 2 | Brian Herbert | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
The Man Who Used the Universe by Alan Dean Foster
I picked up Alan Dean Foster’s The Man Who Used the Universe because it was just released in audio format. It’s a stand-alone science fiction novel, set in the far future, about a man named Kees vaan Loo-Macklin. Kees is a brilliant tactician who is building a career and an empire for himself. When we first meet him, he’s the lackey of a local crime boss, but we watch for years as he works his way up,
July 24th, 2017. Kat Hooper´s rating: 2.5 | Alan Dean Foster | Audio | SFF Reviews | 4 comments |
The Armageddon Rag by George R.R. Martin
The Armageddon Rag is the book that almost destroyed George R.R. Martin’s career. It was meant to be the work that put him on the map: he’d been getting bigger and bigger advances for his previous novels, and this was the planned bestseller that would make Martin a household name. It didn’t sell. In fact, it was such a monumental commercial flop that Martin couldn’t even get a small advance for another book, let alone the six-figure deals he’d been seeing up until then.
March 10th, 2015. Ray McKenzie´s rating: 2 | George R.R. Martin | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
The Winds of Change… and Other Stories by Isaac Asimov
The Winds of Change… and Other Stories is a 1983 collection of Isaac Asimov’s latter-day short pieces; just one of the 506 books he came out with during the course of his incredibly prolific career. The 21 stories in this collection were, with two exceptions, written between 1976 and 1982, and all display the clarity of thought, wit and erudition that are the hallmarks of all of Doc Ike’s work. Four of the stories in this collection — “About Nothing,”
June 3rd, 2013. Sandy Ferber´s rating: 4 | Isaac Asimov | Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Do it! One of the best things I've read in recent years.
This reminds me. I want to read Addie LaRue.
We’re in total agreement David!
I felt just the same. The prose and character work was excellent. The larger story was unsatisfying, especially compared to…
Hmmm. I think I'll pass.