Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

Order [book in series=yearoffirstbook.book# (eg 2014.01), stand-alone or one-author collection=3333.pubyear, multi-author anthology=5555.pubyear, SFM/MM=5000, interview=1111]: 2011

The Wild Girls: Wraps you in silken words and then breaks your heart

The Wild Girls by Ursula K Leguin

“When her mother went to embrace her, Tudju made the gesture that put her aside.”

Some topics carry inevitability in their DNA. When you read about Titanic, or the 1918 influenza pandemic, you know what’s going to happen. In Ursula LeGuin’s novelette The Wild Girls we have a good idea how it’s going to end. We don’t want to believe, but we know.

In the opening paragraphs, Bela ten Belen takes five companions and a male slave and leaves his City home to raid a nearby nomadic village.

March 25th, 2014. Marion Deeds | Ursula K. Le-Guin | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |

Eldritch Tales: A Miscellany of the Macabre by H.P. Lovecraft

Eldritch Tales: A Miscellany of the Macabre by H.P. Lovecraft

For those who just can’t get enough Lovecraft, Blackstone Audio has just released this lovely collection of a significant portion of his work. It contains 56 of his horror stories, poems, letter excerpts, and essays. Notably missing are his longer works (e.g., “At the Mountains of Madness” and “The Shadow Over Innsmouth”) and a few of his most popular short stories which are so often collected elsewhere (e.g., “The Call of Cthulhu,” and “The Dunwich Horror”).

Most of the stories in Eldritch Tales: A Miscellany of the Macabre are vaguely related to Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos,

The Plagiarist: PKD would have written this story

The Plagiarist by Hugh Howey

The Plagiarist is a science fiction novella written by Hugh Howey, who recently became famous for his self-published WOOL series. The plagiarist of the title is Adam Griffey, a college professor who uses newly discovered technology at his university to visit virtual worlds where he seeks out brilliant authors, memorizes their works, and brings them back to our world. Everyone knows the works are plagiarized, but since the author doesn’t live in our world, it doesn’t count, and our protagonist gets the credit for discovering the talent and,

Sworn Sword: Historical fantasy

Sworn Sword by James Aitcheson

[In our Edge of the Universe column, we review mainstream authors that incorporate elements of speculative fiction into their “literary” work. However you want to label them, we hope you’ll enjoy discussing these books with us.]

Sworn Sword is an historical novel set in the 1060s in England. James Aitcheson is a scholar, and the story of Tancred a Dinant, a knight in the service of William the Conqueror, is painstakingly researched, opening a window into a distant period of British history.

Sir Hereward and Mister Fitz: Three Adventures: Garth Nix for adults

Sir Hereward and Mister Fitz: Three Adventures by Garth Nix

When I think of Garth Nix I think of excellent fantasy literature for children, but Nix writes for adults, too. Sir Hereward and Mister Fitz: Three Adventures is a collection of three previously published stories about a knight and artillerist named Sir Hereward and a magically animated puppet called Mr. Fitz. The duo works for the Council for the Saftey of the World and they’ve taken a vow to hunt down and exterminate the supernatural beings who are on a proscribed list of evil godlets.

Jim Henson’s The Storyteller

Jim Henson’s The Storyteller by various authors and artists

Jim Henson’s The Storyteller was a TV show, but somehow I missed seeing it: This graphic novel version serves as my first introduction. It’s such a wonderful graphic novel — and fitting for all ages — that I was curious to see if the TV show was supposed to be any good. Based on Amazon’s reviews, it was a much-loved show mixing live-action and puppets, as I’m sure some of you out there know. I was also curious to know before I wrote this review if fans of the TV show would be likely to enjoy this adaptation,

June 7th, 2013. Brad Hawley´s rating: 5 | Comics | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |

Napier’s Bones: Fascinating idea not fully developed

Napier’s Bones by Derryl Murphy

Imagine being able to manipulate numbers to do magic, just as so many fictional wizards manipulate words, as spells, to accomplish their ends. Imagine seeing everything as a number, with formulae streaming into the air from every physical thing, allowing you to bend and change them — using your abilities to smear a license plate into a new number, say, or blurring the serial numbers on dollar bills. It gives new meaning to the word “numerate.”

Derryl Murphy’s protagonist in Napier’s Bones is a numerate.

Who is Jake Ellis? by Nathan Edmondson

Who is Jake Ellis? by Nathan Edmondson (writer) and Tonci Zonjic (artist)

Who is Jake Ellis? is an excellent thriller that defied my expectations for the wonderful reason that I had so much trouble figuring out what my expectations should be in the first place. In other words, the story is so unique, I couldn’t see it fitting easily into any specific template. At first glance, it’s merely a thriller of the James Bond variety, but the James Bond character doesn’t actually seem to have any real skills of his own or seem to have any mission to accomplish other than not getting killed.

April 5th, 2013. Brad Hawley´s rating: 4.5 | Comics | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |

Conan the Barbarian: The Stories that Inspired the Movie

Conan the Barbarian: The Stories that Inspired the Movie
by Robert E. Howard

Conan the Barbarian is a Conan story collection recently published by Del Rey/Ballantine as a tie-in to the 2011 Conan movie. It has the same title as a story collection published in 1955, a movie novelization by L. Sprague de Camp in 1982, and a movie novelization by Michael A. Stackpole published in 2011 concurrently with the movie.To add to the confusion, Conan the Barbarian is also the title of the Marvel comicof the 1970’s.

Gods Without Men: On the Edge

Gods Without Men by Hari Kunzru

[In our Edge of the Universe column, we review mainstream authors that incorporate elements of speculative fiction into their “literary” work. However you want to label them, we hope you’ll enjoy discussing these books with us.]

Gods Without Men, by Hari Kunzru, has at its center a mystery: what happened to the autistic child of Jaz and Lisa Matharu who went missing in the Mojave Desert. To get to that point though,

Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

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