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]: 2013

Dead Set: A YA horror novel

Dead Set by Richard Kadrey

Zoe’s parents were punks in San Francisco when they met and fell in love. Zoe’s father managed punk bands, while her mother was a graphic artist, designing album covers. When they realized they were going to have a child, they went into the straight life, although Zoe’s dad never left punk music behind. Now Zoe is sixteen, her father is dead, and her mother is battling a heartless insurance company that is refusing to pay. They have moved from their pleasant house in the San Francisco East Bay area to a small apartment in the city.

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves: On the Edge

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler

[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.]

“…I would see his hand on the doorknob, the door beginning to swing shut. I have something to say! I’d tell him, and the door would stop part way.

“Start in the middle,

Battling Boy: Yet another excellent release from :01

Battling Boy by Paul Pope

The more graphic novels I read from First Second publishers, the more impressed I am: Paul Pope’s fairly recent Battling Boy (2013) is yet another excellent release from :01. Paul Pope, known for his distinctive art style, mainly writes for an older crowd with books I enjoy but am not willing to hand over to my 8- and 11-year-old children. However, Pope changes direction, if not his wonderful art style, with Battling Boy,

February 21st, 2014. Brad Hawley´s rating: 4.5 | Comics | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |

When It’s a Jar: Quirky, silly, funny

When It’s a Jar by Tom Holt

When It’s a Jar is Tom Holt’s sequel to last year’s Doughnut. It can stand alone, but you probably want to at least read about Doughnut first (here is Stefan’s review). In Doughnut, physicist Theo Bernstein made a math error which blew up the Very Very Large Hadron Collider. Then from his friend, a famous physicist, he inherits a bottle which is a portal to the multiverse he never knew existed.

Doughnut: Sometimes you just need a good laugh

Doughnut by Tom Holt

Theo Bernstein accidentally put a decimal point one place to the left instead of the right and, thusly, caused the Very Very Large Hadron Collider to explode, thereby disintegrating an entire Alp and becoming one of the most hated men alive. Coincidentally, Shliemann Brothers, the company that held all his investments, went bust at just about the same time, so, well, things aren’t going great for Theo.

After Theo receives an apple, a seemingly empty bottle and a small pink powder compact as part of an inheritance from his friend and former physics professor Pieter van Goyen,

February 14th, 2014. Stefan Raets´s rating: 3 | Tom Holt | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |

The Bread We Eat in Dreams: A mythological menagerie

The Bread We Eat in Dreams by Catherynne Valente

The Bread We Eat in Dreams contains thirty-five of Catherynne Valente’s short stories and novellas, caught out in the wild and arranged neatly for the paying public. Ranging from delicate, herbivorous poems to novella-sized megafauna, these creatures display the ecological diversity of the Phylum of the Fantastic and the continued resonance of the Kingdom of Myth. For gentlemen-scientists and enthusiastic students of all things speculative, Valente’s story-menagerie is worth the visit.

Thirty-five stories cannot be summarized in any meaningful sense,

All You Zombies: Five classic stories by Heinlein

All You Zombies: Five Classic Stories by Robert A. Heinlein by Robert A. Heinlein

All You Zombies: Five Classic Stories by Robert A. Heinlein is a short (3 hours) audio collection of five speculative fiction stories written by Robert A. Heinlein and read by Spider Robinson. I like it a lot. This is a diverse set of tales (fantasy, science fiction, magic realism) that display some of Heinlein’s favorite themes as well as some aspects of Heinlein’s imagination that you may miss if you’ve read only his more popular novels.

The Resurrectionist: The Lost Work of Dr. Spencer Black

The Resurrectionist: The Lost Work of Dr. Spencer Black by E.B. Hudspeth

The first 65 pages of The Resurrectionist: The Lost Work of Dr. Spencer Black by E.B. Hudspeth is a fascinating “biography” of the titular doctor, a man who believed that the creatures of mythology actually existed at one time and could be reborn into our world with the proper surgical technique. It’s a tragic tale of a medical prodigy who had already completed medical school with high honors at the age of 20. Black was a man of intense curiosity who reveled in dissecting every type of animal,

January 10th, 2014. Terry Weyna´s rating: 2.5 | E.B. Hudspeth | SFF Reviews | no comments |

Mistress of the Wind: Good if you’re into fairy tale retellings

Mistress of the Wind by Michelle Diener

“East of the Sun, West of the Moon” is a Scandinavian fairy tale that’s a bit like “Beauty and the Beast,” and even more like “Cupid and Psyche.” It’s full of striking imagery but has always inspired a bit of ambivalence in me — I love that the girl goes on an epic journey to rescue the guy, but I’m always a smidgen irked that she wins him by doing laundry better than her rival! In recent years, a number of authors have turned their hands to retelling the story in novel form,

December 31st, 2013. Kelly Lasiter´s rating: 3 | Michelle Diener | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |

The Black Spider: A horror novella

The Black Spider by Jeremias Gotthelf

A novella-length piece written by a Swiss pastor in 1842 that initially seems to serve more as a religious parable than anything else — an unlikely choice as a Top 100 Horror selection, one would think. And yet, there it is, Jeremias Gotthelf’s The Black Spider (or, as it was titled in its original German, Die schwarze Spinne), holding pride of place in Stephen Jones and Kim Newman‘s excellent overview volume Horror: 100 Best Books.

Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

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