The Physiognomy by Jeffrey Ford Physiognomist Cley has been sent by Master Drachton Below, the evil genius who constructed the Well-Built City, to the faraway mining district of Anamasobia to investigate the theft of a fruit that’s rumored to have grown in the Earthly Paradise and to have supernatural powers. Upon arriving, the skeptical and […]
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Memoranda by Jeffrey Ford In waking from a dream, we obliterate worlds, and in calling up a memory, we return the dead to life again and again only to bring them face to face with annihilation as our attention shifts to something else. After the destruction of the Well-Built City (detailed in The Physiognomy), Physiognomist […]
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The Beyond by Jeffrey Ford The Beyond is the last book in Jeffrey Ford’s WELL-BUILT CITY trilogy. This bizarre story began with The Physiognomy in which Cley, an arrogant and cruel physiognomist, is sent by the evil ruler Drachton Below on a mission to the mining town of Anamasobia. While there, Cley makes a bad […]
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The Portrait of Mrs Charbuque by Jeffrey Ford The best thing about being my own master when it comes to choosing what I want to read is that when I read a book I really want to talk about I can without feeling like I have to put aside any other obligations, and I really […]
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The Empire of Ice Cream by Jeffrey Ford Emerging in the late morning of an overcast day (one novel in 1988 and a handful of short stories over the decade that followed), there was not much indication Jeffrey Ford would become as prolific as he has. In 1997 he produced THE WELL-BUILT CITY trilogy which did well […]
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The Drowned Life by Jeffrey Ford Jeffrey Ford‘s The Drowned Life is as engrossing as his previous short story collections, immediately ensnaring the reader with his detailed prose and characterization. One noticeable trend is that while Ford dabbles in clear-cut fantasy with stories such as “The Manticore Spell” or “The Dismantled Invention of Fate,” much […]
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The Shadow Year by Jeffrey Ford The Shadow Year is a charming coming-of-age tale about the 6th grade year of an average American boy (we never learn his name) growing up in the 1960s. This year isn’t average, though, because there are some strange things going on in his small town. As he navigates his […]
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The Urban Fantasy Anthology edited by Peter S. Beagle & Joe R. Lansdale It’s no secret that I’m not a fan of most urban fantasy. I tend to find problems with almost every urban fantasy book I’ve tried to read. When I got this book in the mail, I kind of rolled my eyes and […]
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Ahab’s Return: or, The Last Voyage by Jeffrey Ford Ahab’s Return: or, The Last Voyage (2018), by Jeffrey Ford, is a Locus finalist for fantasy novels, so one should keep that in mind while taking in this review, as I take a somewhat (though only somewhat) lesser view of the novel. Which happens to me surprisingly […]
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The novella is the ideal length for a science fiction story. It’s long enough to allow a reader to become immersed in a scene and involved with the characters; and it’s short enough to allow a reader to suspend disbelief as to the more unscientific or strange aspects of a story without questioning them too […]
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The Winter 2014 issue of Subterranean Magazine was edited by guest editor Jonathan Strahan, the editor of a popular year’s best anthology and a number of other anthologies. He has good taste, as the stories chosen for this issue demonstrate — with the exception of the longest and last piece, a snarky bit of irreligious, […]
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There is so much free or inexpensive short fiction available on the internet these days. Here are a few stories we’ve recently read that we wanted you to know about. “Peace in Amber” by Hugh Howey (2014, $1.99 Kindle, $3.95 Audible) “Peace in Amber” is Hugh Howey’s tribute to Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five, a surrealistic novel in which […]
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SHORTS is our regular short fiction review column (previously SFM or Short Fiction Monday). In today’s column we review several more of the 2019 Locus award nominees in the short fiction categories. No Flight Without the Shatter by Brooke Bolander (2018, free at Tor.com; 99c Kindle version). 2019 Locus award nominee (novelette). No Flight Without […]
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The Green Man edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling In fairy tales, whenever someone journeys into the forest, you just know something strange is about to occur and that the protagonist’s life is going to be changed forever. The same is true of the stories and poems featured in The Green Man: Tales from […]
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Salon Fantastique: Fifteen Original Tales of Fantasy by Ellen Datlow & Terri Windling Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling are the two greatest short fiction editors of fantasy and horror of our time. Their annual collections of the Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror provided us, for 16 straight years, with the best short genre and slipstream […]
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Feeling Very Strange: The Slipstream Anthology edited by James Patrick Kelly & John Kessel Is there really any difference between post-modernism, interstitial fiction, slipstream and New Weird? Does anyone know? James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel try to outline the boundaries of slipstream with their anthology, Feeling Very Strange: The Slipstream Anthology, particularly by including […]
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The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Volume One edited by Jonathan Strahan My first and foremost complaint — and this is really a quibble more than anything else — is that the title doesn’t tell you what year this anthology belongs to. Which isn’t really a problem if you bought it recently […]
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The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror 2007 In many ways, The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror 2007 anthology is a difficult book to review. For one thing, to me and a lot of my reading/writing circle, this is easily the definitive bible when it comes to short stories of the genre. For another, many of […]
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The Coyote Road: Trickster Tales edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling The Coyote Road: Trickster Tales is another thematic fantasy anthology by the trio of Ellen Datlow, Terri Windling, and Charles Vess. Coyote Road features twenty-six pieces of fiction and poetry. Each story is preceded by art by Vess and ends with a short […]
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The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Volume Two edited by Jonathan Strahan The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Volume Two is one of several anthologies that collects the best science fiction and fantasy of 2007. I’ve read many of the stories included, yet revisiting them actually made me […]
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The Living Dead edited by John Joseph Adams I never knew there were so many ways to tell a zombie story. I pretty much thought that the George Romero version was it — dead people wandering around holding their arms out in front of them and calling out “braaaaaaains,” looking to munch on the living. […]
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The Very Best of Fantasy & Science Fiction: Sixtieth Anniversary Anthology by Gordon Van Gelder (ed.) The Very Best of Fantasy & Science Fiction: Sixtieth Anniversary Anthology is an excellent collection of 23 stories picked from the treasure trove of short fiction that’s been published in the eponymous magazine over the past 60 years. Editor […]
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The Book of Dreams edited by Nick Gevers The Book of Dreams is a small but satisfying collection of short stories that are thematically, albeit loosely, connected by the theme of “dreams.” The book features original stories by Robert Silverberg, Lucius Shepard, Jay Lake, Kage Baker and Jeffrey Ford, and was edited by Nick Gevers […]
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The Faery Reel: Tales from the Twilight Realm edited by Ellen Datlow & Terri Windling The Faery Reel is an indispensable tome for anyone who has a mania for faeries. Aside from the short stories in this anthology, the comprehensive introduction of Terri Windling on the fey and the illustrations by Charles Vess are worth […]
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Steampunk II: Steampunk Reloaded edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer Steampunk II: Steampunk Reloaded is the second steampunk anthology edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer, following 2008’s first installment. It contains about twice as many stories as its predecessor, but unlike the first collection the quality is more uneven here, resulting in a less impressive […]
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The Secret History of Fantasy edited by Peter S. Beagle The basic premise of the SECRET HISTORY anthologies (there’s also a science fiction one, The Secret History of Science Fiction, which I haven’t read) is that there’s a type of writing that got missed or buried because other things were more popular, more commercial, or […]
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Supernatural Noir edited by Ellen Datlow Ellen Datlow suggests in her introduction to Supernatural Noir that noir fiction and supernatural fiction, with its roots in the gothic, have a lot in common. The main character in each tends to be a hard-living guy, usually down to his last flask of scotch, haunted by a sexy […]
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After: Nineteen Stories of Apocalypse and Dystopia by editors Ellen Datlow & Terri Windling When I saw the new Datlow and Windling anthology After: Nineteen Stories of Apocalypse and Dystopia, I was so excited. I love YA fiction, I love dyslit, I love short story anthologies and I love Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling as […]
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Oz Reimagined edited by John Joseph Adams Oz Reimagined is a collection of tales whose characters return as often, if not more often, to the “idea” of Oz as opposed to the actual Oz many of us read about as kids (or adults) and even more of us saw in the famed MGM version of the […]
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The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination edited by John Joseph Adams The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination is the latest themed anthology edited by John Joseph Adams — and it’s another good one. This time, Adams has collected a set of short stories featuring the hero’s (or often superhero’s) traditional antagonist: the mad […]
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The Monstrous edited by Ellen Datlow Whenever I see Ellen Datlow’s name as editor on the cover of an anthology, I know I’m in good hands. Datlow has a made a thirty-plus year career of choosing good stories and developing collections that take different aims at the theme. The theme of The Monstrous is monsters, […]
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The Girl in the Glass — (2005) Publisher: The Great Depression has bound a nation in despair — and only a privileged few have risen above it: the exorbitantly wealthy… and the hucksters who feed upon them. Diego, a seventeen-year-old illegal Mexican immigrant rescued from the depths of poverty, owes his salvation to Thomas Schell, […]
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