SFF Author: Stephen King

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The Stand: The biggest, baddest tale of the apocalypse

The Stand by Stephen King Stephen King‘s The Stand is an awesomely epic creation. It’s good versus evil writ large across the American landscape. It’s heavy, detailed, and extremely rich in the characterizations of its people and themes. The story is familiar — an apocalyptic virus is accidentally (and inevitably) released from a government lab. […]

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Misery: Imprisoned in Nurse Ratched’s guest bedroom

Misery by Stephen King If you’ve read one Stephen King novel, you’ve read nearly all of them. And yet people keep coming back for more. Published in 1987, Misery explores King’s relationship with his most obsessive readers while also wrestling with his own addictions. Misery‘s plot is pretty straightforward: Paul Sheldon is an author of […]

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Needful Things: Pay the salesperson cash in full

Needful Things by Stephen King For the most part, being sheriff of Castle Rock, Maine is a peaceful job — that’s what Sheriff Alan Pangborn tells himself on difficult days. And for the most part, Alan’s right. Castle Rock is indeed a peaceful little town. Sure, there are frictions. The Catholics are planning to have […]

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Desperation: In these silences something may rise

Desperation by Stephen King My only disappointment in Stephen King’s Desperation is that it isn’t longer. This book contains all that makes King so enjoyable to read: strong and believable character development; intuitive and subtle understanding of the childhood psyche; horror as defined by what’s creepy, intense, psychological and sometimes gothic; mythological back-story that superbly […]

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The Very Best of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Vol 2: More disturbing than Vol 1

The Very Best of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Volume 2 edited by Gordon Van Gelder I read the first volume (The Very Best of Fantasy & Science Fiction: Sixtieth Anniversary Anthology, published 2009) before I tackled this one, published in 2014. It’s only been five years, but I detected a darkening of the tone. Maybe […]

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Dark Screams, Volume One: A short horror anthology

Dark Screams: Volume One edited by Brian Freeman and Richard T. Chizmar Dark Screams: Volume One is the first of at least four volumes of short horror anthologies that are projected for publication through August 2015. The books are being published as ebooks only through Random House’s digital-only genre imprint, Hydra, for a bargain price […]

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Magazine Monday: Cemetery Dance, Issue 66

No, it’s not a horrible magazine; it’s a horror magazine, and a fine one at that.  It’s only the Monday that’s horrible. Cemetery Dance is published irregularly, usually three to four issues per year, and covers the entire field of horror, from film to comics to novels. It is heavy on the nonfiction, with excellent […]

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SHORTS: Kehrli, Flynn, King, Hirschberg, Resnick, Buckell, Clitheroe

There is so much free or inexpensive short fiction available on the internet these days. Here are a few stories we read this week that we wanted you to know about. In honor of the U.S. Independence Day today, several of our stories deal with the theme of freedom — though not always in the sense one might […]

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Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse

Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse edited by John Joseph Adams John Joseph Adams assembles a wide variety of apocalypse-related fiction in Wastelands. some of which are older than I am, while others are more recent. What you end up with is a diverse anthology covering topics such as religion, war, and exploration while containing horror, […]

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The Living Dead: Zombies aren’t the point

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

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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Sympathy for the Devil: A collection of bedtime stories

Sympathy for the Devil edited by Tim Pratt Please allow me to introduce Sympathy for the Devil, a fine new anthology filled entirely with short stories about the devil… who is, as we all know, a man of style and taste. However, you won’t just find the smooth-talking stealer of souls here. In addition to […]

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The Secret History of Fantasy: Stories that redefine the genre

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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The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories

The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer I haven’t actually read every page of The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories, yet I’m giving it my highest recommendation. Edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer, Master and Mistress of Weird, The Weird is 1126 pages long […]

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The Best Horror of the Year, Volume Four

The Best Horror of the Year, Volume Four edited by Ellen Datlow Anything Ellen Datlow edits automatically finds a place on my list of books to read. For many years, this included the excellent anthology series The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, which Datlow coedited with Terri Windling. When that series disappeared, much to the dismay […]

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We have reviewed 8043 fantasy, science fiction, and horror books, audiobooks, magazines, comics, and films.

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