Next SFF Author: Chloe Neill

Previous SFF Author: Vera Nazarian

Series: Nebula Award

SHORTS: Carroll, Yoachim, Anders, Haldeman, Rusch, Herbert and Anderson

There is so much free or inexpensive short fiction available on the internet these days. Here are a few stories we read this week:

“The Loud Table” by Jonathan Carroll (Nov. 2016, free at Tor.com, 99c Kindle version)

A group of retired old men meets every day at a coffee shop to hang out most of the day and shoot the breeze. They live for each other’s company, so they’re bewildered and alarmed when the coffee shop manager announces that the café is closing for two months for renovations.

November 7th, 2016. Tadiana Jones and Kat Hooper | Brian Herbert, Charlie Jane Anders, Joe Haldeman, Jonathan Carroll, Kevin J. Anderson, Kristine Kathryn Rusch | Audio, Horror, Nebula Award, Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | no comments |

The Empire of Ice Cream: Dynamic range and dynamic prose

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 critically, but was not a commercial success. A deluge of short fiction followed, however, and since 2000 he has produced more than ninety stories amidst a couple of novels.

The Saliva Tree: A tribute to H.G. Wells

The Saliva Tree by Brian W. Aldiss

In 1966, with the 100th anniversary of H.G. Wells’ birthday approaching, Brian W. Aldiss wrote a story in tribute of one of, if not, the genre’s grandfather. The resulting novella, The Saliva Tree, distills elements of The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds into a suspenseful horror story that has just the socio-political agenda ‘grandpa’ would have approved of.

Set in the late 19th century,

SHORTS: Resnick, Kinney, Chatham, Byrne

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.

The Manamouki by Mike Resnick (1990, originally published in Asimov’s magazine, anthologized in Hugo and Nebula Award Winners from Asimov’s Science Fiction, also included in Kirinyaga). 1991 Hugo award winner (novelette), Nebula award nominee.

Kirinyaga is a terraformed planet where the inhabitants, descendants of a Kenyan tribe,

Forever Peace: Wildly implausible and poorly written

Forever Peace by Joe Haldeman

For the life of me, I can’t understand why Forever Peace won the Hugo, Nebula, John W. Campbell Memorial Awards for Best science fiction novel in 1998. Certainly Joe Haldeman’s earlier 1975 The Forever War is a beloved science fiction classic that deals with the Vietnam War, time paradoxes, and the absurdity of endless conflict. First off, Forever Peace is not a direct sequel, and is hardly related other than sharing a military science fiction theme.

Burn: This Nebula winner was inspired by Walden

Burn by James Patrick Kelly

James Patrick Kelly’s Burn (2005) was a finalist for the Hugo Award and won the Nebula Award for Best Novella in 2007. As Kelly explains in the afterword, the story was inspired by his dislike of Henry Thoreau’s Walden which depicts a pastoral utopian society where simplicity is valued and technology is shunned.

In Kelly’s version of Walden, an entire small planet has been purchased and terraformed into a forested utopia in keeping with Thoreau’s vision.

Stardance: A dated double-award winner

Stardance by Spider Robinson & Jeanne Robinson

Spider & Jeanne Robinson’s Stardance was first published in Analog in 1977 and won both the Hugo and the Nebula Awards for Best Novella. It was up against Vonda N. McIntyre’s Aztecs, John Varley’s In the Hall of the Martian Kings, Gregory Benford’s A Snark in the Night and Keith Laumer’s The Wonderful Secret.

The Terminal Experiment: A substandard Crichton-style thriller

The Terminal Experiment by Robert J. Sawyer

Robert J. Sawyer is a very popular Canadian science-fiction author, with many novels under his belt and several major awards, including the 1995 Nebula Award for The Terminal Experiment, 2003 Hugo Award for Hominids, and 2006 John W. Campbell Award for Mindscan. I hadn’t read anything of his so I decided to give The Terminal Experiment a try. It’s about an engineer who creates three artificial copies of his consciousness,

The Moon and the Sun: A lush, award-winning fantasy that holds up today

The Moon and the Sun by Vonda N. McIntyre

In 1998, Vonda McIntyre’s sumptuous fantasy The Moon and the Sun won the Nebula award for Best Novel. Set in the court of King Louis the XIV of France, this fantastical alternate history asks questions about the nature of humanity, divine right, and the power of belief systems, whether those are religious or philosophical. Science versus religion is also an element, and a pointed one. Along the way, McIntyre shares tidbits about music, art,

The Healer’s War: Harrowing tale of a Vietnam combat nurse

The Healer’s War by Elizabeth Ann Scarborough

This is another Nebula winner I’ve had on the shelf ever since it was published in 1998, but hadn’t got around to reading. So when I found an audio version on Audible narrated by Robin Miles, one of my favorite female narrators after listening to N.K. Jemisin’s phenomenal The Fifth Season, that was enough to pull it to the top of my TBR list. Elizabeth Ann Scarborough is mostly known as a writer of humorous fantasy novels,

Next SFF Author: Chloe Neill

Previous SFF Author: Vera Nazarian

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