Previous SFF Author: Martin L. Shoemaker
The arrival of a new issue of Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet is always an event. There is no set publishing schedule, so a subscriber is never quite sure when an issue will arrive. No. 27 landed in my mailbox just last week, full of amazing fiction. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find a couple of these stories on awards ballots next year.
Three stories in particular struck me as special. The first is “Music Box” by David Rowinski. Rowinski’s protagonist, Patrick Sutton,
September 5th, 2011. Terry Weyna | M.K. Hobson | Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
Two Worlds and In Between: The Best of Caitlín R. Kiernan
Two Worlds and In Between: The Best of Caitlín R. Kiernan is a collection of Caitlín R. Kiernan’s works which span the years 1993-2004. In this collection there are 24 short stories, one poem, one novella, an introduction by the author, and a short afterword for each work. The stories are arranged in chronological order, letting the reader watch the progression of Kiernan’s style and the noticeable changes in her stories’ subject matter as she matures. Some of these stories are award winners and all have been published previously (though some have undergone extensive revisions since their original publication).
August 25th, 2011. Kat Hooper´s rating: 3.5 | Caitlín R. Kiernan | Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 5 comments |
The September 2011 issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction is a mixed bag, with a couple of amazing stories and a few not so amazing. One of the former is “The Observation Post,” by Allen M. Steele. A recurring motif in science fiction is visitors from the future watching hot points in history, and for this story that hot point is the Cuban Missile Crisis. The story begins with a voyage in a blimp that seems fictional, like something out of a steampunk story, until one realizes that the Navy really did use a few blimps until November 1962,
August 22nd, 2011. Terry Weyna | Allen Steele, Robert Silverberg, Theodore Sturgeon | Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Bull Spec is a print and electronic science fiction and fantasy glossy magazine named for its home of Durham, North Carolina. The word “Bull” seems to have become associated with Durham because of a tobacco factory in the city, which itself took the name from the picture of a bull that appeared on the label of a mustard that the tobacco factory owner believed was manufactured in Durham, England; it’s all very complicated, but at least we know that the magazine’s name is based on where it is published. The publisher, Samuel Montgomery-Blinn,
August 15th, 2011. Terry Weyna | Cat Rambo, Gail Z. Martin, Hannu Rajaniemi, Jonathan Strahan, Nick Mamatas | Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
The nonfiction in the Summer 2011 issue of Weird Tales is interesting and informative, telling readers a good deal about a number of diverse topics. Genevieve Valentine offers “A Sweet Disorder in the Dress,” the title taken from a Robert Herrick poem, about the fashion of Alexander McQueen, and especially his Spring 2010 collection, Plato’s Atlantis. This collection was famous, or perhaps infamous, for the huge shoes — a foot high! — that looked like lobster claws, and much of the fashion on display fell into the “who would wear that?!” category (the answer: Lady Gaga,
August 8th, 2011. Terry Weyna | Genevieve Valentine, Karin Tidbeck | Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 4 comments |
The Best of Stephen R. Donaldson by Stephen R. Donaldson
Stephen R. Donaldson will probably always be best known for his novels: the epic fantasy series THE CHRONICLES OF THOMAS COVENANT, the wonderful fantasy diptych MORDANT’S NEED, and — my personal favorite — the dark science fiction GAP CYCLE. However, Donaldson has also produced a number of great short stories and novellas throughout his career. So far, these could mainly be found in his two collections, Daughter of Regals and Other Tales (1984) and Reave the Just and Other Tales (1999),
August 5th, 2011. Stefan Raets´s rating: 4 | Stephen R. Donaldson | Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The Wind From a Burning Woman by Greg Bear
I don’t think early Greg Bear and I are a good match. I did not finish The Wind From a Burning Woman, a collection of short stories from the late 1970s and early 1980s. That may be part of the problem. Maybe these stories are just dated.
Bear seems to be a “writer of ideas,” and several of these tales feature fascinating “what-ifs” or technological wonders, like an asteroid shaped into a deep-space vessel, a surrealistic cathedral in a world where God has definitively Died,
August 2nd, 2011. Marion Deeds´s rating: 0.1 | Greg Bear | Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Volume Two: Adjustment Team (1952-1953) by Philip K. Dick
Philip K. Dick wrote 121 short stories over his career, mostly for science fiction magazines. Subterranean Press has been collecting them in chronological order over several volumes. The first volume, The King of the Elves, contained 22 stories spanning the years 1947-1952. This second volume, Adjustment Team, covers the years 1952-1953 and includes 27 stories with notes that make up approximately 488 pages.
Many of these stories use themes that were common in 1950s SF shorts — space exploration,
August 1st, 2011. Kat Hooper´s rating: 4.5 | Philip K. Dick | Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
Subterranean Online’s summer issue is devoted to young adult fiction, but the authors seem to have taken that directive as license to be subversive. It’s been true for a while now that the only thing “young adult” about most “young adult” science fiction, fantasy and horror is that the protagonist is not an adult. The stories just as entertaining for 50-year-olds as for 15-year-olds, and the themes are by no means limited to the worries of teens. This issue makes it clear why so many genre readers pay no attention to the labels slapped on books these days,
July 25th, 2011. Terry Weyna | Genevieve Valentine, Karen Joy Fowler, Kelly Link, Malinda Lo, Sarah Rees Brennan, Tiffany Trent, Tobias Buckell | Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
The Theodore Sturgeon Award will be given to one lucky author at next weekend’s Campbell Conference Awards Banquet in Lawrence, Kansas. The banquet caps both the Writers Workshop in Science Fiction and the Novel Writers Workshop in Science fiction, and is the kick-off event for the Intensive English Institute on the Teaching of Science Fiction. Writers mingle with academics, which must make gathering that a studious reader would find pretty lively. I wish I were going to be there myself.
Instead, I’m doing the next best thing and reviewing all of the nominees for the Sturgeon Award.
July 4th, 2011. Terry Weyna | Lavie Tidhar, Peter Watts, Yoon Ha Lee | Short Fiction, Theodore Sturgeon Award | SFF Reviews | 6 comments |
Previous SFF Author: Martin L. Shoemaker
We’re in total agreement David!
I felt just the same. The prose and character work was excellent. The larger story was unsatisfying, especially compared to…
Hmmm. I think I'll pass.
COMMENT Was I hinting that? I wasn't aware of it. But now that you mention it.... 🤔
So it sounds like you're hinting Fox may have had three or so different incomplete stories that he stitched together,…