Next SFF Author: A.M. Stanley

Previous SFF Author: Michael A. Stackpole

Series: Stand-Alone

These are stand alone novels (not part of a series).

A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder: Antarctic bizarros

A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder by James De Mille

As I believe I’ve mentioned elsewhere, British author H. Rider Haggard‘s back-to-back-to-back releases of King Solomon’s Mines, She, and Allan Quatermain from 1885 – 1887 served as a sort of triple shock wave on the worldwide literary community. From that point and for the next half a century, scores of imitators would come out with hundreds of works that attempted to emulate the so-called “Father of the Lost-Word Novel,” and with varying degrees of success.

My Darling Dreadful Thing: I bought the romance in this gothic horror love story

My Darling Dreadful Thing by Johanna Van Veen

Johanna Van Veen’s My Darling, Dreadful Thing (2024) is a gothic horror love story set in the 1950’s Netherlands. Lush descriptions and an original, creepy take on spirit companions made this story a seductive, engaging read.

Roos Beckman has had a spiritual companion named Ruth since she was a little girl, when she was first pressed into service by the woman she calls Mama to help fake seances. Crouched in a cubby under the floorboards, Roos pulled ropes and pushed levers to create the effects of spiritual visitation.

Nick and the Glimmung: Likeable city!

Nick and the Glimmung by Philip K. Dick

In his 1969 novel Galactic Pot-Healer, cult author Philip K. Dick introduced his readers to a character named Glimmung: a semidivine being who calls ceramic repairman Joe Fernwright, among others, to Plowman’s Planet (aka Sirius 5) to help raise a sunken cathedral from the oceanic depths. Confusingly described by Dick as weighing 40,000 tons and, later, 80,000 tons, Glimmung was yet a truly fascinating creation. But as it turns out,

Upgrade: Flip this genome

Upgrade by Blake Crouch

I chose Blake Crouch’s 2022 novel Upgrade out of curiosity because I’d never read anything of his. He is a popular author whose books are everywhere, and he writes thrillers, usually with a speculative-fiction flavor. I’d heard of him years ago when Fox TV made a show based on his WAYWARD trilogy, and the one or two episodes I saw (Season 1) had a nifty, paranoid, who-can-you-trust vibe. Upgrade shares that vibe.

My plot synopsis may contain mild spoilers.

Lone Women: The past is complicated

Lone Women by Victor LaValle

Victor LaValle’s Lone Women (2023) is brilliant. It’s about connections, family, secrets, guilt and love. Yes, there is a monster in it. Yes, it is suspenseful, and yes, it is gory, and those are both horror trademarks, but Lone Women is filled with hidden history and restored triumphs. Is it horror? That depends on your definition of “monster.”

In 1915, Adelaide Henry flees her family farm in Lucerne Valley, California. She leaves behind a burning farmhouse and her two dead parents;

Ghost Station: A dead-planet creepfest

Ghost Station by S.A. Barnes

Ghost Station, by S.A. Barnes (2024), is a mix of haunted-house and The-killer-is-among- us horror, with a generous ladling of body horror to round it out. The standout of this space-horror novel is the setting, a deserted habitat on a dead and snowy planet, where psychologist Dr. Ophelia Bray is supposed to be observing the Reclamation and Exploration Team who had a team member die mysteriously on an earlier assignment. Bray’s specialty is Eckhart-Reisner Syndrome (ERS),

Giants In The Dust: Oliver shines in his final sci-fi novel

Giants In The Dust by Chad Oliver

At this late date, the authors who have penned works in the fields of science fiction and fantasy must number well into the multiple thousands, but the ones with an actual background in science, who have used their education and scientific training to both inform and add veracity to their stories … ah, they are indeed amongst a much more limited crew. Let’s see … Isaac Asimov was, of course, an associate professor of biochemistry. Hal Clement had degrees in both chemistry and astronomy,

Someone You Can Build a Nest In: Can a monster and a monster hunter find love?

Someone You Can Build a Nest In by John Wiswell

Relationships are hard. They may be even harder when one person’s definition of love is implanting their eggs in the beloved, so that the hatchlings eat their way out of their parent. For Shesheshen, the protagonist of John Wiswell’s Someone You Can Build a Nest In (2024), this is how her species defines it. Now that she’s fallen in love with Homily, a human woman, the egg-implantation issue isn’t the only obstacle on their road to happiness.

Shesheshen is a protoplasmic creature,

The Flying Eyes: Congeal, heal and repeal

The Flying Eyes by J. Hunter Holly

It sports one of the most famous covers in sci-fi paperback history; a piece of art so iconic that I have seen it reproduced in the form of refrigerator magnets! I am referring here to the first edition of J. Hunter Holly’s The Flying Eyes, the cover of which depicts a man and a woman fleeing in abject terror from the onslaught of several dozen – you guessed it – self-propelled, levitating eyeballs!

City of Bones: A revised edition of Wells’s first novel

City of Bones by Martha Wells

Tordotcom Books has reissued Martha Wells’s 1995 fantasy novel City of Bones, updated and expanded. In an interview, Wells explained that she took a few opportunities to make the writing better but didn’t change the book substantially for this edition.

I knew who Martha Wells was, but until the MURDERBOT series I hadn’t read anything by her. This is the second fantasy novel of hers I have read. City of Bones is a pleasing read,

Next SFF Author: A.M. Stanley

Previous SFF Author: Michael A. Stackpole

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