Browsed by
Month: December 2017

Vintage Treasures: Farewell Fantastic Venus! edited by Brian W. Aldiss with Harry Harrison

Vintage Treasures: Farewell Fantastic Venus! edited by Brian W. Aldiss with Harry Harrison

Comments 3 comments
Farewell Fantastic Venus!-small Farewell Fantastic Venus!-back-small

One of the things I love about pulp SF is its romanticized view of our solar system. The ancient canals and lost cities of Mars, the steaming dinosaur-ridden swamps of Venus. I can still remember the bitter disappointment I felt when I first learned that science had proven Venus completely inhospitable to life. It felt like the solar system had been robbed of its greatest potential for extra-planetary adventure.

Many SF writers felt very much the same way. Two recent anthologies from Gardner Dozois and George R.R. Martin, Old Mars and Old Venus, have done a splendid job re-capturing some of that old pulp magic with a generous sampling of modern tales set in retro-versions of both planets.

But they weren’t the first books to celebrate a cherished (and now obsolete) vision of our solar system. That honor probably goes to Farewell Fantastic Venus!, a 1968 anthology released shortly after the first probes reached Venus, and the hard truth was revealed. The book contains classic Venusian fiction by Arthur C. Clarke and John & Dorothy de Courcy, and two novellas by Poul Anderson, including a Psychotechnic League tale. There’s also a rich sampling of novel excerpts by Olaf Stapledon, Edgar Rice Burroughs, C. S. Lewis, and others. All that plus science articles by Frank R. Paul, Carl Sagan, Sir Bernard Lovell, Willy Ley, and others.

…

Read More Read More

Goth Chick News: Jurassic World 2 Gets More Teeth

Goth Chick News: Jurassic World 2 Gets More Teeth

Comments 4 comments

Jurassic World Goth Chick-small

As much as I’m willing to suspend my disbelief for love of the Jurassic Park franchise, at some point you’d think someone in that universe would just up and decide that resurrecting dinosaurs is simply a bad idea all around. And now that we’ve all gotten a look at the trailer for Jurassic World 2: Fallen Kingdom I have some news to indicate the perpetual voice of reason when it comes to dinos, may be making an appearance to do just that.

It’s been known for a while now that Jurassic World 2 would bring back Jeff Goldblum to reprise his fan favorite role of Dr. Ian Malcolm, and Goldblum is seen prominently in the trailer.

But wait, there’s more…

…

Read More Read More

Could Hitler Have Built the Bomb? Find Out in Against the Odds #50

Could Hitler Have Built the Bomb? Find Out in Against the Odds #50

Comments 2 comments

Against the Odds 50 Building the Bomb-smallAgainst the Odds magazine is a throwback to the great era of tabletop gaming, when magazines like Strategy & Tactics and the much-missed Ares contained complete games in each issue. Issues are expensive ($35, more than the cost of a hardcover book), but for gaming fans it’s well worth the price. The latest issue, #50, contains Building the Bomb, a chilling card game that simulates the Nazi efforts to build the first atomic bomb.

In late 1941 with senior officials across Germany becoming increasingly aware that Operation Barbarossa would fail somewhere short of Moscow… many worriedly began looking for an “out.” Some, like Ernst Udet, head of Luftwaffe Development, and Walter Borbet, a leading industrialist, shot themselves over the shock of the failure. Others, like General Fromm, in charge of the Army Weapons Office, turned their attention to an extraordinary proposal by Germany’s leading physicists to unlock the secrets of the atom and provide limitless power, and a possible war winning explosive device, the atomic bomb.

Building the Bomb is a card game for 2 to 5 players. Each player represents a faction inside German government, military or industrial circles, seeking to engage one of the Reich’s prestigious research institutes to start work on a nuclear program.

Acting through the Director of each center, players will need to size matters up, recruit other scientists, acquire scarce resources, (plus spy on their rivals, this is the Third Reich remember) and certainly go all out if they hope to develop atomic weapons…

Building the Bomb includes 108 colorful playing cards, 40 die-cut counters, and a 10-page rulebook. Playing time is 1 to 2 hours. It was designed by Steven Cunliffe and developed by Lembit Tohver, with graphic design by Mark Mahaffey.

Against the Odds: Journal of History and Simulation is edited by Andy Nunez and published by LPS, Inc. It appears four times per year, yearly subscriptions are $80 in the US. Individual issues are priced at $39.95; issue 50 is around 56 pages. Order copies or get more details at the website. We last covered Against the Odds with Issue #35, which contained the game Boudicca: The Warrior Queen.

See our late November Fantasy Magazine Rack here, and all of our recent Magazine coverage here.

Fantasia 2017, Day 18, Part 1: Geek Girls

Fantasia 2017, Day 18, Part 1: Geek Girls

Comments 0 Comment

Geek GirlsSunday, July 30, was going to be a big day. I had four movies I hoped to see, some of them scheduled so tightly I wasn’t sure I could get to all of them in time despite the convenient proximity of the Fantasia theatres one to another. Still, I at least knew I’d start my day in the D.B. Clarke Theatre, where I would see Geek Girls, a documentary by Gina Hara.

The film’s narrated by Hara herself, a Montrealer of Hungarian birth. We see her reflecting in voiceover on her status as a self-identified geek, and hear interviews with a number of women in geekish fields who talk about their lives and their experiences as women in geek spaces and geek communities. The interviews aren’t presented as give-and-take conversations, Hara instead absenting herself from the film and allowing her interviewees’ words to shape the piece. We hear from a scientist, a game designer, from cosplayers and bloggers and manga makers, from gamers professional and otherwise. Hara’s film becomes about her own search for a place, and for an understanding of what it means to be a geek. We’re told that there’s no word for “geek” in Hungarian, but even in North America, what does it mean for her as a woman to be a geek?

Hara avoids any journalistic reliance on facts and figures, making her film much more of a personal memoir. This is a series of discussions and reflections, not infodumps; even Hara’s interviewees are each introduced, cleverly, with the camera showing a physical sign with their name on it rather than by using subtitles. The interviews are edited so that the film progresses through a rough series of themes, examining the issues of women in geek-related fields. Overall the focus here is on the sense of community among women (especially); that is, the film’s more about the value of fandom rather than an investigation of what pulls one in to being a fan.

…

Read More Read More

The Poison Apple: True Interview – One-on-One with Charlaine Harris

The Poison Apple: True Interview – One-on-One with Charlaine Harris

Comments 0 Comment

Candid photo by Elizabeth Crowens

Candid photo by Elizabeth Crowens

I had the pleasure of interviewing Charlaine Harris at the 2017 Bouchercon, a mystery convention held this year in Toronto. Charlaine has written dozens of books from the Sookie Stackhouse Southern Vampire series that was made into the television series, True Blood on HBO to the Midnight series, which is now featured as the Midnight, Texas series on NBC.

One of the things I wanted to focus on in our interview is that you’ve been involved so many adaptations of your work. I know you’ve been writing for a really long time, but I have to ask you — when you were in your twenties what did you visualize? Did you think your career was going to take this turn?

Charlaine: Who could ever imagine this? I’ve met people I never thought I’d be in the same city with much less dining with and watching them work and then feeling… at least lip service… lucky to be meeting me! I thought, “This is just crazy and weird.”

…

Read More Read More

Ride Your Own Pet Sea Monster: The Abyss Surrounds Us by Emily Skrutskie

Ride Your Own Pet Sea Monster: The Abyss Surrounds Us by Emily Skrutskie

Comments 0 Comment

The-Abyss-Surrounds-Us-smallWhat Anne McCaffrey did for dragons, Emily Skrutskie does for sea monsters.

In The Abyss Surrounds Us, first-person present-tense narration sweeps readers into the world of Cassandra “Cas” Leung. Since Cas is a trainer of Reckoners, genetically engineered giants of the ocean, her perspective gives us the joy of having our own pet sea monster. As Cas, you’ll strap on your scuba gear and swim alongside a massive tortoise, running your hands over and between its keratin plates. You’ll climb on its back and sit on its head. You’ll hitch a ride as it dives. You’ll command it in battle, sending it to charge, ravage, and destroy.

At the age of seventeen, Cas has worked her whole life to become a full-fledged Reckoner trainer. The day has finally come for her to go on her first solo mission, accompanying the legendary monster Durga as she protects a cruise ship in the lawless Neo Pacific. Cas’s first mistake is assuming that any escort duty in pirate-infested waters is going to be a cakewalk. Her second is deciding to go through with the mission despite signs that Durga’s sick. Her third mistake, after pirates have succeeded in killing Durga and overtaking the ship, is failing to take the suicide pill that would guarantee her a swift and painless death.

Defenseless in enemy hands, Cas has a brain full of information the pirates must never discover. But instead of torturing it out of her, the vicious pirate queen has other plans. She has acquired a Reckoner fetus on the verge of hatching. To avoid execution, Cas must birth the thing, raise it, and train it to kill the very people who would come to rescue her.

Once she’s got a lethal beast on her side, though, she can turn it on the pirates and escape. Or at least, this is what Cas thinks. Which is her final mistake.

…

Read More Read More

A Return to Terry Carr’s Best Science Fiction of the Year

A Return to Terry Carr’s Best Science Fiction of the Year

Comments 12 comments

Terry Carr Best Science Fiction of the Year-small

My taste in science fiction — like my taste in music and film — was shaped early. What I learned to love as a teen I largely still enjoy… with some exceptions. One of those exceptions is Terry Carr’s Best Science Fiction of the Year. I picked up my first one in 1977, at the age of 13, and I discovered pretty quickly that they weren’t for me. I went back to reading pulp SF in books like Before the Golden Age, and was blissfully happy to do so for many years.

I’ve returned to Carr’s Best Science Fiction of the Year recently, and discovered why I didn’t connect with them four decades ago: unlike many of his contemporaries, Carr brought an adult eye to SF, and the fiction he selected spoke to adults. It still speaks to adults today, clearly and with no loss of voice, and I now consider Carr’s Best volumes — especially the ones he did in the mid-70s — to be some some of the best SF anthologies ever printed. Here’s what I said last year about #3, published in 1973.

How incredible was The Best Science Fiction of the Year #3? It contains some of the finest science fiction stories of all time, packed into one slender volume. Like “The Women Men Don’t See” by James Tiptree, Jr… perhaps her most famous story, and that’s saying something. And Vonda N. McIntyre’s Nebula Award-winning “Of Mist, and Grass, and Sand,” which became the basis of her 1978 novel Dreamsnake (which swept the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus Awards the following year.) And Harlan Ellison’s classic “The Deathbird,” the Hugo and Locus Award-winning title story of his celebrated 1975 collection Deathbird Stories. Plus Gene Wolfe’s famous “The Death of Dr. Island,” winner of the Locus and Nebula awards for Best Novella.

And an unassuming little story by a young writer named Ursula K. Le Guin, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas,” which won the Hugo Award for Best Short Story, and is considered by many (me included) to be one of the finest short stories ever written. And lots more — including a Jack Vance novella, plus stories by Philip José Farmer, Alfred Bester, R. A. Lafferty, Robert Silverberg, and F. M. Busby. All for $1.50!

Last month I purchased a fine collection of six Best Science Fiction of the Year volumes (pictured above) on eBay for the criminally low price of $7. They arrived a few weeks ago, and I’ve stolen a few minutes here and there to dip into them. It’s been an enormously rewarding experience.

…

Read More Read More

New Treasures: The Witches of New York by Ami McKay

New Treasures: The Witches of New York by Ami McKay

Comments 0 Comment
The Witches of New York-small The Witches of New York-back-small

When a book loudly proclaims “International Bestseller” on the cover, that’s usually code for “Translated from French,” or some equally strange language. A little digging on the copyright page of The Witches of New York reveals that it was, indeed, originally published in a foreign land in 2016… in this case, Canada. Well, that means I can be reasonably sure the author has at least been to New York. You can see why this kind of literary detective work is so important.

Ami McKay lives in Nova Scotia (the greatest land on Earth), and her debut novel The Birth House was a # 1 bestseller in Canada. Her second, The Virgin Cure, was inspired by her great- great grandmother, Dr. Sarah Fonda Mackintosh, a female doctor in nineteenth century New York. McKay was born and raised in Indiana, which is actually farther from New York than Nova Scotia. But we won’t hold that against her.

Publishers Weekly calls The Witches of New York “Wonderful… a sidelong glance at misogyny through a veil of witches, ghosts, and other mystical entities in 1880 New York.” And The Globe and Mail says “Society types straight out of Edith Wharton pursue spiritualism for fun… but McKay widens her scope with grimier episodes… She has a nose for the Dickensian.” It is a Buzzfeed Best Gift Book of the Year.

The Witches of New York was published by Harper Perennial on July 11, 2017. It is 560 pages, priced at $15.99 in paperback, and $9.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Stephen MacKey. Read an excerpt here.

Helen’s Daimones by S.E. Lindberg

Helen’s Daimones by S.E. Lindberg

Comments 5 comments

51rwuiXOUeL._SX331_BO1,204,203,200_There are strange territories in the wilds of swords & sorcery that have been visited successfully by only a handful of writers. They are places where, aside from some actual swords and sorcery, few of the common trappings of the genre are found. Magic may be phatasmagorical, the world — both physically and culturally — has no echoes of our own, and the hero is more likely to be a golem, a resurrected nobleman, or a little girl than an axe-swinging warrior.

Some of C.L. Moore’s Jirel stories and most of Clark Ashton Smith’s oeuvre mapped portions of these realms. In Throne of Bones, Brian McNaughton (reviewed by me here) brought back a detailed study of one nation. Michael Shea and Darrell Schweitzer mapped whole continents. They’re dangerous places, permeated by darkness and decay, and the scent of death is rarely absent from the thick, curdled air.

S.E. Lindberg’s short novel, Helen’s Daimones (2017), is one such tale of this diseased stretch of the world of swords & sorcery. I can’t say this book quite attains the same heights as Shea’s Nifft the Lean or Schweitzer’s The Mask of the Sorcerer (reviewed here), but much of the time it comes tantalizingly close. It’s always exciting to find an author hunting out the stranger reaches of fantasy instead of re-exploring places we’ve all been many times before. This is the third published (second chronologically) novel in Lindberg’s Dyscrasia series. The word dyscrasia is from the Greek, and refers to a bad mixing of the four Classical humors: phlegm, blood, black bile, and yellow bile. In these books, there is no actual magic, only the disease Dyscrasia and corrupted souls.

Lindberg’s novel opens on his young protagonist, the daughter of a furrier, playing in the countryside.

Lithe, ivory-haired Helen crouched in the meadow. She spied the emerging fireflies, ready to play. A storm brewed on the distant, western horizon. Remote, thunderless lightning seemed to communicate to the fireflies with pulsing flashes. She wished she could interpret such magic.

“One day, I will understand your secret language,” Helen vowed.

She was accustomed to being apart from people, immersed in her own reality. Cloaked in a cougar pelt splotched with green dye, she was empowered by her feline familiar’s aura: Angie.

…

Read More Read More

Future Treasures: Elysium Fire by Alastair Reynolds

Future Treasures: Elysium Fire by Alastair Reynolds

Comments 0 Comment

Elysium Fire-smallAlastair Reynolds’ 2007 novel The Prefect introduced Prefect Tom Dreyfus, a hardened law enforcement officer tasked with maintaining democracy throughout the Glitter Band, part of Reynolds’s Revelation Space milieu. Publishers Weekly called the book “a fascinating hybrid of space opera, police procedural and character study… solid British SF adventure, evoking echoes of le Carré and Sayers with a liberal dash of Doctor Who.”

A decade later Reynolds has written a sequel, in which Dreyfuss finds himself caught in a web of murderers, secret cultists, tampered memories, and unthinkable power. It arrives in paperback from Orion next month.

Ten thousand city-state habitats orbit the planet Yellowstone, forming a near-perfect democratic human paradise.

But even utopia needs a police force. For the citizens of the Glitter Band that organization is Panoply, and the prefects are its operatives.

Prefect Tom Dreyfus has a new emergency on his hands. Across the habitats and their hundred million citizens, people are dying suddenly and randomly, victims of a bizarre and unprecedented malfunction of their neural implants. And these “melters” leave no clues behind as to the cause of their deaths…

As panic rises in the populace, a charismatic figure is sowing insurrection, convincing a small but growing number of habitats to break away from the Glitter Band and form their own independent colonies.

Elysium Fire is Book 2 of 3 in the Prefect Dreyfus Emergency series. Our most recent coverage of Reynolds includes Brandon Crilly’s review of Revenger (which won the 2017 Locus Award for Best Young Adult Book), and a look at The Medusa Chronicles, co-authored with Stephen Baxter. Brit Hvide at Orbit shares this take on the cover art:

Peer into the darkness! Gaze upon the future! And admire that sweet, sweet new cover for Alastair Reynolds’ latest space opera, Elysium Fire! That gold band you see on the cover? Nope, it’s not one of Jupiter’s rings, fancy space debris, or a futuristic engagement ring. It’s the Glitter Band, the setting for Reynolds’s latest adventure: ten thousand city-state habitats orbiting the planet Yellowstone, forming a near-perfect democratic human paradise. How’s that for scale?

Elysium Fire will be published by Orbit on January 23, 2018. It is 432 pages, priced at $15.99 in trade paperback and $9.99 for the digital editions.