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Year: 2018

In 500 Words or Less: Waypoint Kangaroo by Curtis C. Chen

In 500 Words or Less: Waypoint Kangaroo by Curtis C. Chen

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Waypoint Kangaroo
By Curtis C. Chen
St. Martin’s Press (320 pages, $25.99 hardcover, $13.99 eBook, June 2016)

I met Curtis C. Chen at my first time out to the Nebulas (about this time last year), and I remember chatting with him in the con suite about Waypoint Kangaroo and its sequel, Kangaroo Too. The premise alone was enough for me to add it to my reading list right away: a covert agent in the near-future forced to go on vacation to Mars, but who can’t seem to avoid trouble. Oh, and he can open a window to a pocket dimension at will, which is why he’s so valuable – because otherwise, he’s a bit of a screw-up. But you know how reading lists get; they’re huge, and I never quite got to reading Waypoint, and felt like a jerk when I hung out with Curtis again at Can*Con and still hadn’t picked it up.

Now that I finally have, I feel even more like a jerk. Why?

Because the next time I write a science fiction adventure novel, I want to do it like Curtis C. Chen.

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Birthday Reviews: Jonathan Maberry’s “Red Dreams”

Birthday Reviews: Jonathan Maberry’s “Red Dreams”

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Dead Man's Hand
Dead Man’s Hand

Jonathan Maberry was born on May 18, 1958.

Maberry won the 2007 Bram Stoker Award for Best First Novel for Ghost Road Blues, which was also nominated for Best Novel. The next year he won the Bram Stoker Award for Best Nonfiction with David F. Kramer for their book The Cryptopedia: A Dictionary of the Weird, Strange & Downright Bizarre. In 2012, he won the Bram Stoker for Best Young Adult Novel for Dust & Decay, and again the following year for Flesh & Bone. In 2015, he shared a Bram Stoker Award for Best Graphic Novel with Tyler Crook for Bad Blood.

“Red Dreams” original appeared in Dead Man’s Hand: An Anthology of the Weird West, edited by John Joseph Adams in 2014. In 2017, Maberry included it in his collection Wind Through the Fence and Other Stories.

Set in the American West of 1876, the story follows Jonah McCall, who has been leading a band of mercenaries against a Cheyenne tribe led by Walking Bear, in hopes of earning the bounty placed on the head of each member of the tribe. When the “Red Dreams” opens, McCall has wiped out the Cheyenne and won the bounty, but at the cost of all of his own men. He and his horse, Bob, are the only survivors on the empty Wyoming desert where they watch a meteorite fall through the atmosphere.

Alone on the desert, McCall begins to reflect on his history with the Cheyenne, dating back to an enormous raid that massacred women, children, and the elderly, to the recent destruction of Walking Bear’s war party. Although McCall only sees himself doing his job and what is right for the local white settlers, his thoughts show him as an antihero. Maberry doesn’t indicate that Walking Bear was any less damaged than McCall, but Walking Bear’s thoughts and deeds aren’t being presented in the story, at least not by a reliable narrator. What is clear is that McCall has no personal animosity towards Walking Bear, but rather does hold him in a grudging respect.

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Goth Chick News: 13 Questions for Misty Keasler, Creator of Haunt

Goth Chick News: 13 Questions for Misty Keasler, Creator of Haunt

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Our annual road trip to the Haunted Association and Attractions Show this year yielded some very unique finds, not the least of which being the photo-journal / coffee table book Haunt, created by photographer Misty Keasler.

Ms. Keasler toured and photographed professional haunted attractions across American and her work was recently the subject of an entire exhibit at the Modern Museum in Fort Worth, TX. Haunt includes 104 photographs many of which are unpopulated “scenes” from some of the season’s most famous attractions. Who would put these rooms together this way? Who makes up the market for such places, paying to be scared? And what does this say about American culture?

As you can imagine, we were just dying to find out so Misty, meet everyone – everyone, meet photo journalist extraordinaire, Misty Keasler.

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Future Treasures: Adrift by Rob Boffard

Future Treasures: Adrift by Rob Boffard

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Rob Boffard is the author of the Outer Earth series, which was recently re-packaged in a brick-sized (1,024 pages!) omnibus volume selected by Unbound Worlds as one of the Best Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books of February. His newest novel is Adrift, the tale of a group of tourists caught in a cat-and-mouse game with a deadly alien ship in deep space. It arrives in trade paperback from Orbit next month.

In the far reaches of space, a tour group embarks on what will be the trip of a lifetime – in more ways than one…

At Sigma Station, a remote mining facility and luxury hotel in deep space, a group of tourists boards a small vessel to take in the stunning views of the Horsehead Nebula. But while they’re out there, a mysterious ship with devastating advanced technology attacks the station. Their pilot’s quick thinking means that the tourists escape with their lives – but as the dust settles, they realise they may be the only survivors…

Adrift in outer space on a vastly under-equipped ship, they’ve got no experience, no weapons, no contact with civilization. They are way out of their depth, and if they can’t figure out how to work together, they’re never getting home alive.

Because the ship that destroyed the station is still out there. And it’s looking for them…

Adrift will be published by Orbit on June 5, 2018. It is 416 pages, priced at $15.99 in trade paperback and $9.99 for the digital edition. Read the first chapter at the author’s website.

Birthday Reviews: F. Paul Wilson’s “When He Was Fab”

Birthday Reviews: F. Paul Wilson’s “When He Was Fab”

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Cover by Bob Eggleton
Cover by Bob Eggleton

F. Paul Wilson was born on May 17, 1946.

Wilson won the Bram Stoker Award for his short story “Aftershocks” in 1999. He has been nominated for the award seven more times, and in 2009 he received a Lifetime Achievement Awards from the Horror Writer’s Association. Wilson was named a Grand Master by World Horror Con in 2005. He received his first Prometheus Award in 1979 for the novel Wheels Within Wheels and in 2004 he won the award for the novel Sims. His Healer and An Enemy of the State won back-to-back Prometheus Hall of Fame Awards in 1990 and 1991. He was one of the Guests of Honor at the 2009 World Horror Convention in Winnipeg, Canada.

Although originally written with Thomas F. Monteleone’s Borderlands 2 in mind, “When We Was Fab” was purchased by Darrell Schweitzer for a special F. Paul Wilson issue of Weird Tales, which appeared in Winter of 1992/1993. Wilson reprinted the story in his 2009 collection Aftershocks and Others: 19 Oddities. It has not otherwise been reprinted.

“When He Was Fab” starts out like many stories about an alien symbiote that takes over a hapless human, in this case, Doug, who works as a super for an apartment in Brooklyn. The symbiote attaches itself to him one day when he’s cleaning out a clogged drain in the building’s basement. The story is also about Marc, a New Yorker who has suddenly found himself part of the cream of New York night life, able to get into all the bars and the person the stars all want to be seen with. Despite the shallowness off Marc’s live, he has found something that makes him happy and he tries to share what he has found with other people.

Wilson eventually brings Marc and Doug’s stories together. In doing so, he takes the symbiote, which would normally be the villain or monster of this type of story and actually makes the creature, which appears as a thick goo, to be a more sympathetic character than either of the humans whose activities Wilson has been describing. When the symbiote appears to take ill, both Doug and the reader care about what happens to the creature.

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Vintage Treasures: Four for Tomorrow by Roger Zelazny

Vintage Treasures: Four for Tomorrow by Roger Zelazny

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If you’ll allow me to wax nostalgic for a moment (I know, I know…. when do I do anything else?), I’d like to spend a moment fondly remembering an era when relatively unknown writers could make a huge splash with a mass market paperback collection.

Roger Zelazny’s first collection Four for Tomorrow was published as a paperback original in March 1967 by Ace Books, with a rather uninspired (and very green) cover by Jack Gaughan. Now, Zelazny wasn’t exactly an unknown writer in 1967 — the year before he’d published his first novel ..And Call Me Conrad, which tied with Frank Herbert’s Dune for the Hugo Award for Best Novel, and his second, The Dream Master, an expansion of his Nebula Award-winning novella “He Who Shapes.” In fact, it was a busy time for Zelazny — his novelette “The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth” won the 1966 Nebula Award, and his groundbreaking Lord of Light, one of the finest SF novels ever written, won the 1968 Hugo Award.

It was Zelazny’s time. And it’s certainly no surprise that his slender 45-cent collection Four for Tomorrow, which collected four of his best-known longer works from his fledgling career, was a huge success. It was reprinted more than half a dozen times over the next 25 years, and is still fondly remembered.

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May/June Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction Now on Sale

May/June Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction Now on Sale

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The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction May June 2018-smallThe big May/June issue of F&SF comes packed with stories by Gardner Dozois, Lisa Mason, Matthew Hughes (a new Argent and Sable tale), Albert E. Cowdrey, Black Gate writer Nina Kiriki Hoffman, and many others — all under a magnificent cover by Alan D. Clark illustrating “The Barrens” by Stephanie Feldman, featuring a group of high school students searching for a pirate radio station transmitting from the Pine Barrens of New Jersey, and the supernatural menaces they encounter on the way.

Victoria Silverwolf at Tangent Online calls the issue “an even balance of science fiction and fantasy… [with] a wide variety of imaginative literature.” Here’s a snippet of her review.

“Unstoppable” by Gardner Dozois concerns a prince obsessed with becoming the greatest warrior in the world. After murdering his way to the throne, he uses magic to become indestructible. It all leads to an ironic ending. This is an enjoyable tale, if hardly profound.

“Crash-Site” by Brian Trent takes place on a distant planet in the far future. Various characters are after a weapon recovered from a starship that crashed on the planet centuries ago. The main appeal of this science fiction adventure story is its technologically advanced setting.

Set in the 1920s or 1930s, “What You Pass For” by Melanie West involves magic white paint, which allows a man to give his fellow African-Americans the physical characteristics of Caucasians. He hates and fears his unwanted ability, and refuses to use it on himself, although this condemns him to a life of poverty. A dancer, forbidden to join a ballet company because of her race, demands the use of this power, even though she is already very light-skinned. This is a powerful story about appearances and reality.

“Ku’gbo” by Nigerian writer Dare Segun Falowo is a dense, complex fantasy with a plot difficult to summarize. Suffice to say that it takes place in an African village which is no ordinary community, and that it begins with a boy seeking to protect food from invisible rams. The many supernatural events and beings that fill the plot, and the author’s fondness for metaphors, make this a story which must be read slowly and carefully to appreciate its uniqueness.

Set in modern New Orleans, “Behold the Child” by Albert E. Cowdrey depicts an unscrupulous lawyer who uses a telekinetic little boy to kill his enemies. A rival lawyer and a private detective, both telepathic, fight to end his reign of terror. The narrative tone is often light, contrasting oddly with the story’s violence. The ending comes as an unpleasant surprise.

Read Victoria’s complete review here.

Here’s the complete Table of Contents of the May/June 2017 issue.

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Baum’s Giant Robot

Baum’s Giant Robot

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Baum The Magical Monarch of Mo, and His People color illus

L. Frank Baum is a seminal figure in the history of robots, and not for the reason that might leap to mind. By my standards The Tin Woodman (whose subtle real name is Nick Chopper, if you bother to read on to the second Oz book, The Marvelous Land of Oz (1904)) isn’t a robot. He retains his original brain and personality, which makes him a cyborg. So is Fyter the Tin Soldier and Chopfyt, who can both be found into the hallucinogenic The Tin Woodman of Oz. (Fyter is a second tin man, and Chopfyt is made of the leftover human parts of the two of them. You think the Flying Monkeys give kids nightmares!) I’m sure some academic has done a lengthy examination of retention of identity in Oz stories, given all the transformations Baum puts his characters through.

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Birthday Reviews: Bruce Coville’s “The Passing of the Pack”

Birthday Reviews: Bruce Coville’s “The Passing of the Pack”

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Cover by Gary Lippincott
Cover by Gary Lippincott

Bruce Coville was born on May 16, 1950.

Best known as a YA author, Coville won the Golden Duck Award in 1992 for his novel My Teacher Glows in the Dark, won it again in 2000 for I Was a 6th Grade Alien, and in 2006 won a Golden Duck for an audio production of Robert Heinlein’s novel Rolling Stones. His novels have twice been nominated for Mythopoeic Awards and in 2000, he received a Skylark Award from NESFA. He received the Empire State Award for Excellence in Literature for Young People from the New York Library Association in 2012.

“The Passing of the Pack” was originally written for the young adult anthology Werewolves: A Collection of Original Stories, edited by Jane Yolen and Martin H. Greenberg in 1988. Coville included the story in his collection Oddly Enough in 1994 and when that volume and its successor were collected in the omnibus Odds Are Good: An Oddly Enough and Odder Than Ever Omnibus, the story saw print again. In 2011, Coville issued the story as an e-book.

Throughout most of history, wolves have been seen as an enemy. They threaten the livestock on small villages and, when particularly hungry can also threaten humans. Bruce Coville channels that fear of wolves in the opening of “The Passing of the Pack,” which describes a wolf attack on a sixteen year old boy and then flashes back to the first time wolves attacked his village when he was five years old.

The story looks at the character’s life as a fatherless boy in a small village, specifically how he was treated almost as an outsider by the rest of the villagers. When he came to the defense of a girl he had befriended, the accusation of witchcraft against her was applied to him as well. By this time, Coville has shown an affinity for him by the wolves and his rescue by the animals is not really a surprise.

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New Treasures: Verdigris Deep by Frances Hardinge

New Treasures: Verdigris Deep by Frances Hardinge

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Frances Hardinge has twice been nominated for the Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy, for her novels Cuckoo Song and The Lie Tree. Verdigris Deep has previously been published in the US under the title Well Witched (2008), and was nominated for the Locus Award for Best Young Adult Book. Amulet has now released it under its original title as part of a set of matching editions with Fly By Night, Fly Trap, and others. Farah Mendlesohn at Strange Horizons said:

Verdigris Deep confirms what I already suspected: Frances Hardinge is the best new fantasy writer for children since Diana Wynne Jones. There is simply no one to match her…

Three children, Josh, Ryan, and Chelle… steal money from an old wishing well. Initially, nothing much happens: then Ryan looks in a mirror and sees water running from his eyes, and passes a poster on which a woman comes alive, her eyes streaming like a fountain. The woman commands him to fulfil the wishes attached to each coin they stole. When Ryan contacts Chelle and Josh he discovers that each of them has acquired “powers” to aid this directive: Josh can now affect electricity and any item that can carry current, while Chelle has become a radio receiver for the wishers—in their vicinity she spills their every thought. Ryan’s “power” remains hidden for a while, mere warts on his hand; but as things proceed the warts develop into eyes which can see the wishes people make as long smoky threads emerging from the chest.

Serving the spirit in the well begins as empowering fun: Ryan, Chelle, and Josh help a young man to win a Harley Davidson, and facilitate a young woman none of them like in finding her true love, but as the story develops it darkens: wishes become more worrying, some of them are out of date and no longer accord with people’s desires yet must still be fulfilled, others are downright nasty or require nastiness to achieve… As the book rolls on to its crescendo, water and emotions flood the page. The ending is deeply satisfying: it is incomplete, problematic, and flows off the edge of the page.

Verdigris Deep was published by Amulet on April 10, 2018. It is 287 pages, priced at $10.99 in hardcover and $9.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Vincent Chong.