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Tor Double #9: Isaac Asimov’s The Ugly LIttle Boy and Theodore Sturgeon’s The [Widget], the [Wadget], and Boff

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The ninth Tor Double collects novellas by Isaac Asimov and Theodore Sturgeon, the only entries by either author. The Asimov’s story is The Ugly Little Boy and Sturgeon offers the oddly titled The [Widget], the [Wadget], and Boff. This volume is the first to include two stories that did not win, or even receive a nomination, for any awards. Leigh Brackett’s story in the previous volume wound up winning the 2020 Retro Hugo Award. Theodore Sturgeon’s The [Widget], the [Wadget],…

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The Tuvela Theory: The Demon Breed by James H. Schmitz

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The Demon Breed (Ace Books, September 1979). Cover by Bob Adragna Earlier this year, I visited my city library during a book sale. One of the things I spotted on their shelves was a novel by James H. Schmitz that I wasn’t familiar with. I’ve liked Schmitz since I discovered his story “Novice” in the collection Analog 2 — so I bought this one. The Demon Breed came out in 1968, fairly late in Schmitz’s career, which lasted from 1943 to…

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Deadly Archeology on Alien Planets: “It Opens the Sky” by Theodore Sturgeon

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Venture Science Fiction, November 1957. Cover by Emsh In this series of essays I have been taking a close look at stories I find interesting, trying to figure out how they work. So far the stories (and one poem) I have discussed are pieces I find particularly good – and this is hardly surprising, as surely it’s better to know how and what good stories do than weak stories. But this time I’m taking a look at a story I…

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October 1 New Releases: Aurora Blazing by Jessie Mihalik, The Sinister Mystery of the Mesmerizing Girl by Theodora Goss, and Hex Life, edited by Christopher Golden and Rachel Autumn Deering

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Welcome to October! It’s Release Day for a trio of terrific books, and I couldn’t decide which one to feature, so I’m going to cover them all. You’re welcome. Let’s get right to it. The first one is the sequel to Jessie Mihalik’s debut novel, the space opera-romance Polaris Rising, which we covered back in February. Aurora Blazing (Harper Voyager, 400 pages, $16.99 trade paperback/$11.99 digital, October 1, 2019) is the second novel in The Consortium Rebellion. As the dutiful…

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Airships in a Floating World: The Peridot Shift by R J Theodore

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Covers by Julie Dillon I don’t get enough steampunk in my diet these days. Once the industry was awash with it; that’s not true so much any more, although there are still a few publishers catering to readers like me. Parvus Press is one of the better ones, and their flagship steampunk series is R J Theodore’s Peridot Shift. The first, Flotsam, was published last year, and the sequel Salvage just arrived earlier this month. The novels deftly blend First Contact, Magic,…

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Birthday Reviews: Theodora Goss’s “Singing of Mount Abora”

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Theodora Goss was born on September 30, 1968. Goss has won two Rhysling Awards for Long Poem. The first was in 2004 for “Octavia Is Lost in the Hall of Masks” and the second for “Rose Child” in 2017. She has also twice been nominated for the Nebula Award, the Mythopoeic, the Seiun, and the World Fantasy Award, winning the last once. She has additionally been nominated for the William L. Crawford/IAFA Fantasy Award, the SLF Foundation Award, and the…

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Take a Monstrous Tour of Europe in The Extraordinary Adventures of the Athena Club by Theodora Goss

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When Theodora Goss released The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter last June, Black Gate reviewer Zeta Moore raved, calling it “A Novel You’ve Been Waiting For Your Whole Life.” Here’s a clip from her review. The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter [is] a 400-page extravaganza featuring… the daughters of legendary characters from classic fantasy and science fiction… When Mary Jekyll’s mother dies, the young inheritor of her meager estate discovers her father — Henry Jekyll himself — associated…

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Birthday Reviews: Jody Lynn Nye’s “Theory of Relativity”

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Jody Lynn Nye was born on July 5, 1957. Nye began her career writing technical articles and gaming related fiction, including several choose-your-path adventures in the Crossroads Adventures series for Anne McCaffrey’s Pern and Piers Anthony’s Xanth. She followed those ups with The Dragonlover’s Guide to Pern and Magic of Xanth before beginning to publish her own works as well as collaborative novels. Many of her novels and short stories are humorous and she has also written military science fiction….

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Vintage Treasures: Particle Theory by Edward Bryant

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Cover by Richard Powers Edward Bryant died last year, at the age of 71. He was widely acclaimed for his short fiction, and published some 121 stories between 1970 and 2017. He won back-to-back Nebulas, for “Stone” (1978) and “giANTS” (1979). Wikipedia notes that “By 1973, he had gained acclaim for stories with a conversational style that mask rather dark realities,” and that seems right to me. His produced a single novel, Phoenix Without Ashes (1975), co-written with Harlan Ellison….

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Birthday Reviews: Theodore Cogswell’s “The Wall Around the World”

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Theodore R. Cogswell was born on March 10, 1918 and died on February 3, 1987. Cogswell received a Hugo nomination for his book PITFCS: The Proceedings of the Institute for Twenty-First Century Studies, which has been described as a “fanzine for pros.” His story “The Wall Around the World” was nominated for a Retro Hugo Award for Best Novelette. In 2000, he was posthumously inducted into the First Fandom Hall of Fame. “The Wall Around the World” first appeared in…

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