Search Results for: analog

Cloud Painters, Alien Blobs, and War in the Asteroids: March-April 2024 Print SF Magazines

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March-April 2024 issues of Analog Science Fiction & Fact, Asimov’s Science Fiction, and the Winter 2024 Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. Covers by Eli Bischof (for “Ganny Goes to War”), Eldar Zakirov (for “How Sere Kept Herself Together”) and Mondolithic Studios. There’s some great old-time serial adventure in this month’s print SF magazines. In the Asimov’s SF novella “How Sere Kept Herself Together,” Alexander Jablokov brings back his cynical detective Sere Glagolit (introduced in “How Sere Picked Up Her Laundry,”…

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Vernor Vinge, October 2, 1944 — March 20, 2024

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The Zones of Thought trilogy: A Fire Upon the Deep (Tor paperback reprint, February 1993), A Deepness in the Sky (Tor, March 1999), The Children of the Sky (Tor, October 2011). Covers by Boris Vallejo, Bob Eggleton, Stephan Martiniere Vernor Vinge died on March 20, 2024, after several years suffering from Parkinson’s Disease. (I was aware that he had retired from writing, though I didn’t know about his illness, and part of me had hoped for one more novel or…

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Love Exotic Science Fiction on Desert Planets? Try Donald Kingsbury’s Courtship Rite

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Courtship Rite (Timescape Books, July 1982). Cover by Rowena Morrill Noe took her strange Liethe in a comforting embrace. “Some of us make our Contribution to the Race through Death, and others of us make our Contribution to the Race through Life. That’s the way it has always been.” One of the distinctive pleasures of science fiction is the heterotopia — a story set not in a good place (a utopia) or an evil place (a dystopia) but in an…

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Vintage Treasures: World’s Best Science Fiction First Series edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Terry Carr

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World’s Best Science Fiction First Series (Ace Books, 1970). Cover by Jack Gaughan If you want to understand science fiction, it’s not a bad idea to start by reading Year’s Best volumes. And if you’re going to do that, it’s not a bad idea to start with the World’s Best Science Fiction, edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Terry Carr, an annual series that began in 1965 and lasted for an amazing 26 volumes. The last of which, The 1990…

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Emancipation: April by Mackey Chandler

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April, Mackey Chandler (self published, May 4, 2019). Cover uncredited Back in 2020, one of the blogs I follow had a paragraph about a newly released self-published novel, Who Can Own the Stars? by Mackey Chandler. The title sounded interesting, so I tracked it down on Amazon. It turned out to be volume 12 of a series; having enjoyed it, I went back to the first volume, April, and then read through the entire series, one volume at a time….

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A to Z Reviews: “Virtually Correct,” by Marianne Dyson

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Marianne J. Dyson’s “Virtually Correct” was originally published in the May 1995 issue of Analog under the “Probability Zero” rubric. Stories published as part of the Probability Zero series are stories that use the science fiction tropes, but in a way that allows the author to write a story which could never happen. Dyson tackles the concept of racial profiling in “Virtually Correct.” Maxwell Bishop runs a security firm known as Security Unlimited. The firm uses virtual reality simulations of…

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Make Room For Harry Harrison: Anthony Aycock on a Forgotten SF Master

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Make Room! Make Room! (Berkley Medallion, July 1967). Cover by Richard Powers Harry Harrison was a true believer. Like Isaac Asimov, Terry Carr, Donald Wollheim, Gardner Dozois, Lin Carter, Damon Knight and a handful of others, he dedicated his life to science fiction, and in a multitude of roles, as writer, editor, critic, and scholar. His fiction, however, has been largely — and unjustly — forgotten, and in the dozen years since his death in August 2012, all his books…

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Domestic Gods, Cannibal Toys, and Sherlock Holmes in Tombstone: January-February 2024 Print SF Magazines

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January-February 2024 issues of Analog Science Fiction & Fact and Asimov’s Science Fiction. Cover art by Julie Dillon, and Maurizio Manzieri (for “Burning Grannies”) It’s February 10th, and I’m a little concerned to see there’s no sign of the January/February issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. Not on their website or Facebook Page, both of which still show the November-December issue, and not on Twitter/X or Amazon. I can’t even find a copy of the cover, which I…

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Neither Beg Nor Yield, edited by Jason M. Waltz

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Sword & Sorcery is a clenched fist thrust into the sky, a raised middle finger in the face of the Unknown, an epithet spat into the dirt through a rictus of bared teeth. S&S demands an attitude of not merely surviving but of dominating living, all else—everything else—be damned. The heroes of S&S continue living deeply until there are no more breaths to take. The only -ism S&S promotes is LIVE!-ism. Absolutely a rebellion against meaninglessness, it also fully embraces…

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Vintage Treasures: Courtship Rite by Donald Kingsbury

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Courtship Rite (Timescape/Pocket Books, September 1983). Cover by Rowena Morrill I still remember the buzz of excitement in Ottawa fandom when a young local writer named Charles de Lint sold his first novel to Ace Books. Riddle of the Wren wasn’t particularly groundbreaking —  not like the breakout books soon to come from Charles — but everyone read it, and it was passed around and enjoyed with the kind of hometown pride that quickly catapulted Charles into literary stardom, at…

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