The spring issue of Conjunctions, the literary magazine of Bard College, is called “Between and Betwixt: Impossible Realism,” described as “postfantasy fictions that begin with the premise that the unfamiliar or liminal really constitutes a solid ground on which to walk.” This is a follow-up to its “New Wave Fabulist” issue back in 2003, which I reviewed for Locus. I like the title of this new edition (makes more sense to me than new wavey fabulous), though I’m not quite sure…
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In his for the most part disdainful observations of science fiction as a cultural phenomenon, The Dreams Our Stuff is Made Of, Thomas Disch characterizes Ray Bradbury, among other notable genre authors of the post- WW II generation, as being in “affluent decline” by the 1980s, suffering from “the literary equivalent of repetition compulsion” (122). He also rues that SF is a young man’s game, not because it is physically exhausting, but because the marketplace focuses on a largely juvenile…
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Apologies to David Soyka and all for posting off my usual day, but I thought I should keep finish what I started (for once in my life). It’s been a busy week, but I did finally manage to acquire and read the remaining Nebula-nominated novels. And I’m glad to say that my preliminary generalization in the first installment of this post holds up: these books are not all created equal, but they are, in their way, all worthwhile reads. And…
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I just reviewed Jeff and Ann Vandermeer’s The New Weird anthology, and if you’re interested in varying offshoots and antecedents, you might want to check out my reviews of: The New Wave Fabulists Paraspheres Cyberpunk Slipstream Should be enough homework for today.
“So just what is science fiction?” asks editor Lou Anders in the preamble to his second and latest volume of Fast Forward, an annual collection of original genre stories (you can find my review of the first edition here). Theodore Sturgeon, whose definition Anders includes in the epigraph, used to seem to say it best: “…a story about human beings with a human problem, and a human solution, that would not have happened at all without its science content.” Maybe…
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I’ve just started the Jeff and Ann VanderMeer edited The New Weird, a kind of anthropological excavation of a genre movement earlier in the decade that many of its adherents started to disavow once they got labelled with it (bad enough to be in the sf/fantasy ghetto and then get relegated to an even more narrowed niche), about which I hope to have more to say in this space at some later time. For now, though, here’s what China Miéville…
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The Del Rey Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy Tall Tales on the Iron Horse Reviewed by David Soyka Well, here we are again with another short fiction collection with a dumb and unoriginal title – The Del Rey Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy is the latest entrant in a long line of insipidly titled collections that have contributed their small part towards the ghettoization of the genre. Presumably this is not editor Ellen Datlow’s fault, but rather that…
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Theodore Beale is the author of five science fiction and fantasy novels, including Summa Elvetica: A Casuistry of the Elvish Controversy. An active member of the SFWA, he has participated on three Nebula Award juries. He is a professional game designer and he lives in Italy. Judith Berman’s last Black Gate offering, “Awakening,” was a finalist for the 2007 Nebula Award. Residing in another wing of the genre, her most recent story, “Pelago,” is a far-future sf novella forthcoming…
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We at Tin House endeavor to widen the circle of lit. mag. readers, and to make extinct the preciousness and staid nature of journals past. That is our mission. Please lift your glasses in toast, and read on… Thus proclaims the website for Tin House magazine, one of the more arch-literary venues to dip into the realms of the weird and fantastic in recent memory. Their thirty-third issue was devoted to “Fantastic Women” — a title guaranteed to attract the…
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By David Soyka Copyright © 2008 by New Epoch Press. All rights Reserved. Tin House Issue #33: Fantastic Women ($17.00 postpaid) The “Fantastic Women” themed issue of Tin House (Volume 9, number 1) was rightly named by Amazon as a “10 Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of 2007.” However, this quarterly being a “literary” magazine, there actually isn’t any science fiction (the one possible exception is Lydia Millet’s wonderful “Thomas Edison and Vasil Golakov,” in which the famed inventor attains…
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