A to Z Review: “Bit by Bit,” by Karina Fabian

A to Z Review: “Bit by Bit,” by Karina Fabian

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A to Z Reviews

Karina Fabian published “Bit by Bit” in Daily Science Fiction in January, 2011 and it was subsequently reprinted in their massive first year’s collection, Not Just Rockets and Robots.

A root canal is bad enough, but it becomes even worse of Sally when the dentist’s drill broke off in her tooth. Rather than attempt to extract the broken off drill bit, the dentist elected to leave it inside the tooth (this is not recommended practice by the ADA). Almost immediately, Sally began hearing chirping sounds, which she understood to be an alien language.

Unable to understand what the aliens may have been saying, but understanding that the constant noise was annoying her and making life difficult, Sally attempted to have the drill bit removed, a procedure which was denied by her insurance company. Joining the aluminum hat brigade as a method to stop the signals from reaching her tooth, Sally found her job as a barista in jeopardy.

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Goth Chick News: Is Universal Finally Treating Its Iconic Catalog the Right Way?

Goth Chick News: Is Universal Finally Treating Its Iconic Catalog the Right Way?

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I’ve spent more words here than I care to count ranting about the atrocities Universal Studios has repeatedly tried to visit on its iconic monster movie catalog. I could dry heave every time I think about the whole Dark Universe debacle and the fact that we were this close to having a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde courtesy of Russell Crowe, a Van Helsing brought to you by Channing Tatum, Dwayne “the rock” Johnson as Wolfman, and (I can barely type this) Angelina Jolie recreating the Bride of Frankenstein. Literally, the only good thing I can say about the first step in this hellish march to mediocrity that was Tom Cruise in The Mummy (2017), is that its spectacular crash and burn lit fire to the entire concept.

But here we are in 2024 and a mere year away from the launch of Universal’s new Epic Universe theme park, part of which is a new “land” called – you guessed it – Dark Universe. Sources point to plans for the new park being in the works since the early 2000’s, and scuttling the big-budget remakes of their classic monster films meant Universal was left with a revenue gap that tied their new park property to their movie vault. The answer, when it finally started being talked about at Hollywood cocktail parties, is a classic example of the best ideas being the original ones.

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

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 interestingly different place. Geta, the setting of Donald Kingsbury’s Courtship Rite, has long been my favorite heterotopia.

The society Kingsbury portrays is shaped in important ways by its physical setting. Geta is a desert world, a science fictional trope that goes back to Percival Lowell’s Mars and the many stories set there, from Burroughs on. It’s not as harsh as Herbert’s Arrakis, but certainly harsher than Le Guin’s Anarras. For one thing, its native life is biochemically incompatible with its human inhabitants; eating it, without careful detoxification, is lethal. The only things truly safe to eat are a limited number of introduced Earth lifeforms: bees, eight species of plants (not all named) — and other human beings, because Geta’s most visibly distinctive cultural trait is institutionalized cannibalism. Kingsbury calls this out on the first page of the novel, where the children of a famous man, Tae ran-Kaiel, attend a funeral feast where his roasted body is the main course.

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Immaculate Scoundrels: That Tarantino-style Wuxia-80’s Heist-Fantasy Film… with Lizard People… you never knew you needed

Immaculate Scoundrels: That Tarantino-style Wuxia-80’s Heist-Fantasy Film… with Lizard People… you never knew you needed

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Immaculate Scoundrels (Flying Wizard Press, March 5, 2024). Cover by Brian Leblanc

There are lots of jokes associated with being GenX; so many, in fact, that arguably, the best joke is being GenX, period. I mean, multiple discussions of various generations literally provided lists and manage to forget that there actually is a group of people born between 1965 and 1980 at all!

But thanks to the odd 80s nostalgia of Stranger Things, Maverick, and the never-ending exploitat… er… expansion of the Star Wars franchise… the rather odd era of Big Hair, Nuclear Escalation, the birth of the Summer Blockbuster and a lot of pretty bitchin’ music is in vogue. It was an interesting, weird and contradictory time to grow up, with a lot of contradictory media and mixed messages (I’ll never forget seeing a literal “Say No to Drugs” commercial attached to the trailer for Porkys).

The end result was a generation marked for having a certain feral cynicism born of constant reminder from about age 13 that we were the “baby bust” and had zero political or economic influence and likely never would so just “go do you.” And any inclination otherwise probably ended with the dot.com crash, 9/11 etc. all hitting as most of us were 25 – 33, with 1/2 the generation still on a Clintonian hangover and the other half still believing Reaganomics had been a thing.

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What’s Coming Here on Monday Mornings…

What’s Coming Here on Monday Mornings…

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So, you’re wondering, “What’s Bob gonna write about in the coming months?”

Actually, not one of you is wondering that, but this is my column. So… Writing about a thousand words a week often involves picking a topic on Saturday morning, and having something ready to go on Monday morning. I’ve actually been working on a few things ahead of time this year, which is kinda cool.

“Really, Bob? You mean, some stuff, you’re not just totally winging?”

Well, I wouldn’t put it so crudely, but yes. I’m trying to go a little deeper on a few things. Including number two below, which I am THRILLED with.

 

DOYLE ON HOLMES

For the entire month of April and into May, The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes returns to Monday mornings. Peter Haining’s The Final Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is a nifty book which had been published by Barnes and Noble. It has several items which are included in Jack Tracy’s foundational Sherlock Holmes: The Published Apocrypha.

It also has several additional items worth reading. Doyle wrote some essays regarding Sherlock Holmes, and I’m going to do a series on those. The posts will quote liberally from Doyle’s essays, with my own input. I suspect even serious Sherlockians haven’t read Doyle’s essays in some time.

And if you aren’t familiar with The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes, then you missed my first three years here at Black Gate, as that was the name of my column.

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A Really Impressive First Novel: The God of Endings by Jacqueline Holland

A Really Impressive First Novel: The God of Endings by Jacqueline Holland

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The God of Endings (Flatiron Books, March 7, 2023)

At this year’s Capricon I shared an autograph session with Jacqueline Holland. In the way of things, especially with customers sparse, I ended up signing a couple of my books for her and she signed a copy of her first novel, The God of Endings, for me. The novel was published in March 2023 by Flatiron Books, a fairly new imprint.

Jacqueline Holland got her MFA from the University of Kansas, studying with the wonderful Kij Johnson. She has published work in some impressive literary journals, like Big Fiction. This novel is fantasy, and she told me her next two novels will be science fiction. It’s a vampire novel, which is normally not my thing, but Jacqueline’s description made it sound intriguing, and not your standard vampire novel (certainly these are not sparkly vampires!) and it lived up to that.

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Vintage Treasures: The Bantam Spectra Élisabeth Vonarburg

Vintage Treasures: The Bantam Spectra Élisabeth Vonarburg

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The Bantam Spectra Élisabeth Vonarburg: The Silent City (August 1992),
In the Mothers’ Land (December 1992), and Reluctant Voyagers (March 1995).
Covers by Oscar Chichoni, Oscar Chichoni, and Stephen Youll

I left Canada to attend grad school at the University of Illinois in Urbana Champaign in August 1987, and when I did I lost touch with much of the vibrant Canadian SF scene. There were a few Canadian authors celebrated in the States — folks like Charles de Lint, Donald Kingsbury, Julie Czerneda, Peter Watts, Guy Gavriel Kay, and a handful of others — but they were the exception. I had to get used to not hearing favorite Canadian acts on the radio (like The Box and Gowan), and I gradually got used to a lack of Canadian representation in bookstores as well.

That’s why it was such a delight to see French Canadian author Élisabeth Vonarburg experience a brief but marvelous period in the sun in the mid-90s, when Bantam Spectra translated three of her most famous novels into English, and brought them to the attention of grateful American readers.

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A to Z Reviews: “The Good Food,” by Michael Ezell

A to Z Reviews: “The Good Food,” by Michael Ezell

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A to Z Reviews

“The Good Food,” by Michael Ezell originally appeared in the 2016 anthology Beyond the Stars: At Galaxy’s Edge. The story feels like a classic science fiction story, placing a single human, his enhanced animal companion, and a computerized ship on an alien planet which has been seeded with plant life and insects in the first stage of a terraforming project.

The planet on which Jensen lands has demonstrated an anomaly. The vegetation around the landing base established by humans has died off, leaving a straight edge not too far from the landing plate in a pattern which could not be natural. However, there is no indication the planet has intelligent life on it.

Although Jensen, as the human, appears to be the commander of the mission, the actual situation isn’t quite as straight forward. Jensen, a former soldier, and Roy, his enhanced dog, are sent out of the ship to explore the region, while the ship’s computer, called Moira, stands ready to analyze any samples they might find that may be related to the anomaly. Their mission goes sideways when they discover a small creature ready to attack both Roy and Jensen, potentially at the head of a larger attack.

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New Treasures: Your Shadow Half Remains by Sunny Moraine

New Treasures: Your Shadow Half Remains by Sunny Moraine

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Your Shadow Half Remains (Tor Nightfire, February 6, 2024). Cover by David Seidman

Nightfire is Tor’s new horror imprint, and it’s made quite an impact on the field in the the past two years. Some of its releases include the Locus Award-winning What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher, Cassandra Khaw’s Stoker nominee The Salt Grows Heavy, and Cassandra Khaw and Richard Kadrey’s The Dead Take the A Train.

Sunny Moraine’s novella Your Shadow Half Remains arrived from Nightfire last month, and while I was browsing Sally Kobe’s booth at Capricon it leaped enthusiastically into my hands.

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Ellsworth’s Cinema of Swords: The Darkness Before the Dawn

Ellsworth’s Cinema of Swords: The Darkness Before the Dawn

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Dungeons & Dragons (USA/Czech Republic, 2000)

Heroic fantasy on the big screen was in a parlous state at the dawn of the 21st century, and anyone whose crystal ball was foggy about the immediate cinematic future could be forgiven for thinking that swords and sorcery films were at their nadir. The Barbarian Boom was long past, Kull the Conqueror had been terrible, the Merlin miniseries was mediocre, and Xena: Warrior Princess had run its course. It was a grim time, and especially if you were a fan of Dungeons & Dragons style adventure, the pickings were slim.

However, though 2001 would bring to the faithful Brotherhood of the Wolf, Pirates of the Caribbean, The Mists of Avalon, and most spectacularly, The Fellowship of the Ring, in the darkness before that dawn, the options were thin gruel or highly spiced but raw meat — as you’ll see in the films we’re covering this time ‘round.

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