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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
by David Soyka Since you’re reading this, you’re presumably interested in reading fantasy (either that or somehow or another this page got linked to somebody’s “Free Tour” button). My guess is that most people take that to mean that you like stories about disenfranchised princesses and questing knight errants in made-up worlds populated by dwarves and sorcerers. Also, no doubt, there must be some universe-shattering struggle between Good and Evil. Now, don’t get me wrong, I like a big fat…
A Look at Current Sci-fi and Fantasy Magazines By David Soyka Copyright 2007 by New Epoch Press. All rights reserved. This installment of reviews is arriving a little late, so neither of our subjects this time around — September’s Fantasy and Science Fiction and the twentieth anniversary edition of Interzone — is likely still available at your local newsstand. Both venerable publications, however, sell back issues, so if anything here piques your interest, you should be able to get your…