Browsed by
Tag: A to Z

A to Z Reviews: Wheel of Dreams, by Salinda Tyson

A to Z Reviews: Wheel of Dreams, by Salinda Tyson

Comments 0 Comment

A to Z Reviews

From 1992 through 1999, Del Rey books published a series of 27 novels under the “Del Rey Discovery” imprint. These books weren’t always first novels (at least three of them were actually the second books in their respective series), but they were all novels by relatively newly published authors, ranging from Nicola Griffith, Mary Rosenbaum, and L. Warren Douglas to Michelle Shirey Crean, Don DeBrandt, and Kevin Teixera. The 24th novel published under the imprint was Salinda Tyson’s fantasy Wheel of Dreams, which appears to have been her only novel, although she began published short stories in the 2010s. Wheel of Dreams, the 40th entry in the A to Z Review series, is also the first novel I’ll be discussing.

Wheel of Dreams opens with Kiera’s father hosting several travelers on an evening that culminates in Keira being sold to one of the travelers, a soldier named Roshannon, to be his wife. This is just the first indication of the level of misogyny which plagues the world in which Keira and Roshannon live. The morning after her forced wedding, Keira flees from Roshannon before he awakes, stealing his clothes so she can travel as a man. Keira’s goal is the city of Cartheon, where her dead mother had told her about when she was growing up.

…

Read More Read More

A to Z Reviews: “The Dybbuk in Love,” by Sonya Taaffe

A to Z Reviews: “The Dybbuk in Love,” by Sonya Taaffe

Comments 1 comment

A to Z Reviews

Over the weeks as I’ve written these reviews, I’ve noted coincidences such as sequential stories that have similarities. Today’s review of a story about Jewish folklore just happens to be the one that falls on the morning of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year.

Originally published as a chapbook in 2005, Sonya Taaffe’s “The Dybbuk in Love” is a look at a traditional part of Jewish folklore.  Not as well-known as the golem,  which traditional states was created by Rabbi Judah Loew in sixteenth century Prague, the dybbuk dates to the same period and refers to the soul of a dead person that possesses a living person in order to achieve an unfinished goal.

…

Read More Read More

A to Z Reviews: “When the Morning Stars Sang Together,” by Isaac Szpindel

A to Z Reviews: “When the Morning Stars Sang Together,” by Isaac Szpindel

Comments 2 comments

A to Z ReviewsIsaac Szpindel’s “When the Morning Stars Sang Together” appeared in the 2004 alternate history anthology ReVisions, which Szpindel co-edited with Julie E, Czerneda, which explored alternative technological advancements. Szpindel’s story, set in the twentieth century, looks at a world in which Galileo reconciled science with the Church rather than being persecuted for championing the scientific method.

The main character has been given access to letters written by Galileo to his older daughter, Maria Celeste, who was a nun at the San Matteo convent. In real life, while Maria Celeste’s letters to Galileo have survived, his letters to her are lost.  Szpindel tells his story by alternating between the text of those lost letters and the events which are  happening to the modern scholar who is studying them and coming to conclusions that, in his world, as are heretical as the conclusions Galileo came to in our world in the seventeenth century.

…

Read More Read More

A to Z Reviews: “Side Effects,” by Julian Saari

A to Z Reviews: “Side Effects,” by Julian Saari

Comments 1 comment

A to Z Reviews

Julian Saari offers up a fish tale of a bar story in “Side Effects.” This  short piece is the only work he has listed on the Internet Science Fiction Database and it appeared in the August 1991 issue of Analog, alongside a Pern story by Anne McCaffrey and the second part of the serialization of Lois McMaster Bujold’s Barrayar, impressive company.

Given the nature of the short story, it is appropriate that Saari sets it in a bar, called Timonescu’s.  Even more appropriately, Timonescu’s is part of a fishing lodge, where one would expect the clientele to tell tall tales about the sizes of their catches, or more likely the ones that got away. To this end, the bar’s owner, Ion Timonescu approaches the story he is told be a stranger with a certain amount of skepticism.

…

Read More Read More

A to Z Reviews: “A Sound, Like Angels Singing,” by Leonard Rysdyk

A to Z Reviews: “A Sound, Like Angels Singing,” by Leonard Rysdyk

Comments 0 Comment

A to Z Reviews

Leonard Rysdyk published a handful of short stories in the early 1990s, and has continued to self publish novels. His second short story, “A Sound Like Angels Singing,” appeared in 1993 in Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling’s anthology Snow White, Blood Red, the first volume of their six book fairy tale anthology series.

Rysdyk’s narrator is a rat who goes about its rodential business scrambling for food, having sex, fighting with other rats, and basically living a glorious rat lifestyle. They do have to avoid the dogs and cats that humans employ to attempt to kill them, but for rats, every day is pretty much like every other day. The status quo doesn’t make for a good story, and so on this particular day, something strange seems to be happening, although the narrator can’t quite place what it is.

…

Read More Read More

A to Z Reviews: “Auriga’s Streetcar,” by Jean Rabe

A to Z Reviews: “Auriga’s Streetcar,” by Jean Rabe

Comments 0 Comment

A to Z Reviews

Growing up in northern Illinois with an interest in astronomy, I was very familiar with the Yerkes Observatory in Williams Bay, Wisconsin. The 40-inch refractor telescope, built in 1893, was the largest of its type until the 43 inch Swedish Solar Telescope was completed in 2001, although only 39 inches of that telescope are usable.

In 2004, Jean Rabe published the short story “Auriga’s Streetcar” in Martin H. Greenberg and John Helfers’ anthology Space Stations. Rabe’s heroine, Hoshi, has taken a private spacecraft to the abandoned Yerkes-Two space station on the eve of its deorbiting to see what she can salvage, with her focus on the40-inch lenses that had once be used at the Williams Bay Observatory, but which had since but relocated to the space station.

…

Read More Read More

A to Z Reviews: “The South China Sea,” by zm quỳnh

A to Z Reviews: “The South China Sea,” by zm quỳnh

Comments 0 Comment

A to Z Reviews

In my collection, the letter Q is represented by 12 authors and 28 stories, ranging from Qitongren’s “The Spring of Dongke Temple,” which I discussed last week and ending with zm quỳnh’s “The South China Sea,” which appeared in the anthology Genius Loci, edited by Jaym Gates in 2016. I should note that my story “Well of Tranquility” also appears in Genius Loci.  The only letter represented by fewer authors is X (two authors and four stories).

The title provides the setting for quỳnh’s story, which looks at the plight of refugees fleeing from war in Việt Nam. The narrator’s family owns a boat and uses it to attempt to ferry the refugees from their homeland to a safer place. Unfortunately, the sea is as dangerous and implacable enemy as the militaries fighting over their home countries. The threats of storms and pirates are pervasive and as the story opens, it is clear that over several attempts to ferry people to safety, the family has failed, resulting in the deaths of many refugees and family members, and the ultimate return to Việt Nam.

…

Read More Read More

A to Z Reviews: “The Spring of Dongke Temple,” by Qitongren

A to Z Reviews: “The Spring of Dongke Temple,” by Qitongren

Comments 3 comments

A to Z ReviewsQitongren offers a mix of fantasy and fairy tale with “The Spring of Dongke Temple.” Originally published in Chinese in 2007, it was translated by Liu Jue in 2019 for publication in the anthology of Chinese science fiction Ticket to Tomorrow and Other Stories. In 2020, Ann and Jeff VanderMeer selected the story for The Big Book of Modern Fantasy.

“The Spring of Dongke Temple” opens with a cautionary tale of a woodsman who stumbled upon the isolated Buddhist temple in the mountains and after a brief stay there returned to his family refusing to say anything about the temple except to note the proliferation of swallows in the ruins. The brief description gives the temple a feeling that it might not be out of place in the tales of H.P. Lovecraft.

…

Read More Read More

A to Z Review: “Cronus,” by Marianne Puxley

A to Z Review: “Cronus,” by Marianne Puxley

Comments 0 Comment

A to Z Reviews

Just as Avis Pabel only published one science fiction story, so, too, did Marianne Puxley. Puxley’s only sf short story, “Cronus,” appeared in the May 1989 issue of Interzone.

Rhea and Tyrrell area married and expecting a baby in a rather amorphous future. Tyrrell sees Rhea’s pregnancy as a chance to move into a Community called Cronus, which he sees as a beneficial place to live, safe from the “baneful Greenwomen” who are presented as some sort of bogeyman living outside the safe communities. Rhea isn’t sure it is the right choice, but eventually agrees.

Life for Rhea in the Community is anything but idyllic. She dislikes the regimentation and finds that being a woman means she is a second class citizen, expected to be a housekeeper and to take care of her husband who does useful work for the Community. Most of the women belong to the Wives’ Federation, but Rhea refuses to join, seeing it as a step toward giving permission to have her individuality taken from her.

…

Read More Read More

A to Z Review: “Basic Agreement,” by Avis Pabel

A to Z Review: “Basic Agreement,” by Avis Pabel

Comments 3 comments

A to Z Reviews

“Basic Agreement,”  by Avis Pabel appeared in the September 1958 issue of Astounding and was reprinted in the December UK issue of  the magazine. It is the only story by Pabel that appears in the Internet Science Fiction Database, although she wrote articles under the name Avis Brick that appeared in the magazine Persuasion, which was published by the Nathaniel Branden Institute, part of the Objectivist movement championing Ayn Rand.

“Basic Agreement” is an odd little story of Marjorie, who insists she sees something out of the  corner of her eye in her bedroom each night after her parents put her to bed. Her father has little patience with her shenanigans. The fact that Marjorie is unable to describe what she saws just serves to make him less willing to offer her sympathy. Instead, he compares Marjorie to her older sister Jill, who has apparently died and was either a perfect child or whose death has sanctified her in her parents’ memories.

…

Read More Read More