Browsed by
Category: Reviews

A to Z Reviews: “Know Your Target Audience,” by Dan Mygind

A to Z Reviews: “Know Your Target Audience,” by Dan Mygind

Comments 0 Comment

A to Z Reviews

In 2010, Carl-Eddy Skovgaard selected several examples of Danish science fiction to be translated into English. The stories were published in the anthology Sky City and included Dan Mygind’s “Know Your Target Audience,” which originally appeared in 2007 as “Kend din målgruppe” in Skovgaard’s anthology Lige under overfladen: en dansk sf originalantologi.

Mygind’s story is set in a futuristic world five decades after a dirty bomb exploded in the Copenhagen subway system, leaving the city uninhabitable. Straight Talk is an entertainment and news, or perhaps propaganda, organization that has just had a major success running the World Song Competition. While celebrating, Straight Talk CEO Ole Kraft finds himself cornered by Peter Nielsen, one of the company’s employees who has a tendency toward believing in conspiracy theories.

…

Read More Read More

Christopher Moore and His Very Dirty Job

Christopher Moore and His Very Dirty Job

Comments 3 comments

When talking about banning books, nobody mentions Christopher Moore. No doubt Moore is upset about this, because he’s out to offend pretty much everybody. The fact that he does this with glee, panache, and massive gobs of bathroom humor probably doesn’t signify, and certainly won’t save his neck when the book-banning trolls finally come for him. The fact is, he’s funny, and there’s nothing the book-banners hate more than a healthy sense of the absurd.

An excellent case in point is Moore’s A Dirty Job, in which unassuming Charlie Asher, a second-hand dealer in San Francisco, becomes a “death merchant,” a sort of dogsbody for Death, who, it seems, has left the field, possibly never to return. It’s Charlie’s job to match dying people with their “soul vessel,” usually some knick-knack or other with sentimental value, in part so that the dead can find rest, and in part to prevent Orcus, lurking in the sewers, from eating up the soul vessels and rising again to usher in an age of darkness and doom.

That’s right, Orcus. Our old friend from the original AD&D Monster Manual. Etc.

…

Read More Read More

A Lovely Work of Magic & Mystery: Vinyl Wonderland by Mark Rigney

A Lovely Work of Magic & Mystery: Vinyl Wonderland by Mark Rigney

Comments 0 Comment


Vinyl Wonderland (Castle Bridge Media, June 25, 2024). Cover artist unknown

Vinyl Wonderland is Mark Rigney’s new novel. It’s told by an older Brendan Purcell, about some strange happenings back when he was 17, having just dropped out of high school for… reasons. Which will become clear. His life is a mess — his mother died suddenly, his father is drinking terribly, and has lost his job. And Brendan too is drinking constantly, and has also lost his job. But he has a new one — helping out at Vinyl Wonderland, a used record store. This is 1984, when records were still the primary means of buying music. (It’s also a time I was haunting used record stores!)

Shortly before Christmas, Vinyl Wonderland owner Karl asks Brendan to take over for a few days while he tends to his hospitalized mother. And he warns him — have nothing to do with the “Elvis door” — a locked door behind an Elvis cardboard standup in the rear. And for a while, Brendan complies, even though some people, including the town’s mayor, importune him to let them through the door. Meanwhile both Brendan and his dad are drinking even more, and we learn a bit about Brendan’s life — he’s a good soccer player, but other than that not much of a student, and apparently a terrible person. How much of this — the drinking, the bad attitude, the downright mean stuff he admits to — is in reaction to the loss of his mother, and how much was already part of him, isn’t clear.

…

Read More Read More

A to Z Reviews: “The City of Silence,” by Ma Boyong

A to Z Reviews: “The City of Silence,” by Ma Boyong

Comments 1 comment

A to Z Reviews

Over the past several years, the Anglophonic worlds has become more aware of the science fiction being published in modern China. This is due, in part, to the work and outreach being done by Science Fiction World, a magazine from China with a circulation of more than 130,000 as well as publishers like Neil Clarke who have sought out Chinese fiction to publish in translation.

Ken Liu, who has won multiple Hugo Awards, a Nebula Award, and a World Fantasy Award, has also worked to bring Chinese science fiction to English readers with his translation of Cixin Liu’s The Three Body Problem and the publication of the anthology Invisible Planets, which offered translations of a dozen short stories by seven Chinese authors. One of the authors included in the book is Ma Boyong, represented by his story “The City of Silence,” which Ken Liu translated into English.

…

Read More Read More

A to Z Reviews: “The Butcher of Darkside Hover,” by Jonathan Sean Lyster

A to Z Reviews: “The Butcher of Darkside Hover,” by Jonathan Sean Lyster

Comments 0 Comment

A to Z Reviews

Jonathan Sean Lyster only has two published stories, the first appeared in 2020 and the second, “The Butcher of Darkside Hover,” appeared in the  October 2022 issue of Analog. There is a strong resonance between “The Butcher of Darkside Hover” and the classic story “The Cold Equations,”  by Tom Godwin.

The story is set on a base located on the farside of the moon, although as the story progresses, it becomes clear that it is actually in orbit over the farside of the moon, which is one of the issues with the story. Lyster slowly provides details of his world, but never fully and in a manner that means the reader is putting together the pieces to get an idea of what his world looks like. The process means that the reader’s perception is constantly changing regarding the setting when it should be more focused on the problem presented for the characters and their solution.

…

Read More Read More

The Wit and Wisdom of Connie Willis

The Wit and Wisdom of Connie Willis

Comments 7 comments


Asimov’s Science Fiction, December 2011, containing “All About Emily,” and the Subterranean
Press hardcover edition (January 31, 2012). Covers by Duncan Long and J.K. Potter

Far too often, the best among us are roundly ignored. This can hardly be said of Connie Willis, who has collected an astonishing array of Hugo, Locus, and Nebula awards, yet her name somehow doesn’t seem to ring from the battlements. Perhaps I’m simply attending to the wrong battlements, but when I hear discussions of the great women of science fiction, I tend to catch the names LeGuin, L’Engle, Butler, and, now, Jemisin. Willis seems to come up less frequently.

Better yet, let’s just leave gender entirely out of the equation.

Willis’s name deserves to come up front and center in any discussion of top-tier sci-fi, first and foremost because she is very funny.

…

Read More Read More

A to Z Reviews: “The Adventure of You,” by Paul La Farge

A to Z Reviews: “The Adventure of You,” by Paul La Farge

Comments 0 Comment

A to Z ReviewsPaul LaFarge wrote five novels before his death in January 2023 from cancer. His essays and fiction appeared in a variety of magazines. Only a small portion of his work was within the genre, but the story “The Adventure of You,” which appeared in Gordon van Gelder’s original anthology Welcome to Dystopia in 2019 is one of those genre stories.

In an unspecified time and place in the future, John Arnold Arnold is working as a debris removal specialist for a company. The story is told through a memo from the company’s HR department, ostensibly to help Arnold’s mental health, but it quickly becomes clear that the program being offered is more for the company’s benefit than Arnold’s. The memos offer an explanation of the situation in the company town for the reader while providing indoctrination for the workers.

…

Read More Read More

Lord of a Shattered Land and The Doom of Odin: Howard Andrew Jones and Scott Oden Deliver High-octane, Euro-Mediterranean Adventure

Lord of a Shattered Land and The Doom of Odin: Howard Andrew Jones and Scott Oden Deliver High-octane, Euro-Mediterranean Adventure

Comments 3 comments

I just finished two Euro-Mediterranean-inspired fantasy novels, and, by chance, both feature dragons on their beautiful covers. This post showcases both. Scott Oden’s The Doom of Oden wraps up a trilogy (Grimnir Series) and Howard Andrew Jones’ Lord of a Shattered Land begins a five-book series (Hanuvar Chronicles). Each offers anti-Roman myths/legends, Oden’s Grimnir overtly calls out Rome (and then introduces loads of Nordic fantasy) and HAJ’s Hanuvar’s primary antagonist is the Dervan Empire (obviously inspired by the Roman Empire). In the spirit of Robert E. Howard’s Conan, who roamed the Euro-Mediterranean continue of Hyboria, these both continue a tradition with a unique flair. These series are not to be missed!

Both are veteran authors with respect for history and historical fiction (HAJ is known for his Harold Lamb series editing and Oden for his bibliography that includes The White Lion, The Lion of Cairo, Men of Bronze, and Memnon). Here they write sagas about veteran protagonists. Don’t expect coming-of-age stories or epic fantasy, five-character parties either. These provide the classic Sword & Sorcery approach: the protagonists may have sidekicks, but they operate primarily on their own, and they are already equipped with experience/skills/power from page one. So the pace is fast and focused.

…

Read More Read More

A to Z Reviews: Sync, by K.P. Kyle

A to Z Reviews: Sync, by K.P. Kyle

Comments 0 Comment

A to Z Reviews

K.P. Kyle’s debut novel Sync is the first of three novel-length works that I’ll be looking at in this series. Published by Allium Press, in 2019, Kyle offers the story of Brigid, who picks up a hitchhiker on a cold, rainy night in New England and she drives home to Boston. Although Jason doesn’t smell very good and seems to be suffering from paranoia, Brigid invites him to spend the night at her apartment so he can get cleaned up and get a good night’s sleep before getting on a train for somewhere.

When a burglar breaks into Brigid’s home that evening, she and Jason go on the lam, trying to avoid the men who apparently actually are after Jason. Jason also reveals his secret to Brigid. He was part of an experiment that allows him to temporarily jump from one reality to another, although the process leaves him naked.

…

Read More Read More

A to Z Reviews: “Tag,” by David Kablack

A to Z Reviews: “Tag,” by David Kablack

Comments 0 Comment

A to Z Reviews

David Kablack’s “Tag” appeared in the 18th issue of the magazine Pirate Writings, which would change its name to Fantastic Stories of the Imagination with the next issue. One of the features of Pirate Writings was the inclusion of a short-short story section.  The first story in the section in this particular issue is set in a small town. Charlie, the O’Reilley twins, Wally, and Black Tom O’Faolin, all teenagers on the cusp of adulthood, are spending time playing a game of tag on one of the rare days off the working members of the group have.

Their game is interrupted by one of the village’s outcasts, a hunchback whose father is unknown and whose mother has died, hobbles past them on his way home from the market. Being young boys faced with someone who is an outsider, they stop their game to watch him go by.  As Charlie starts the game up again by tagging Tom, Tom gets an idea and tags the hunchback with enough force that he sends his purchases scattering across the ground.

…

Read More Read More