Jurassic World brought us the more dinosaurs, more action, and more Chris Pratt than ever before, not to mention selling more tickets than anything that came before. It was everything you could want in a summer blockbuster…or was it?

Cast: Chris Pratt…Owen / Bryce Dallas Howard…Claire / Irrfan Khan…Masrani / Vincent D’Onofrio…Hoskins / Ty Simpkins…Gray / Nick Robinson…Zach / Jake Johnson…Lowery / Omar Sy…Barry / BD Wong…Dr. Henry Wu / Judy Greer…Karen

I enjoyed the dino-heck out of Jurassic World, just like millions of other viewer that plunked down dollars and yen (Jurassic World was one of the five US movies allowed to screen in China this year), and as summer blockbusters go, it was a slam dunk. Not as much fun as Guardians of the Galaxy, but with wider appeal. Not as smart as Jurassic Park, but with bigger dinosaurs. Continue reading →

The Flicker Men by Ted Kosmatka is what the best sf should be; a story that compels the reader to grapple with the questions that drive the conflict, writing so good that you’re fixed in place like a pithed frog, and characters that you care about from the opening sentence.

There are no spaceships and square-jawed heroes here, nor is there a single LGBTn (where n is whatever comes next) character– or maybe there are, but they just aren’t wearing a sign. That’s fine in both cases; this book is nonstop terrific. It’s a story about people simultaneously chasing and being chased by their own demons while trying to pull back the veil of mystery underlying the nature of reality and should appeal to all you zombies. It also has real science–or as close to real science as I’ve seen in one of the best novels I’ve read in a long time. Continue reading →

Thomas Easton and Judith Dial’s Decopunk lead off with a cogent essay declaring Steampunk to have run out of itself, pointing out that it was always more fantasy than sf, and criticizing it for putting on Victorian blinders when it came to social injustice. Their remedy to this being to offer up the decade of deco as a more suitable venue for a re-imagined past.  To the ramparts folks, cry havoc and loose the dogs of war!

Unfortunately for Thomas and Judith, writers are closer kin to cats.
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A.C. Hadfield’s second novel, again featuring freelance adventurer Carson Mach and crew, The Lost Voyager, comes off as something of a budget-priced cross between The Expanse series and Guardians of the Galaxy, but that’s not a bad thing, just what it is. Hadfield has consciously assembles all the classic characters here for a ship for hire series. The Intrepid is an small exploration ship with a few more cannons than average, her captain, Carson Mach, is a charismatically iconoclastic former military officer who’s in a relationship with the human hybrid assassin that came to kill him but stayed for breakfast, his best friend is the professional “hunter” and general bad-ass who saved his life way during the war, and the other crew members are assorted leftovers from recent wars with aliens, including a slightly mad scientist and his AI pet. Now former enemies and allies are all working to meld together into a team.

Today’s mission, which will clear a host of debts and fines against the captain and crew if they live, is to find out what happened to the missing mining vessel Voyager, which we know was forced down on a the planet it was heading towards and then attacked by big mean alien somethings. They’re also supposed to wipe the data from the computers at the mining facility in the system, because it contains sensitive information.
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