Category Archives: Science Fiction

Science Fiction Books to Look for December 2019

Originally posted on Amazing Stories Magazine: Science Fiction Books to Look for December 2019
It’s December. Holiday lights, chilly nights, hot chocolate, fireplaces, and comfy chairs to snuggle up with a good book. Of course, you’re hoping someone will give you something great that came out earlier in the year, like The Expanse Boxed Set: Leviathan Wakes, Caliban’s War and Abaddon’s Gate from November, or Sarah Pinkser’s excellent collection of short stories Sooner or Later Everything Falls Into the Sea, and I could happily go on, but that’s another column.  While you’re waiting to unwrap your presents, you can pick up something fun to read and be pretty sure no one will give it to you because it’s too late in the season to get on anyone’s radar.  Nonetheless, there are some good books coming out in the year’s closing hours. Continue reading →

The Sky Done Ripped (Ned the Seal) by Joe R. Lansdale

The Sky Done Ripped (Ned the Seal) by Joe R. Lansdale
Cover Artist: Timothy Truman
Review by Ernest Lilley
Subterranean Hardcover ISBN/ITEM#: 9781596069107
Date: 31 December 2019 List Price $40.00
Links: http://www.sfrevu.com/php/Review-id.php?id=18687

If you’re looking for an absurdist mash-up of H.G.Wells, Jules Verne, Authur Conan Doyle, and pretty much every other proto-steampunk adventure you can image, you’ve come to the right place. If you’re looking for the further adventures of Ned, the steampunk/cybernetically uplifted seal, ditto, and it’s a fine place to be. But if you’re looking for serious science fiction, don’t stop here. But if you’re up for some pulpy-steampunky-timey-whimy fun, by all means, pull up a chair. Continue reading →

Science Fiction Books to Look for November 2019

Originally posted in Amazing Stories Online: Science Fiction Books to Look for November 2019 

There’s a lot of good hard sf out this month, starting with Martin Shoemaker’s  The Last Dance, about an Earth-Mars Cycler whose captain has rubbed the wrong people the wrong way and is probably going to get court-martialed for it. Lighter space opera fans will like Fortuna, the start of a series starring a family of smugglers with sibling issues, not to mention the genocidal war they may have triggered. Eternal Shadow is an impressive debut by Trevor B. Williams, where a planet-eating object has Earth on the menu,  and Daniel Wilson, author of Robocalpse continues the story started by Michael Crichton in Andromeda Strain with Andromeda: Evolution. Speaking of hard sf, Robert Markley’s Kim Stanley Robinson (Modern Masters of Science Fiction) takes a look at the unchallenged master of the genre. Continue reading →

The Menace from Farside (Luna) by Ian McDonald

The Menace from Farside (Luna) by Ian McDonald
Publication: 11/12/2019 (Tor.com) Novella
(This review was originally published in the October 2019 Issue of SFRevu

Cariad Corcoran is the daughter in a group marriage on the Moon, and she’s definitely the alpha female to a pack of boys, which is just the way she likes it. Her world order is upset when a shift in the marriage brings with it a new sister, one that is much better equipped to turn the boys’ heads than she is.

Cariad doesn’t mind not being able to compete on attractiveness, but she really likes being in charge, so she comes up with a scheme that puts the new sister in a role that will show everyone who’s boss. Which is how they wind up exposed on the lunar surface receiving fatal doses of radiation and with no one to save them except themselves. Continue reading →