Our Opinions Are Correct, the Hugo winning podcast hosted by Annalee Newitz and Charlie Jane Anders is one of my favorites and someday I’m going to do an article on where you can hear smart people talk critically about SF, but not today. Today I just want to say how happy I was to see that the latest (Feb 13, 2020) episode was all about food in SF. Well, and Fantasy, if you have to be honest. Continue reading
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
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
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