Book Review: Kangazang! by Terry Cooper (Audiobook)
(I must first apologize for the lateness of this review. A series of personal disasters prevented me from writing this review.) Doctor Who fans will be happy to know that Terry Cooper’s Kangazang! is read by none other than Colin Baker — the Sixth Doctor. That alone made me excited to listen. And boy did […]
Book Review: Hexed by Kevin Hearne
Finally we have an urban fantasy author writing about something other than werewolves and vampires devoid of their mythological undercurrents. Kevin Hearne’s Hexed takes us back to the roots of all the mythological creatures which have dominated much of fantasy for hundreds of years, but with a welcome change of scenery. Hexed follows Atticus O’Sullivan, one […]
Book Review: Sword of Fire and Sea by Erin Hoffman
Erin Hoffman’s debut novel is a traditional high fantasy romp formed from the ashes of a collaborative project. It’s origins are a bit unusual in a field of secondary world fantasies created by individuals with Tolkien on the mind, and the effort to move beyond the collaboration shows in the development of the world’s magic […]
Book Review: “Gates (Variations)” by Larry Niven (from Gateways)
I’m sensing a pattern in Gateways. One really good story, followed by a bad one, followed by a good one, and so on and so forth. Larry Niven’s “Gates” is one of those bad ones. Split between two perspectives — a science fiction writer talking about the singularity/Bill Gates and Bill Gates making the decision […]
Book Review: “Sleeping Dogs” by Joe Haldeman (from Gateways)
Haldeman’s addition to Gateways is, thus far, one of the best stories in the lot (granted, by this point, I’ve only read three). “Sleeping Dogs” is another military-related science fiction story set some time after an interstellar war. Flann Spivey is an ex-soldier-turned-futuristic-psychiatrist whose job is to aid people who have essentially become immortal on […]
Book Review: “Von Neumann’s Bug” by Phyllis and Alex Eisenstein (from Gateways)
“Von Neumann’s Bug” (VNB) is occupied with a trope familiar to science fiction fans: the self-replicating machine. In this case, the machine is an alien search drone named Bert who terrorizes a small, middle-class family in an attempt to rebuild itself and escape Earth’s gravity to resume its mission. And it does so by inconspicuously tearing apart […]