Book Review: BLACKOUT and ALL CLEAR by Connie Willis
Connie Willis is the only writer I can think of in science fiction who can combine high tension with dry wit; belly laughs with nail biting; and clever scientific ideas with ripping yarns. Her latest...
View ArticleShort Story Review: The Storyteller’s Wife by Eugie Foster
The idea of children being stolen by fairies and some lifeless changeling being substituted to fool the parents into believing it real has been around in fairytales for centuries. But the substitution...
View ArticleBook Review: SEA CHANGE by S.M. Wheeler
Lilly is the unhappy child of two powerful but dysfunctional parents who despise each other. The girl, however, finds solace at the ocean, where she meets and befriends an eloquent, intelligent sea...
View ArticleBook Review: A THOUSAND PERFECT THINGS by Kay Kenyon
In her epic new work, A Thousand Perfect Things (Premier Digital Publishing), award-winning author Kay Kenyon creates an alternate 19th century earth ruled by the warring factions of scientific...
View ArticleClinging to the Wreckage: How to Save Science Fiction
In its introduction to its list of the best science fiction and fantasy of the year, the io9 website says 2012 was a great year for books that transcended genre boundaries. I had no problem with them...
View ArticleBook Review: ANNO DRACULA: JOHNNY ALUCARD by Kim Newman
Kim Newman’s latest novel, Anno Dracula: Johnny Alucard(Titan Books) is, in my view, the first essential vampire book of the decade. It combines rollercoaster action with satire, mordant wit and scares...
View ArticleBook Review: THIS RIVER AWAKENS by Steven Erikson
It’s 1971. Owen Brand and his family move to the riverside town of Middlecross in an attempt to escape poverty. For the twelve-year-old, it’s the chance for a new life and an end to his family’s...
View ArticleThe Art of Big ‘O’
If there is anything that’s guaranteed to flush out my inner geek, its science fiction and fantasy art on album covers. Long before the word “geek” came into more common usage, I was a schoolboy who...
View ArticleInterview: Kim Newman
I recently had occasion to highly praise British author, Kim Newman‘s fun, postmodern take on the dracula mythos, Anno Dracula: Johnny Alucard (review). Kim kindly agreed to the interview which...
View ArticleBook Review & Three Book Giveaway: Dangerous Women edited by George...
The dangerous women who inhabit the pages of this huge cross-genre anthology range in temperament from slightly irritable to out and out bloodthirsty. With a few stops en route through feisty and...
View ArticleBook Review: THE TROOP by Nick Cutter
In his endnotes to this excellent horror novel, Nick Cutter acknowledges a debt to the structure of Stephen King’s Carrie, although The Troop (Gallery Books) bears no resemblance to that book. What it...
View ArticleBook Review: THE DOCTOR AND THE DINOSAURS by Mike Resnick
It’s April, 1885, and famed shootist, John “Doc” Holliday, is dying of consumption. He is visited at his sick bed by shape-shifting medicine man and great Comanche chief, Geronimo, and offered a deal:...
View ArticleReview: Assassin’s Creed (Graphic Novels)
As a player — and fan — of the Assassin’s Creed on the Xbox 360, I was delighted to have the opportunity to review graphic novels based on the game. The first collection, The Ankh of Isis Trilogy...
View ArticleBook Review: ALIEN: OUT OF THE SHADOWS by Tim Lebbon
The deep-ore mining vessel, Marion, is in orbit above the inhospitable planet LV178 from which the Kelland Mining Company is extracting precious trimonite. During a shift change, the Marion’s crew of...
View ArticleReview + Giveaway: The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Volume 8,...
When it comes to anthologies, it’s almost unheard of that I enjoy every story. So it was an enormous pleasure and surprise to find that this was the case with The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of...
View ArticleReview: Lightspeed Magazine 48, ed. John Joseph Adams
Though this is the first issue of Lightspeed I’ve read, there’s no question in my mind that it’s easily the equal, in terms of content, of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction although, to be...
View ArticleReview: Women Destroy Science Fiction! Lightspeed Special
When I was around 11 years old, a girl in our English class read aloud her creative writing assignment. It was about a soldier in the first World War, so badly wounded that he couldn’t stop the rats in...
View ArticleBook Review: KOKO TAKES A HOLIDAY by Kieran Shea
Kieran Shea’s first novel, Koko Takes a Holiday (Titan Books), is an extremely fast-paced chunk of science fiction space operetta with attitude. In common with its pulp fiction antecedents, it’s...
View ArticleBook Review: Dead Man’s Hand: An Anthology of The Weird West, ed. John Joseph...
I enjoy a good Western now and then. Mainly cinematic ones, though I have read a number of novels over the years. The weird western is a relatively new phenomenon, emerging probably from some of the...
View ArticleBook Review: The Ultra Thin Man by Patrick Swenson
THIS REVIEW CONTAINS WHAT SOME MAY CONSIDER MINOR SPOILERS. Blending elements of noir crime and science fiction isn’t a new thing, but Patrick Swenson in The Ultra Thin Man (Tor), tackles the mashup...
View ArticleBook Review: Resistance by Samit Basu
It’s 2020, eleven years after the passengers of flight BA142 from London to Delhi developed extraordinary abilities corresponding to their innermost desires. The result is a world overrun with supers....
View ArticleLast Contact in Bulgaria
Last Contact is a short film portraying the despair of a researcher long after his last contact with the outside world. While the film is in the final stages of production, Michael Garrett, the man...
View ArticleBook Review: Bathing the Lion by Jonathan Carroll
Jonathan Carroll’s latest novel, Bathing the Lion, opens with a relationship breakup. The breakup is described so vividly that the pain and tension is tangible and convincingly real. But this, along...
View ArticleAttack of the Hollywood Remake Zombies: 2
Spider-man, Superman, Batman, The Thing, Invasion of The Body Snatchers, War of the Worlds – I could name many more, but I haven’t the time, or the blog space. You probably glean from the headline that...
View ArticleReview: Ack-Ack Macaque by Gareth L. Powell
Imagine if you will a World War II fighter pilot…who also happens to be a monkey. The eponymous Ack-Ack Macaque isn’t all he seems, however, as Powell’s seriously entertaining alternate history novel...
View ArticleBook Review: Blackwater Lights by Michael M. Hughes
A mysterious phone call from an old friend prompts Ray Simon to return to the town of Blackwater, where he had spent part of his childhood. The visit isn’t something he is too keen on, however, since...
View ArticleBudget? What Budget?
Recently, British horror writer Ramsay Campbell drew the attention of a horror Facebook group to some low-budget horror films he appreciates. His suggestions were in reponse to the question that some...
View ArticleBook Review: Gorel and The Pot-Bellied God by Lavie Tidhar
Reading Gorel and the Pot Bellied God by Lavie Tidhar (PS Publishing) felt like discovering Michael Moorcock for the first time. That sense that something has shifted in my world and I’ve been...
View ArticleReviews: The Beauty and The Bridge
This time I am reviewing two works: a novella, The Beauty by Aliya Whitely; and a short story, The Bridge by Angela D. Mitchell. Both are distinguished by highly original, unusual storytelling and...
View ArticleReview: The League of the Sphinx: The Purple Scarab by R.E. Preston
If you enjoy pulp fiction and old-style Saturday morning serials, before they were reinvented by the Indiana Jones franchise, you will enjoy R.E. Preston’s The Purple Scarab (Westmarch Publishing)....
View ArticleReview: Nightmare Magazine, April 2015
A horribly delayed review, for which I unreservedly apologise to John Joseph Adams and the editorial crew (hey, you know I love you guys!). In my defence, I had a backlog, made my return from seven...
View ArticleBook Review: If Then by Matthew De Abaitua
What if there was an equation to help us understand and ultimately eliminate war? That is one of the central themes of Matthew De Abaitua’s latest novel, If Then (Angry Robot Books). The title itself...
View ArticleReview: Whispers from the Abyss ed. Kat Rocha
Whispers from the Abyss (01 Publishing) describes itself as “An anthology of H.P. Lovecraft inspired short fiction.” But the authors within its pages are no slavish Elvis tribute acts. Instead, they...
View ArticleBook Review: The Monstrous, ed. Ellen Datlow
In The Monstrous (Tachyon Publications), the latest anthology in which she holds the editorial reins, Ellen Datlow presents us with yet another utterly compelling cornucopia of horrors. In this case,...
View ArticleBook Review: A Borrowed Man by Gene Wolfe
Gene Wolfe’s A Borrowed Man (Tor) is a novel that sneaks up on you. Beneath its cosy exterior, elegant origami-like folds of spare prose and apparently simple storyline, beats a very dark heart. A...
View ArticleBook Review: The Wolf in the Attic by Paul Kearney
Paul Kearney’s The Wolf in the Attic (Rebellion/Solaris) is a coming-of age-story. The publishers suggest it will appeal to people who love the work of Tolkein, C.S. Lewis and Philip Pullman, and I...
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