A month’s worth of ezines and one print anthology. Publications Reviewed Fantasy Magazine, August 2010 Strange Horizons, 23 August 2010 Beneath Ceaseless Skies, #48 July 29 2010; #49 August 12 2010 Lightspeed, August 2010 Tor.com, August 2010 Subterranean, Summer 2010 Gateways, ed. Elizabeth Anne Hull Fantasy Magazine, August 2010 Some very nice premises in this [...]

One of the factors that makes Ted Chiang an important SF writer even when he’s not writing SF is that he always works things out. He’s never quite satisfied with ideas solely as metaphors, and even when he casts us into an entirely alternative cosmology – Babylonian myth (‘‘Tower of Babylon’’), fundamentalist dogma (‘‘Hell is [...]

Alaya Dawn Johnson’s Racing the Dark (opener of the Spirit Binders trilogy) would certainly have made my recommended list for best first novels, if I’d seen it when it came out in 2007. At least I can say something about it now, because it sets the stage for new sequel The Burning City. The first [...]

There’s no more personal aspect of anyone’s responses to stories than their response to emotion. Theodore Sturgeon’s work makes the most direct appeals possible to the reader’s emotions. So, even more than usual, this is a case where my own views on a writer may not tally with yours. When I say, though, that I [...]

Two printzines, an ezine and an anthology. Publications Reviewed F&SF, Sept/Oct 2010 Albedo One #38, 2010 Intergalactic Medicine Show #18, August 2010 Is Anybody Out There?, Nick Gevers & Marty Halpern, eds. F&SF, Sept/Oct 2010 A Halloween issue, although there is nothing outwardly indicating it; the cover has cute mini dinosaurs. But the Bailey story [...]

In Zendegi, Greg Egan cranks his focus back from the possibilities of life in extreme and exotic environments far from here and now to – well, very close to here and now. The book is divided into two parts set in Iran in 2012 and 2027-28, as the rule of that nation’s religious and political [...]

The digests from Penny Press and the usual online first-of-the-month publications. Publications Reviewed Asimov’s, September 2010 Analog, October 2010 Clarkesworld #47, August 2010 Apex, August 2010 Abyss & Apex #35, 3rd Quarter 2010 Tor.com, July 2010 Asimov’s, September 2010 Stories set in skies and clouds. “The Sultan of the Clouds” by Geoffrey A Landis David [...]

Frederik Pohl is a seminal figure in the development of modern science fiction. In the course of his astounding 70-plus-year career, he’s left an indelible mark on the genre as a writer (he’s produced some of the key works of science fiction, including The Space Merchants with C.M. Kornbluth and Gateway, and has won multiple [...]