A rare, all-print column, with an anthology and two of the field’s remaining little magazines. Makes me feel all nostalgic. The Good Story award goes to Kiernan’s “Tidal Forces” in Eclipse 4. Publications Reviewed F&SF, May/June 2011 Eclipse 4, edited by Jonathan Strahan On Spec #83, Winter 2011 Shimmer, 13 2011 F&SF, May/June 2011 Starring [...]

Fritz Leiber: Selected Stories Fritz Leiber (Night Shade 978-1597801805, $24.95, 359pp, hc) October 2010. Last year’s Selected Stories of Fritz Leiber opens with perhaps his most famous story. ‘‘Smoke Ghost’’ (1941) announces from the start its reinvention of its tradition. In an office in some American metropolis, a woman called Miss Millick is taking dictation [...]

A couple of belated appearances and the usual monthly ezines. The Good Story award goes to Paul Park’s verse narrative at Tor.com. Publications Reviewed Tor.com, April 2011 Asimov’s, April/May 2011 Abyss & Apex, 2nd Quarter 2011 Strange Horizons, April 2011 Fantasy Magazine, April 2011 Lightspeed, April 2011 Beneath Ceaseless Skies, April 2011 Tor.com, April 2011 [...]

Kris Saknussemm’s first novel Zanesville, (billed as ‘‘the first book in the Lodemania Testament series’’), was a kind of phantasmagoric Krazy Kat dystopia published by Villard in an apparent effort to position it in the balls-out postmodern fabulist tradition that stretches from Vonnegut and Barth to David Foster Wallace and Jonathan Safran Foer – or at [...]

compiled by Jeff VanderMeer Although my year’s best selections included some international fiction, I thought it would be of use to compile a few “core samples” of work, mostly in other languages, that my contacts found of particular interest in 2010. This year I decided to exclude Australia and New Zealand because writers from those [...]

In the opening scene of Greg van Eekhout’s optimistic post-apocalyptic fable (something we could use more of) for middle grade readers, The Boy at the End of the World, Fisher awakes in a bubbling pod, disconnects his umbilical cord, and realizes two things: that the world is dangerous and he is alone. These things prove [...]

Here are the usual first-of-the-month ezines, together with a batch of quarterly and bimonthly publications. My Good Story award goes to E Lily Yu’s fable of wasps and bees in Clarkesworld. I also recommend an usual not-really-SF piece by M David Blake in Bull Spec. Publications Reviewed Clarkesworld, 55 April 2011 Analog, May 2011 GigaNotoSaurus, [...]