Kathleen Ann Goonan’s This Shared Dream is a direct sequel to In War Times (reviewed in June 2007), if we understand that in the complex universe(s) of its setting calculating a value for ‘‘direct’’ is a tricky business. The first book took us through WWII and its aftermath, up to the early 1960s, as experienced [...]

A varied mix this time: a print anthology along with one of the digests and a couple of regular ezines. The Good Story award goes to two selections from F&SF: the Rickert and the Ryan. Publications Reviewed Ghosts by Gaslight, edited by Jack Dann and Nick Gevers F&SF, September/October 2011 Tor.com, August 2011 Beneath Ceaseless [...]

The 4-Dimensional Nightmare J.G. Ballard (Gollancz, 197pp, hc) 1974. Reissued as Voices of Time (Gollancz, 197pp, hc) 1985. By most orthodox standards, J.G. Ballard is not a very good writer. His characters are ciphers, his plots are straightforward and one book is often very similar to the next. It’s easy to see, also, why the [...]

I finally made it past the road construction to my post office box, where I found a stash of little printzines waiting. Online, a lot of Genevieve Valentine. Publications Reviewed Fantasy Magazine, August 2011 Lightspeed, August 2011 Strange Horizons, August 2011 Intergalactic Medicine Show, August 2011 Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet #27, August 2011 On Spec [...]

Mark Charan Newton’s Nights of Villjamur seems to have slipped under my radar last year, but this excellent novel finally reached me in advance of sequel City of Ruin, which I plan to review next month. This time, I’ll join the enthusiastic chorus for a work that deserves all the favorable notice it can get. [...]

A couple of slick zines along with the online usuals. A lot of myth, a lot of gods. The Good Story award, again, goes to Yoon Ha Lee and Clarkesworld. Publications Reviewed Clarkesworld, August 2011 Interzone #235, July-August 2011 Realms of Fantasy, August 2011 GigaNotoSaurus, August 2011 Redstone SF, August 2011 Apex Magazine, August 2011 [...]

by Gary Westfahl Lest anyone suspect that I am a hopeless curmudgeon, ardently devoted to classic science fiction films and persistently disdainful of their contemporary equivalents, let me first acknowledge that Rupert Wyatt’s Rise of the Planet of the Apes invites consideration as the very best of the Apes films, artfully conveying and updating the [...]

Geoff Ryman’s short fiction has seemed so distinctive, and has been so often award nominated over the past couple of decades, that it comes as something of a surprise to realize there’s so little of it, or that the sixteen stories in his new collection Paradise Tales – his first since the four novellas gathered [...]

Both: This is a film that isn’t any better than it has to be. You have first-rate acting and solid direction in service of a third-rate script written by no less than six people, one of whose job was evidently to excise every last bit of surprise or cleverness from the dialogue. HW: When I [...]