A lot of reading this time, including an SF anthology and the debut of a new ezine. I found good stories, particularly at Tor.com, Strange Horizons, and Beneath Ceaseless Skies. Publications Reviewed Rocket Science, edited by Ian Sales Strange Horizons, May 2012 Lightspeed, May 2012 Tor.com, May 2012 Beneath Ceaseless Skies, May 2012 Jabberwocky #10, [...]

For much of its history, SF has liked to portray itself (in caps) as The Literature of Ideas (sometimes I’ve heard claims that it’s the only literature of ideas, but that’s just too silly to pursue). But, through time and convention, it doesn’t take long for these ideas to get concretized into specific concepts, and [...]

In the fall of 2010, I had the privilege of attending a conference where I got to meet Brian Stableford for the first time. Always an admirer of his fiction, I was thrilled to have a chance to talk with him and learn of his current projects. His main efforts these days, he revealed, would [...]

What do you get when you combine hyper­smart teenagers trying to crack the uncrackable Voynich manuscript, letters from the infamous alchemist and conjurer Edward Kelley’s daughter, a mysterious secret society or two, and chase scenes set in a pitch-perfect modern Prague? Funny you should ask. Robin Wasserman’s sinister, twisty new literary thriller The Book of [...]

A pair of digests, one a double. Publications Reviewed Analog, July/August 2012 Asimov’s, July 2012 Analog, July/August 2012 Plenty of good reads in this double issue with double novellas, definitely the best issue of the year so far. “Nightfall on the Peak of Eternal Light” by Richard A Lovett & William Gleason Drew Zeigler – [...]

Karl Edward Wagner was among the most talented writers of the generation that helped to put horror on the popular fiction map in the 1970s and ’80s. For this comprehensive two-volume retrospective of his short horror fiction, editor Stephen Jones gathers the full contents of Wagner’s collections In a Lonely Place (1983) and Why Not [...]

Gary Westfahl’s illuminating and entertaining new study of a certain subset of SF films could not have been released at a more useful or propitious or significant instant in history. With the space program of the USA at a watershed moment of retrenchment and reassessment (hopefully segueing into a renaissance) and the space programs of [...]

The usual monthly ezines, plus a couple of less usual ones. The web is making it possible for individuals to create and publish their own personal visions for a magazine, and the quality is often as high as readers can find in more traditionally professional zines. Publications Reviewed Clarkesworld, ay 2012 Apex Magazine, May 2012 [...]

Both: Our only disagreement is just how much we love this film: Howard thinks The Avengers is the best Marvel superhero film ever made, while Lawrence thinks it’s the best live-action superhero film ever made. (The Incredibles is still the reigning champion as best superhero film period.) Howard Waldrop: When I saw Thor, I thought, [...]