Mining the monthly zines for the good stories. The digests, including an Asimov’s double issue, and some ezines. A good month at Tor.com this time. Publications Reviewed Asimov’s, October/November 2012 Analog, November 2012 Strange Horizons, August 2012 Lightspeed, August 2012 Tor.com, August 2012 Asimov’s, October/November 2012 The fall double issue features two substantial novellas, which [...]

The season of rising summer has come to Astreiant, throne-city of the queendom of Chenedolle. The winter-sun shines until midnight, the Midsummer Fair will soon begin, and the merchants are hiring for journeys to the Silklands, the League, and other queendoms. In short, it’s the time unhappy adolescents run away in search of a better [...]

Jack Glass is Adam Roberts’s thirteenth (non-parodic) novel. Out of that total, there are only three I have not read, sheerly due to having lacked time immediately upon their release and then being perpetually swamped thereafter by the constant influx of newer material. I can adduce similar personal statistics about only a few other contemporary [...]

A collaboration between Gregory Benford & Larry Niven is one of those dream-team arrangements that publishers and readers, um, dream about. But as anyone who has watched a supergroup rock concert during pledge week knows, such dreams are not always fulfilled. So it was with some satisfaction that I found Benford & Niven’s together-again-for-the-first-time extravaganza* [...]

One of the more interesting developments in the ever-inventive, ever-trendy world of interdisciplinary academic studies over the past several years has been the growth of something called animal studies, which, as you might suspect, is no longer simply the province of zoologists, but seems to be open to almost anyone who wants to jump in [...]

Featuring a really fine issue of F&SF, with the Good Story Award to Andy Duncan. The current issue of Shimmer is also particularly worth reading. Publications Reviewed F&SF, Sept/Oct 2012 Solaris Rising 1.5 , edited by Ian Whates Intergalactic Medicine Show, July 2012 Apex Magazine, August 2012 Shimmer #15, 2012 F&SF, Sept/Oct 2012 A lot [...]

Neal Stephenson opens the introduction to his stimulating and highly readable new collection by saying that publishers always reassure him that “I have reached the stage in my life and career where it is not only possible, but advisable, to release a compilation of what are drolly referred to as my ‘shorter’ works.” I will [...]

Early American history (or is it legend?), alchemy, and a long-standing family curse reach a crisis point around a pair of modern teens in Blackwood, the excellent debut of Locus contributing editor Gwenda Bond. Though the publisher is British, Bond is thoroughly American; as the bio notes, she lives in a century-old house in Lexington [...]

Starting out with several printzines that arrived too late in July to review, plus the usual first of the month ezines. Overall, if it were a contest, I’d give the award to the printzines this time. Publications Reviewed Asimov’s, September 2012 Analog, October 2012 Interzone, July-August 2012 Clarkesworld, August 2012 GigaNotoSaurus, August 2012 Redstone Science [...]

by Gary Westfahl Hearing that a new version of the 1990 film Total Recall was being produced, one naturally hoped for a film that would be closer to the text and spirit of Philip K. Dick’s 1966 story “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale” than the first adaptation, largely a violent rollercoaster ride tailored [...]