James Nicoll Reviews

This debut collection of darkly humorous, feminist speculative fiction from the Balkans contains ​“sly, uncommon stories — a rare mix of the witty and the visceral, with no small hint of the decadent and trasngressive. A major talent” (Jeff VanderMeer, author of Borne). Mars showcases a series of unique and twisted universes, where every character is tasked with making sense of their strange reality. One woman will be freed from purgatory once she writes the perfect book; another abides in a world devoid of physical contact. With wry prose and skewed humor, an emerging feminist writer explores twenty-first century promises of knowledge, freedom, and power. ​“Bakić’s stories are a dark delight — a treasury of forbidden pleasures, moments of resistance and resilience, and terrifying possibilities.” —Strange Horizons ​“At turns funny, surreal, and grounded in simple language but flung through twisted realities, the stories in this collection are provocative and utterly readable.” —The Brooklyn Rail ​“Skillfully disorienting.” —BUST

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Last time she investigated the saints of the Solme Complex. This time it’s the sinners of the Sensation… Presenting the second Salvi Brentt novel from award-winning author, Amanda Bridgeman. 

** A series of brutal murders has the homicide division of San Francisco’s Hub 9 working overtime. But as the bodies mount, they begin to question whether the attacks are random or somehow connected. 

When one of their own falls victim, Detective Salvi Brentt and the Hub 9 homicide team join forces with the narcotics and cyber divisions to track down those responsible. They soon discover a volatile new drug-tech experience, involving black market neural implants, has hit the streets, causing the epidemic of violence and missing persons. 

With the clock ticking and the bodies piling up, Salvi must go deep undercover in the seedy Sensation club scene to found out who is behind it. But in the secretive playgrounds of the rich and powerful, some will stop at nothing to protect their empire… 

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Update: Funds Acquired!

My faithful laptop has subtly hinted that I need to prioritize replacing it, first by closing every Word File within a few minutes of opening them, then by presenting me with this

for the better part of an hour, before springing this delight surprise

twice.

Thus the James Needs a New Laptop or He Will Composing and Posting Reviews on His Phone Fundraiser! I did that for about six months in 2015 and it was not fun. 

The laptop I am considering is about a thousand dollars, Canadian. If people would like to commission reviews or even just donate via the PayPal button, it would be enormously appreciated. 

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July 2020

21 books read. 11.5 by women (55%), 8.5 by men (40%), 1 by a non-binary author (5%), and 9 works by POC (43%)

Year to Date

147 books read. 78.5 by women (53%), 59 by men (40%), 6 by non-binary authors (4%), 3.5 by unknown (2%), 57 works by POC (39%)

Charts below cut

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In light of experiences at this WorldCon, I am amending my panel requirements: No all-male panels, and at least _two_ panelists who are persons of colour.

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MAN OR MACHINE?

Tell new intriguing science fiction stories with M‑SPACE Companion. 

Create sidekick droids and AI villains with rules for robots and artificial intelligence. Or play as a robot. 

Make powerful characters with the latest cybernetic implants. And try the cutting-edge Q Tech implants, bordering on magic. 

Learn about your characters’ former lives in the Origins chapter, or breach security with the new rules for hacking. 

A failed cybernetic experiment hides behind the blast doors at the bottom of a mineshaft. Find out more in the scenario Escape on Mosek Uhn.

This is what you get:

• Rules for modular robots, both humanoid and simple droids. 

• Cybernetics, with implants and body part replacements. 

• The almost magical Q Tech implants. 

• Rules for detailed character backgrounds. 

• Computers and hacking. 

• Scenario: Escape From Mosek-Uhn. 

• Updated character sheet.

And, if you haven’t already, don’t forget to download the seven additional Origins tables in the free Companion Addendum. Available from FrostByte Books’ webpage.

Along with the Companion, Circles of Steel contains 13 organisations for robots and cyborgs. Tailored for the Companion, Alex Greene has crafted a versatile set of Circles, easy to use in any campaign. The PDF is a Pay What You Want title.

M‑SPACE is needed to make full use of the Companion, but it is compatible with most d100 games.

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Forty years ago, Champions: the Super Roleplaying Game was inspired by off-the-leash newsstand comics full of weird and headstrong creators. No one knew where a story was going, and what ​“heroic” meant changed constantly. That’s why it was the first role-playing game to hand you and a few friends a creative studio, rather than a constructed genre package.

This book presents an exploration of those first-generation texts as envisioned and redesigned by Ron Edwards, long-time Champions player, co-founder of the Forge, publisher at Adept Press, and author of diverse role-playing games. It contains all of the rules you need to create and play any hero and villain you can think of, procedures for the Now so your play-experience is a cutting edge rather than a railroad; and a nonstandard, in-depth examination of superhero comics informed by professionals and insiders.

Like the original game, this one isn’t a setting or a quantitative breakdown of a genre. It’s for your own superhero comics experience. However you want it! Silly or not silly, cool or not cool, retro or contemporary, appropriate or inappropriate, safe or edgy, relevant or not relevant. Never mind what some franchise pays for, what a fanbase demands, or what the experts pontificate about.

This is your studio. Let’s see what you make with it! 

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In a single day and night of fierce fighting, the Archduchy of Mongaul has overrun its elegant neighbor, Parros. The lost priest kindgom’s surviving royalty, the young twins Rinda and Remus, hide in a forest in the forbidding wil marches. There they are saved by a mysterious creature with a man’s body and a leopard’s head, who has emerged from a deep sleep and remembers only his name. Guin.

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There was and there was not, as all stories begin, a princess cursed to be poisonous to the touch. But for Soraya, who has lived her life hidden away, apart from her family, safe only in her gardens, it’s not just a story. 

As the day of her twin brother’s wedding approaches, Soraya must decide if she’s willing to step outside of the shadows for the first time. Below in the dungeon is a demon who holds knowledge that she craves, the answer to her freedom. And above is a young man who isn’t afraid of her, whose eyes linger not with fear, but with an understanding of who she is beneath the poison. 

Soraya thought she knew her place in the world, but when her choices lead to consequences she never imagined, she begins to question who she is and who she is becoming…human or demon. Princess or monster. 

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Lost Voices was a series of reviews I did on rec.arts.sf.written in 2000, reviewing works by authors not now (well, then) producing new books. I have run the pieces through a spell-checker but for the most part otherwise left the reviews as they were, spotty research, mid-sentence parentheticals, insufficient grasp of paragraph structure and all.

The series taught me that focusing on people whose careers have hit roadbumps is kind of a downer.

Lost Voices can be found here.

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