7 Aug, 2020
Doing What the WFC Cannot Do
Mike Chen’s 2019 Here and Now and Then is a standalone time-travel thriller.
The Temporal Corruption Bureau protects history from malicious tampering. Kin Stewart used to be a TCB field agent but, his beacon disabled in a fight with a perp, he can’t return to 2142. Marooned in the 1990s, he has no choice but to make a new life for himself.
Eighteen years later in 2014….
6 Aug, 2020
Translation
Xia Jia’s 2020 A Summer Beyond Your Reach is her first English language story collection. Translations are by Ken Liu, Carmen Yiling Yan, Emily Jin, and Rebecca Kuang.
5 Aug, 2020
Special Requests
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Kristine Smith’s 2007 Endgame is the final book in her Jani Kilian quintet.
About a year has passed since the last book. The idomeni oligarch, Ceel, determined to put an end to Tsecha’s ongoing heretical activities, decides on a cunning plan. Surely assassinating a charismatic leader will dissuade their followers from pursuing heretical ways! What could possibly go wrong?
[spoilers abound for those who haven’t read the previous books in the series]
3 Aug, 2020
Miscellaneous Reviews
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Nnedi Okorafor’s LaGuardia is a near-future/alternate-future comic. Art is by Tana Ford and lettering by Sal Cipriano; the colourist is James Devlin.
In 2010 the first extra-terrestrials arrived in Nigeria. Nigeria, or at least its national government, welcomed the aliens and benefited from imported technology. Other nations, like the United States, took a very different view. Let Nigeria have its aliens, only let them have their aliens far from America.
Unsurprising since, as returning Nigerian-America doctor Future Nwafor Chukwuebuka knows all too well, this is more or less the position the US takes on people like her.
2 Aug, 2020
Because My Tears Are Delicious To You
Jerome Bixby’s 1964 Space by the Tale is a collection of … you’ve guessed it, short stories and novelettes.
31 Jul, 2020
Doing What the WFC Cannot Do
2020’s Forest of Souls is the first volume in Lori M. Lee’s Shamanborn series.
Foundling Sirscha Ashwyn seems destined to spend an unremarkable life as servant to her betters. But Sirscha is too ambitious for that. She apprentices herself to Kendara the Shadow, master spy/assassin for the kingdom of Evewyn.
Part of her training has consisted of service in the army. While there, she makes a friend, fellow soldier Saengo. She is dispatched on an errand by Kendara; Saengo accompanies her. It’s a trap; a shaman attacks with fire. Sirscha survives but Saengo does not.
What happens next is unexpected and quite disquieting.
29 Jul, 2020
Military Speculative Fiction That Doesn't Suck
2003’s Contact Imminent is the fourth volume in Kristine Smith’s Jani Kilian quintet.
Human-idomeni relations are troubled at the best of times. On the plus side, the idomeni now have an embassy on Earth, near the terrestrial capital Chicago. On the minus side, someone appears to have done a subpar job of ensuring that the property granted for idomeni use was properly prepared. Or so the landmines suggest.
28 Jul, 2020
Translation
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Alejandro Jodorowsky’s comic The Incal (French: L’Incal ) was illustrated by Jean Giraud (AKA Moebius). The Incal was serialized in Métal hurlant from 1981 to 1988. The series comprises six volumes.
John DiFool is a low-budget private investigator, competent enough for only the most lowly of tasks. When the series opens, DiFool is being thrown by masked assassins to his certain doom in a deadly lake of acid far below.
26 Jul, 2020
Because My Tears Are Delicious To You
Andrew J. Offutt’s 1973 The Galactic Rejects is a standalone SF novel.
The starship Brunner , having been ambushed by the alien Azuli, is doomed. The crew of the Brunner , hoping to prevent panic, assure their passengers that there enough spacepods for all. This is a lie, but it doesn’t convince the telepath Rinegar. He commandeers a spacepod and escapes.
The spacepod lands on the nearest world, which just happens to be conveniently habitable. The pod can’t take off again; Rinegar is marooned. With him are two strangers, fellow veterans of the Terran-Azuli war: flighty teen Corisande and twenty-something delinquent Berneson.
25 Jul, 2020
Special Requests
Marta Randall’s 1976 Islands is a standalone science fiction novel.
Take the Immortality Treatment, live forever. That is the promise of the post-Great-Shaping world. The reality is very different for Tia Hamley. She is immune to the Treatment. Her contemporaries can look forward to eternity. Not Tia.