29 Aug, 2019
Miscellaneous Reviews
2019’s Rediscovery Vol 1: SF by Women 1958 – 1963 is an anthology of classic science fiction written by women. The managing editor is Gideon Marcus; editing and arrangement are thanks to A. J. Howells, Janice Marcus, and Erica Frank.
27 Aug, 2019
Miscellaneous Reviews
Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain’s 1905 Sultana’s Dream is a feminist utopian novella. It was originally published in The Indian Ladies Journal.
A sultana muses on the condition of women in Calcutta, the city in which she lives. When a woman she takes for an old friend invites her for a walk, the sultana goes with her. It soon becomes clear the sultana has misunderstood the situation.
25 Aug, 2019
Because My Tears Are Delicious To You
Brian M. Stableford’s Hooded Swan series consisted of the following short novels:
The Halcyon Drift (1972)
Rhapsody in Black (1973)
Promised Land (1974)
The Paradise Game (1974)
The Fenris Device (1974)
Swan Song (1975)
The story arc begins with a sullen man trapped on a desolate planet.
24 Aug, 2019
Doing What the WFC Cannot Do
Aliette de Bodard’s 2017 The Dragon that Flew out of the Sun: Stories of the Xuya Universe collects three stories set in her alternate-future Xuya universe.
23 Aug, 2019
Special Requests
Jo Walton’s 2019 Lent is a standalone historical fantasy.
Dominican prior Girolamo Savonarola of Florence is a man of many gifts. He can see demons. He can cast them back to Hell. He has profound powers of persuasion. He is a man who can shape history.
He is also fated to be hanged and burned in May of 1498.
22 Aug, 2019
Big Hair, Big Guns!
Richard S. McEnroe’s 1984 The Shattered Stars is a standalone (ish) SF novel which takes place in McEnroe’s Far Stars and Future Times setting.
Moses Callahan is the proud owner of the independent trader Wild Goose, which is another way of saying he is a cash-short, desperate man pushed into an economic corner by larger, richer concerns who can afford ships with up-to-date tech. Just the sort of captain who might be greedy enough that he wouldn’t examine closely a chance to earn some quick cash.
Might.
21 Aug, 2019
Special Requests
Alexis Hall’s 2019 The Affair of the Mysterious Letter is a standalone fantasy mystery.
Wounded in the war against the Empress of Nothing, Captain John Wyndham returns not to Ey, the straitlaced home of his youth, but to his college town, the cosmopolitan city of Kelathra-Ven. Despite years spent away at the front, John is at heart still a small-town boy.
He ends up rooming with the flamboyantly decadent sorcerer(ess) Shaharazad Haas. Haas appreciates Wyndham for his placid toleration of Haas’ eccentricities.
18 Aug, 2019
Because My Tears Are Delicious To You
Alan Dean Foster’s 1974 Icerigger is the first volume in the Icerigger Trilogy. It is set in Foster’s Humanx Commonwealth.
Interstellar salesman Ethan Frome Fortune planned to visit the desolate iceworld Tran-ky-ky just long enough to sell some knickknacks. Instead, he stumbled over a kidnapping in progress. Fortune’s inopportune appearance was only the first thing that went wrong with the kidnappers’ plans.
One shuttle crash later and Fortune and his companions are trapped on Tran-ky-ky. The wrong side of Tran-ky-ky, thousands of kilometers from the only Commonwealth base on the planet…
17 Aug, 2019
Doing What the WFC Cannot Do
Fiyah Summer 2019 is the eleventh issue of the Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction. The cover credits Troy L. Wiggins and DaVaun Sanders, but the full masthead is:
Executive Editors: Troy L. Wiggins + DaVaun Sanders + Brandon O’Brien
Acquiring Editors: Brent Lambert + Danny Lore + Kaleb Russell + Eboni J. Dunbar
Art Direction + Layout: LeKesha Lewis
Cover Artwork by Seth Brown
Fiyah often has themed issues. This issue is an exception to that rule.
15 Aug, 2019
Miscellaneous Reviews
To Be Taught, if Fortunate is a standalone hard-SF novella from Becky Chambers.
Flight engineer Ariadne O’Neill and mission specialists Elena Quesada-Cruz,
Jack Vo, and Chikondi Daka have been dispatched aboard the OCA spacecraft Merian to the red dwarf star Zhenyi (BA-921), just which is a mere fourteen light-years from Sol.
Faster than light drives do not exist and neither does terraforming. Instead, the explorers must depend on somaforming, a technologically induced metamorphosis that will adapt them to the worlds they visit.