30 Jun, 2024
Because My Tears Are Delicious To You
George R. Stewart’s 1949 International-Fantasy-Award-winning Earth Abides is a stand-alone post-apocalyptic novel.
Bitten by a rattlesnake while alone in the mountains, Isherwood “Ish” Williams has no choice but to convalesce in isolation. The rattlesnake bite does not kill Ish. In fact, it saves his life.
While Ish was laid up in his cabin, the world he knew ended.
28 Jun, 2024
Doing the WFC's Homework
Ngozi Ukazu’s 2024 Barda is a stand-alone superhero graphic novel, set in Jack Kirby’s Fourth World. Although perhaps superhero isn’t the correct term.
Apokolips is Darkseid’s domain, a grim planet entirely devoted to tyranny and cruelty. To live on Apokalips is to serve Darkseid, either as a minion or as an example of the consequences of disappointing Darkseid.
Barda leads the Female Furies, an elite band of warriors trained by the saccharine-sweet sadist Granny Goodness. Barda has a dark secret: on a planet where love is not merely unknown but forbidden, she has fallen for someone. Who?
Why, none other than Orion of New Genesis!
Spoilers for the last fifty years of New Gods continuity.
27 Jun, 2024
The End of History
1990’s Tehanu: The Last Book of Earthsea is the fourth of at least six volumes in Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea secondary-universe fantasy series.
As a young woman, Tenar was a priestess to the Nameless Ones. She chose to flee. Tenar was offered a place in cosmopolitan1 Havnor. She chose backwater island Gont instead. Adopted by the old mage Ogion, Tenar was offered a chance to learn magic. She chose to marry a farmer named Flint instead2.
Tenar did not choose to become a widow living alone. Time chose that for her.
26 Jun, 2024
Translation
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2023’s Daemons of the Shadow Realm, Volume 3 is the third tankōbon1 in Hiromu Arakawa’s ongoing modern fantasy manga series, Yomi no Tsugai in the original Japanese. It has been serialized in Monthly Shōnen Gangan magazine since December 2021. Volume 3 in English translation was released in 2023.
Having survived a raid by mercenaries commanding tsugai (demons) on the Kagemori compound, Yuru takes part in the aftermath.
First question: who ordered the attack and why?
25 Jun, 2024
Shockwave Reader
John Brunner’s 1984 The Tides of Time is a stand-alone science fiction novel.
Travelers Gene and Stacy make port and set up camp in a cave on a backwater Greek island. They will be there for some time… centuries, by some measurements.
23 Jun, 2024
Because My Tears Are Delicious To You
1980’s The Orphan is the first volume in Robert Stallman’s speculative fiction trilogy, The Book of the Beast.
Depression-era farmer Martin Nordmeyer is astonished to discover a naked boy hiding in his hayloft. The boy is Robert Lee Burney. Robert has no family that he can name. Indeed, he has no family at all; he was not so much born as created.
21 Jun, 2024
Doing the WFC's Homework
First published as part of Amazon’s Forward series, N. K. Jemisin’s 2019 Emergency Skin is a stand-alone science fiction novelette.
Accompanied by a helpful AI that is forever reminding of mission parameters, a brave (but unnamed) scout ventures in search of precious biological treasure to the hell-world known only as … TELLUS!
Which we call Earth.
20 Jun, 2024
The End of History
1992’s Two-Bit Heroes is the second book in Doris Egan’s science fantasy Ivory trilogy.
Theodora is smitten with sorcerer Ran Cormallon and Ran is smitten with Theo. Therefore, despite the manifest imprudence of Theo returning to Ivory — planet of magic!1—Theo does just that.
Ran accepts a seemingly easy assignment: vet a would-be groom.
19 Jun, 2024
Translation
2005’s The Devotion of Suspect X is the first in Keigo Higashino’s Detective Galileo mystery series. First published as Yogisha X No Kenshin, the English translation is by Alexander O. Smith with Elye J. Alexander1.
Togashi proclaims that he is no longer the abusive embezzler whom Yasuko Hanaoka divorced. He insists that he still loves Yasuko and still wants to be a loving father to Yasuko’s daughter Misato. Perhaps he does. He certainly enjoys the money he bullies out of Yasuko. As long as he lives, Togashi will never leave mother and daughter alone.
Cut to: Yasuko and Misato viewing Togashi’s cooling corpse, showing bruises and ligature marks.
Enter a mathematician.
18 Jun, 2024
What's The Worst That Could Happen?
L. Neil Smith’s 2001 The American Zone is the fifth and final book in Smith’s North American Confederacy series, which is set in a libertarian utopia.
About ten years after the events of The Probability Broach, PI Win Bear, political refugee from a statist timeline, is distracted from a potentially vexing case1 by the bombing of the Old Endicott building.
This will not be the last terrorist outrage2. News pundit Jerry Rivers blames exochronic refugees (like Bear) for the crime. Has nativism come to the North American Confederacy?