31 Dec, 2024
Shockwave Reader
John Brunner’s 2013 The Man Who Was Secrett and Other Stories is a collection of short stories, most of which feature Mr. Secrett, librarian for Royal Society for Applied Linguistics. Except as otherwise noted, all contents are by John Brunner.
29 Dec, 2024
Because My Tears Are Delicious To You
Jean Sutton and Jeff Sutton’s 1967 The Beyond is a stand-alone juvenile SF novel.
Starship Cosmic Wind snuck down to Engo’s surface, hoping to trade necessities for contraband. Captain Gordon Cromwell witnesses something he should not have seen. Worse, once back in civilization, he talks about what he has seen.
Enter the secret police.
27 Dec, 2024
Doing the WFC's Homework
2024’s The Scarlet Throne is the first volume of Amy Leow’s secondary-universe fantasy, the False Goddess Trilogy.
The goddess Rashmatun manifests to her devout followers by possessing the body of sanctified host girls. Through these living vessels, known as Rakhti, the goddess makes her will known. This system has functioned for centuries.
The current Rakhti is a teenager named Binsa. Binsa has secrets. For example, although traditionally Rakhti serve for a short term, Binsa has no intention of leaving office. For another example, Binsa is no holy vessel, just a barefaced liar dependent on demonic magic.
26 Dec, 2024
Special Requests
2013’s Nebula nominee1 The Golem and the Jinni is the first volume in Helene Wecker’s Golem and the Jinni series.
1899: America’s New York City is home to legions of immigrants from across the world. These newcomers are of every sort one could imagine, but Chava and Ahmad are perhaps the oddest.
25 Dec, 2024
Translation
1989’s The Best Japanese Science Fiction Stories is a collection of Japanese science fiction stories. The editors are credited as John L. Apostolou and Martin H. Greenberg.
Various quirks of how I track books are going to bite me on the ass with this book. I’ve only myself to blame.
24 Dec, 2024
What's The Worst That Could Happen?
2003’s The Pixel Eye is probably the third book in Paul Levinson’s Dr Phil D’Amato SF mystery series (although some sources claim it is the fifth).
America is about to pay the price for its excess of civil liberties and due process. The police may pursue criminals, the intelligence agencies chase conventional spies, but who exactly is keeping an eye on the greatest menace to America? I speak, of course, of
22 Dec, 2024
Because My Tears Are Delicious To You
Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed is a science fiction novel set in her Hainish setting.
Shevek is his generation’s most brilliant physicist. For reasons that will become clear, Shevek makes the momentous decision to pursue his research not on his native moon Anarres. Rather, he takes what he hopes is just a sabbatical in A‑Io on Urras, the world about which Anarres orbits.
20 Dec, 2024
Doing the WFC's Homework
S. L. Huang’s The River Judge is a prequel to The Water Outlaws1.
In a land not unlike the Northern Song Dynasty, Li Li’s foul-tempered father and submissive mother run an inn in a village notable mainly for its isolation. An inn might seem a reliable source of income. Nevertheless, Li Li’s father has side ventures.
Thus, the corpses.
19 Dec, 2024
Big Hair, Big Guns!
1984’s Circumpolar! is the first volume in Richard A. Lupoff’s Twin Planet’s duology.
It has long been known that the Earth is a flattened toroid. Vast ice walls bar the southern (outer) edge of the planet. Fierce winds make passage through the hole at the northern (inner) region nearly impassable. Therefore, while this side of the Earth — the side with Eurasia, the Americas, and all the other familiar continents — has been mapped, nothing is known of the other side.
Mrs. Victoria Woodhull Martin offers fifty thousand dollars to the first team to somehow reach and return from the other side of Earth.
Two aviator teams undertake this historic challenge.
18 Dec, 2024
Translation
Masaoki Shindo’s RuriDragon (Japanese: ルリドラゴン, Hepburn: Ruridoragon) is a Japanese modern-day fantasy manga series. Originally a one-shot published in Shueisha’s Jump Giga magazine in December 2020, RuriDragon has been serialized in Weekly Shōnen Jump starting in June 2022. Currently, installments appear on the Viz site. For example, issues 19 to 24, which I assume will become volume 4.
The latest revelation confronting half-human, half-dragon Ruri Aoki is that she now secretes a venom not unlike toad venom. Mildly toxic, the venom may also have psychoactive properties… to which only Ruri is exposed.
Having lost another half-day of school she can ill-afford, Ruri returns to class, only to encounter a purely mundane problem: bullying.