Category: Books
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Book Review: Revenger
It's sometimes very difficult to tell the difference between a genius and a crackpot. Both can be geeky, eccentric, abrasive, or just plain annoying. There is, however, one foolproof "tell" for the crackpot: they don't share ideas. If someone comes up to me at a convention or a book signing and starts going on about…
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Retro-Review: Famous Science-Fiction Stories (Part 4 and Conclusion)
At last we've come to the final stories in Famous Science-Fiction Stories: Adventures in Time and Space. Time to wrap up and make a general assessment. By His Bootstraps, by Anson MacDonald/Robert Heinlein: This is a well-known story, but I hesitate to call it a classic. It has a lot in common with Heinlein's other…
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Retro-Review: Famous Science-Fiction Stories (Part 3)
We're about two-thirds of the way through the book. Did the editors front-load the good stuff, or save the best for a boffo finish? Let's find out. Asylum, by A.E. Van Vogt: Space vampires! One of the first discussions of what SETI researchers call the "Zoo hypothesis!" Identity games worthy of Philip K. Dick! Unconvincing…
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Retro-Review: Famous Science-Fiction Stories (Part 2)
This post continues my look at the ground-breaking 1946 anthology Famous Science-Fiction Stories: Adventures in Time and Space, edited by Raymond Healy and John McComas. It's probably going to take at least four entries to cover the whole book. Last time I got through the first seven stories, and so far the collection has been…
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Retro-Review: Famous Science-Fiction Stories (Part 1)
American literature doesn't have an official "Canon." There's no equivalent of the Academie Francaise to decide what is and what is not Literature with a capital L. But we do have some approximations: high-school or first-year college course reading lists, better-late-than-never Pulitzers, adaptations in Classics Illustrated Comics or Oscar-bait films . . . And of…
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Ozblogging: Tik-Tok of Oz, Part 8 (whew!)
Having finished the story several chapters earlier, Mr. Baum piles anticlimax on anticlimax by cutting away from the adventurers in the Nome Kingdom to the magical fairyland of Oz, where Ozma has been watching the whole thing on her Magic Picture. I have to say Ozma is a little uncomfortably voyeuristic here. It's one thing…
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Ozblogging: Tik-Tok of Oz, Part 7
When last we left Our Heroes, the villainous Nome King had just transformed the Shaggy Man into a dove, transformed the Rose Princess Ozga into a fiddle (not that anyone really cares), chained up Quox the dragon, and was preparing to force Polychrome to marry him and stay in the underground kingdom forever! How will…
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Retro-Review: Rogue Moon
Imagine there was a novel which combined James Patrick Kelly's amazing short story "Think Like a Dinosaur" with Alastair Reynolds's brilliant novella Diamond Dogs. Imagine that novel was written in 1960 by a respected and influential science fiction author, editor, critic, and teacher with multiple Hugo and Nebula awards to his credit. Now imagine how…
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Going LIVE!
I've finally dipped a toe into the waters of independent e-publishing. My e-chapbook "Outlaws and Aliens" is now live on Amazon! It's an affordably-priced little ebook containing two of my short stories — "The Alien Abduction" and "Object Three." The cover art is by Rob Caswell. You can buy it here. Makes a great way to…
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Kitchen Report: Timballo
The Leopard, by Giuseppe di Lampedusa, is a landmark of Italian literature. There are many reasons to read it, but among others it contains some of the great dinner scenes in modern fiction. The meal in Chapter 2 begins with "monumental dishes of macaroni." But this isn't just a pile of pasta, oh no. Di…
The Cambias Digression 