Re: The Helper and His Hero

“The Helper and His Hero,” by Matthew Hughes is the latest installment of Guth Bandar’s adventures in the noösphere, a shared dreamspace. In the waking world, Guth Bandar is on a journey into the Swept, to investigate whether the gravitional anomalies there can affect the noösphere. The story is filled with picaresque inventions: the Swept […]

Re: A Handbook of American Prayer

In the opening of A Handbook of American Prayer, by Lucius Shepard, Wardlin is tending bar when a woman walks in before opening hours. He gives her a hard time, but her boyfriend gets it even rougher, when they get in a fight and Wardlin accidentally kills him. Though Wardlin isn’t the nicest guy in […]

Re: softspoken

Do you go to cons only to discover that the Guest of Honor is someone you’ve barely heard of? That certainly makes me feel stupid. For instance, last year Lucius Shepard was the GoH at Readercon, and had interesting things to say in his interview. I decided I needed to do my homework. Now I’m […]

Re: The Secret History of Moscow

In 90s Moscow, where the streets are filled with kiosks “selling everything and manned by loud men who wouldn’t leave you alone,” something even stranger than capitalism is happening. Galina’s sister Masha is transformed into a jackdaw, sending Galina looking for her. She meets a cop, Yakov, who is assigned to track down rumors of […]

Re: Children’s Crusade

Remember how I changed my mind about “Titanium Mike Saves The Day” after I got past the first page? Well, the same thing happened with “Children’s Crusade,” by Robin Wayne Bailey, only it went in the opposite direction. A boy, Ari, is kneeling in prayer, ignoring hunger without complaint. Then his uncle Abad gives him […]

Re: Always

Funny how you can always tell a cult by who gets to have sex. In “Always,” by Karen Joy Fowler, the unnamed narrator is warned by her mother: if only the pastor is having sex, it’s a cult. When the narrator and her husband come to Always and discover exactly that about Brother Porter, she […]

Re: The Merchant and The Alchemist’s Gate

The story I have to tell is truly a strange one, and were the entirety to be tattooed at the corner of one’s eye, the marvel of its presentation would not exceed that of the events recounted… A lovely salute to the storytelling girl in The Orphan’s Tales, and a big claim to make. At […]

2008 Hugo Nominations

The 2008 Hugo Nominations were announced last night. And I called it: Halting State is on the ballot. When I read Rollback, I had a sinking feeling it too would be nominated, but I was afraid to say so out loud. Likewise, seeing The Last Colony listed makes me feel very discouraged: Old Man’s War […]

Re: Child, Maiden, Woman, Crone

As a perpetrator of clunky writing (and I’m sure you can find examples in my recent posts), I wondered if there was some joke when I read the first paragraph of “Child, Maiden, Woman, Crone,” by Terry Bramlett. The music filled the valley as Johnny Nobles coerced the strings on his Gibson. He ended the […]

Re: The Fiddler of Bayou Teche

Come here, cher, and I tell you a story. The opening lines of “The Fiddler of Bayou Teche,” by Delia Sherman establish an intimate narrative voice, so clear you can hear her speaking inside your head. Better yet, read it out loud. Cadence is an albino girl who lives out in the swamp with her […]