My 2010 Hugo ballot

I’ve finished my reading for the Hugo nominees. While I’m still digesting what I think and what I want to say about the last few stories, I have sorted out my feelings enough to know how I will vote. As the votes are due by July 31, I’ll try to post the rest of my […]

Re: Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest; Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast;

“Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest; Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast” by Eugie Foster is utterly otherworldly. It’s a world where every day you put on a mask and the mask determines who you are. The technology built into the mask, as well as powerful pheromones from other sources, control your thoughts, your desires, what you […]

Re: The Women of Nell Gwynne’s

One thing “The Women of Nell Gwynne’s,” by Kage Baker, really gets right is that you can’t take steampunk seriously.

Re: It Takes Two

When I first read Nicola Griffith’s “It Takes Two,” in Eclipse Three, it didn’t make much of an impression on me. All I could remember was how quickly my interest faded in reading about high-tech workers bemoaning their fate post-dot-com bust. Even now that I’ve re-read the whole thing recently, I’m still not all that […]

Re: Overtime

I like the central premise of Charles Stross’s Laundry stories: eldritch gods are real, computers are breaching the barriers that keep them out, and the job of maintaining that barrier is left to a dysfunctional British bureaucracy known as the Laundry. But if you haven’t read The Atrocity Archives or The Jennifer Morgue, this is […]

Re: The God Engines

I really didn’t expect to like “The God Engines,” by John Scalzi as much as I did. For one thing, most of his work makes me crazy. For another, the story is written in a clunky fantasy style that makes you wonder if he’s practicing for next year’s Kirk Poland. I mean, what else can […]

Re: The Windup Girl

I first encountered The Windup Girl, at last year’s Readercon, when Paolo Balcigalupi read the first chapter. It paints a vivid picture of a factory in a future Bangkok, where genetically modified elephants are used like mill donkeys to wind massive springs to store energy. It’s a world where generippers have destroyed food supplies and […]

Re: WWW:Wake

It’s so long since I invoked the 150 page rule, I think it’s time to restate it. Life is short. If you start reading a book, that doesn’t mean you have to finish it. Honest. The book won’t care. Sometimes, even though I’m not exactly enthralled, I feel obliged to give a book more of […]

Re: Let Us Now Praise Awesome Dinosaurs

Is Readercon more fun than a barrel of dinosaurs? Don’t answer that. Read or listen to “Let Us Now Praise Awesome Dinosaurs,” by Leonard Richardson first and enjoy the episodic adventures of two dinosaurs from Mars.

Re: Shambling Towards Hiroshima

Appropriately enough, I read James Morrow’s “Shambling Towards Hiroshima” all in one go while Gamera The Invincible played on Wolfman Mac’s Chiller Drive-In. It’s 1984, and Syms J. Thorley has just won the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Baltimore Imagi-Movie Society. Known as the Monogram Shambler, his real name is Isaac Margolis. His most famous […]