Re: The Dybbuk in the Bottle

Folklore is a natural font for fantasy stories, but some stories fit in better than others. “On The Banks of the River of Heaven” felt like an extra element gracefully inserted into Japanese folktales. “The Dybbuk in the Bottle,” by Russell William Asplund feels like a genie in a bottle story dressed up with Jewish […]

Re: Sixty-One Nails

One of these days I’m going to learn that just because a book has a cool idea or an awesome premise doesn’t mean I’m going to like it. In his feature in The Big Idea, Mike Shevdon has some very cool things to say about other worlds and the true meaning of ancient ceremonies. But […]

Four out of five collards align

I don’t plant anything in rows. I like squares and clusters. Where I don’t plant, I like letting new plants spring where they think they will do best; and where I do I like to make it look as if the plants put themselves there. So what am I to think when I let collards […]

Re: Zoo Story

Zoo Story: Life in the Garden of Captives, Thomas French is filled with wonderful stories about the lifes and deaths of animals in the Lowry Park Zoo in Tampa. We get a little time with the herpetologists and the snakes, and the vanishing Panamanian Golden Frog, but mostly the mammals hold our attention. We get […]

Re: Divided By Infinity

“Divided by Infinity,” by Robert Charles Wilson brings you back to the vanishing world of the used book store — the smell of old bindings, the rattle of bead curtains, the rumpled owner — but which world is it?

NERAX North is coming

Well, I’ve got another beer festival to keep me busy: I’ll be the Bar Manager at NERAX North, starting a week from tonight. NERAX is all about the traditional method of serving beer, naturally carbonated and cool as a stone-lined cellar. It’s beer you can taste and beer worth tasting. This year, we have a […]

First Frost

Woke up to frost on the leaves this morning, and the birds woke to find ice on their drinking water. I will spare you the sight of the other carnage: the dead squash plant, cold-singed eggplants, and truly nasty-looking water garden. It’s winter’s first kiss.

Of Librarians and Bats

Yesterday, I declared that I refused to read a story. Today I am declaring — with regret — that I’m not going to read This Book is Overdue, either. Marilyn Johnson makes the contemporary role of libraries sound fascinating when she’s on the radio. I even heard her a couple times, but I just couldn’t […]

Re: The Heart of A Mouse

I guess the Halloween monster story for the Torque Control short story club must be “The Heart of A Mouse,” by K.J. Bishop. The beginning introduces us to a depressing post-apocalypse landscape with literal fallen angels rotting on the ground. And the narrator is a modified mouse.

A Pre-Rakhaelite Maple

This is what I get to see as I climb the steps: a maple tree covered in gold, in its moment of glory before the leaves fall.