Re: Distant Replay

It’s hard for me to say much about “Distant Replay,” by Mike Resnick. It falls into the vague middle ground of an okay story, but I don’t love it or hate it enough to really get into it. It begins when Walter, an old man marking time until he can join his dead wife, Diedre, […]

Re: Recovering Apollo 8

I was just a kid in the 60s, but I remember the uncertainty of the Apollo program, from the terrible reality of Apollo 1, to wacky speculations that Apollo 11 would sink into the lunar dust. The movie “Apollo 13” captured wonderfully the constant fear that something might go wrong. When you look at what […]

Re: Memorare

In “Memorare,” by Gene Wolfe, March Wildspring is a producer, filming a documentary about memorials orbiting Jupiter near the places where people died trying to colonize the solar system. Like the pyramids, they are booby-trapped. The narrator of his films, his beloved Kit, brings along an assistant, a woman who hides until she’s forced to […]

Re: Stars Seen Through Stone

Vernon is a small-time regional music producer who landed in Black William, Pennsylvania with his (now) ex-wife, Andrea, when their car broke down. Perhaps because he’s recounting events that happened ten years before the main action of the story, the opening passage of “Stars Seen Through Stone,” by Lucius Shephard, sounds stiff in its formality […]

Re: Fountain of Age

When I read a story that I don’t like written by someone I admire, it makes feel like there’s something wrong with me. Nancy Kress, for example, is incredibly smart about writing, she gets her science right, she gets her people right–but every now and then I run across a story that rubs me the […]

Re: Halting State

When an army of Orcs rob a bank, you’re know you’re in for a good time. So who thinks it’s worthwhile to raid the central bank of the gameworld Avalon Four? Sue, an Edinburgh cop, Elaine, a forensic auditor, and Jack, a gaming programmer, are called together to find out. Throw in corporate backstabbing, terror […]

Re: Rollback

Robert J. Sawyer has some useful things to say about promoting your work. After all, the guy who snagged sfwriter.com for his website must know what he’s doing. But maybe he’s a little too good at promoting himself. When I heard him interviewed on Dragon Page Cover to Cover, I was intrigued by the opening […]