Re: The Erdmann Nexus

“The Erdmann Nexus,” by Nancy Kress has the trademark detailed descriptions and well-drawn characters, but I have a problem with its One Impossible Thing. The story opens with a slightly confusing passage about a spaceship that’s not the spaceship Dr. Erdmann imagines it to be. Then we actually meet Dr. Henry Erdmann, a physicist retired […]

Re: Exhalation

Where “Evil Robot Monkey” touched my heart, “Exhalation” by Ted Chiang engaged my brain. No, wait. It stole my brain and turned it inside out in one long thought experiment. The reading on Escape Pod perfectly matches the dry tone of the narration. Opening with the jarring image of exchanging lungs for freshly charged ones […]

Re: The Graveyard Book

The Graveyard Book, by Neil Gaiman is a good example of how to write a chapter book. While each chapter stands on its own, small things get repeated, binding the book into a satisfying whole. In a wonderfully understated opening, we follow “the man Jack” tracking down the last surviving member of a family he […]

Re: Shoggoths in Bloom

Professor Harding, educated at a college in Alabama (I’m guessing Tuskegee) and Yale, comes to Maine to pursue a line of inquiry no one else wants: shoggoths. “Shoggoths in Bloom“, by Elizabeth Bear depicts in wonderful, luscious prose the beauty of the Maine shore and sky, as well as the discomfort and wary approaches between […]