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: 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: 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 […]

Re: Boneshaker

The prologue is the most exciting part of Boneshaker, by Cherie Priest. In 1863, the Incredible Bone-Shaking Drill Engine went on a rampage. In Seattle, there was a boom when the failed 49ers passed through to strike out for the Yukon. Angling for a commission from the Russians to drill for gold, a mad scientist, […]

Re: Non-Zero Probabilities

Just because a story is nominated for both the Nebula and the Hugo doesn’t mean I’ll like it. And if I don’t, who cares? But if such a story was also written by someone I have known, however glancingly (she was the previous organizer of my SF Meetup), I do care. So I put off […]

Re: Bride of Frankenstein

I am appalled. Horrified and appalled. I actually liked a sentimental story by Mike Resnick.

Re: Spar

Whatever you might think of the Nebula-winning “Spar“, you have to admit that Kij Johnson did what she set out to do. In an interview, says she feared her writing was getting too “glossy” and she wanted to get away from that. This story is far from “glossy” all right. It’s so raw, it doesn’t […]

Re: The Moment

“The Moment,” by Lawrence M. Schoen is told in a series of moments, a comic-tragic succession of galactic entities all drawn to a footprint on the Moon. The prose is filled with cerulean imagery and technophilic vocabulary; to a large degree the wordplay carries me along in reading it. And yet, this story bugs me.