Well, friends, I finally read the concluding book of the Divergent series. It’s difficult for me to fully review this book without discussing spoilers. So…if you don’t want to know spoilers, stop reading this review right now. Sigh. I have mixed feelings about Allegiant. The things I liked: I liked seeing Four’s weaknesses. I liked when […]
A Moving Tribute to a Jedi: Kenobi by John Jackson Miller
2014-09-15 · by ·
Kenobi is a beautiful surprise, a wonderful scene in the larger arc of the Star Wars drama. I had no idea what I was in for when I started it, and I’m glad I gave it a try. It’s an exciting and moving story of one of Star Wars most important characters. I had stopped […]
A Taste of Fear: Ansible 15715 by Stant Litore
2014-09-10 · by ·
Wowsers. Ansible 15715 (The Ansible Stories) is going to be hard to review without spoilers, but it so worth the read. Okay, let’s see if we can give it a go… If you’ve read Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game series, Vernor Vinge’s A Fire Upon the Deep, or Dan Simmons Hyperion Cantos, you’ve run into […]
Meet Dave Butler, Steam Punk/Science Fiction/Fantasy Author Extraordinaire
2014-08-24 · by ·
Dave Butler, the author of steam punk novel City of the Saints, is one of the most interesting authors I’ve had the opportunity to meet in the recent past. And, probably, the less than recent past, as well. I first ran into Dave Butler when he sat on a panel about J.R.R. Tolkien at Salt Lake […]
Science Fiction as the Best Social Fiction of Our Time: The Chaplain’s War by Brad Torgersen
2014-08-20 · by ·
Author Doris Lessing once noted that “That function of a writer is to raise questions not find answers.” A Nobel Prize winner, Lessing famously responded to a critic of her Canopus in Argos series–a work of science fiction, in contrast to what critics considered her more serious literature–by saying: “What they didn’t realize was that […]
What Good Science Fiction Looks Like: A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge
2014-08-13 · by ·
Vernor Vinge is brilliant and his A Fire Upon The Deep has got everything that really good science fiction should have. In his Zones of Thought universe, Vinge has divided the Milky Way galaxy into zones in which technology, thought, and intelligence increases the further you move from the galactic core. These zones–the “Unthinking Depths,” […]
Book Review | Killer of Enemies by Joseph Bruchac
2014-08-04 · by ·
I have no idea where I found Killer of Enemies. Something about the title caught my attention, I think, but by the time I had picked it up (from the library) I had already forgotten why. Somehow, though, I decided to read it, anyway. Despite a title that probably should have died in marketing (as […]
Hugo Nominee: The Lady Astronaut of Mars by Mary Robinette Kowal
2014-07-30 · by ·
One of the podcasts I listen to in my spare time (or rather, while I’m mowing the lawn or doing laundry or in the car, because really: who has spare time?) is Writing Excuses, which includes Mary Robinette Kowal. She is the author of the Glamourist Histories, which I hear is something like Pride and […]
Andy Weir’s The Martian Should Get a Hugo Nomination
2014-07-14 · by ·
If Andy Weir isn’t up for the Hugo next year, then scifi fandom doesn’t deserve good fiction anymore, because The Martian is pure awesome sauce. Left behind on Mars after a freak dust storm puts a hole in his suit and buries him, Mark Watney–astronaut, biologist, engineer–knows that the odds are against him returning back to Earth […]
The Wonder of Short Stories: Writers of the Future Volume 30
2014-07-02 · by ·
The thing about I like about short stories is that you don’t have to commit much to get a certain amount of satisfaction. Any novel worth reading will spend a certain portion of time introducing conflict, stringing together a plot, creating characters and relationships, and, if were in science fiction or fantasy, building a […]
