Last Update: 22 August 2006
(What's New: A long overdue update of my family information page. A long overdue update of my reviews list to include the last few months of SF Site reviews. And my SF Reader's Page now has 77 of my Ace Double Reviews.)
Comments? e-mail reaches me at home at richard.horton@sff.net.
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About My Family

Go directly to Reviews.

My new SF page: A Science Fiction Reader's Page.

A small collection of links.

Reading Interests:

The consuming interest which brings me to SFF Net is reading, mainly reading Science Fiction. Actually, I counted the novels I've read over the last few years, and found the following approximate proportions: Science Fiction, 30%; Mainstream, 30%; Mysteries, 10%, Fantasy 15%, Historical Fiction 5%, Romances (almost exclusively Regencies), 5%, Children's Books, 5%. SF is the only field in which I make any attempt to keep up with the latest stuff, however, and it is my "base" reading material, to which I feel I can always return. In "mainstream" literature I try to read a subset of the "Classics" list, and I also read a number of contemporary British writers. In the fields of mystery, historical fiction, and regency romances I have a few authors whom I read voraciously, and as for children's books I try to rediscover books I loved as a child myself in advance of Melissa reading them (or just for kicks).

A Brief List of Favorite Authors:

SF: Gene Wolfe, Ursula Le Guin, David Brin, Kim Stanley Robinson, Bruce Sterling, Iain M. Banks, Greg Egan, Samuel R. Delany.

Mainstream: Robertson Davies, Anthony Powell, Kingsley Amis, Martin Amis, Penelope Fitzgerald, A.S. Byatt, Vladimir Nabokov, Jorge Luis Borges, Nicholson Baker, David Carkeet. (The alert reader will note how many of those have "crossover tendencies". (All except Powell and Fitzgerald, I'd say.))

Mysteries: Anne Perry, Robert Barnard, Bill James, William Marshall, Ellis Peters, Robert B. Parker, Georges Simenon, Donald Westlake.

Regencies: Georgette Heyer above all, Jo Beverly, Rosemary Edghill.

Historical Fiction: Dorothy Dunnett, Cecelia Holland, Patrick O'Brian, Bernard Cornwell.

Poetry: Wallace Stevens, W. B. Yeats, Philip Larkin

Reviews by me:

I've written a few reviews of books I've recently read (actually, now well over 100 reviews are linked from here). Some appeared in the SFF-Net and DM newsgroups, or on Usenet at rec.arts.sf.reviews, but I've put copies here. I've also spent some years reviewing for Dave Truesdale's excellent short fiction review 'zine, Tangent, which is now online at Tangent Online. However, as of the February 2002 issue, my short fiction review efforts have been concentrated on being one of two short fiction reviewers (the other is the estimable Nick Gevers) for Locus, the "newspaper of the Science Fiction field". I wrote a review column for the unfortunately short-lived British magazine 3SF. I did reviews for the last few issues of Dave Felts' small SF magazine Maelstrom SF, (sadly, also defunct). I've done a lot of reviewing for SF Site. Some of the reviews listed here are located at SF Site, or at Tangent, and the link will take you there. The most recent three or four reviews (not counting the SF Site reviews) are marked with a .

Science Fiction and Fantasy

This page highlights those aspects of my site which concern SF. While I'm primarily a reader of Science Fiction, I also read a fair amount of Fantasy, and I take a pretty broad church view of definitions of SF. (I also read a good deal of "mainstream" fiction, and mysteries, and romance, and children's books, and I've explicitly left any non-SF reviews that I've done in my review list. Nobody should restrict themself to any one genre.) This page is largely just a reorganization of my home page, and it will duplicate some stuff that will remain there.

I'm including, for now, four areas of content on this "page", besides this introductory material. First, I have links to my reviews of a variety of books, mostly but not all SF. Some of these reviews have been published online at SF Site, and at Tangent Online. Others were posted to the Usenet newsgroups rec.arts.sf.reviews or rec.arts.sf.written, or to the non-propagated newsroups at SFF-Net and Dueling Modems. A few come from different sources. The second area is a few short, SF-related, lists. The third is a collection of some SF-related essays I've written, either for SF Site or just on my own. And, finally, I have some links to other interesting SF-oriented sites.

Reviews by me:

I've written a few reviews of books I've recently read (actually, now well over 100 reviews are linked from here). Some appeared in the SFF-Net and DM newsgroups, or on Usenet at rec.arts.sf.reviews, but I've put copies here. I've also spent some years reviewing for Dave Truesdale's excellent short fiction review 'zine, Tangent, which is now online at Tangent Online. However, as of the February 2002 issue, my short fiction review efforts have been concentrated on being one of two short fiction reviewers (the other is the estimable Nick Gevers) for Locus, the "newspaper of the Science Fiction field". I'm wrote review columns for the three issues of the sadly short-lived British magazine 3SF. I did reviews for the last few issues of Dave Felts' small SF magazine Maelstrom SF, (now also defunct). I've done a lot of reviewing for SF Site. Some of the reviews listed here are located at SF Site, or at Tangent, and the link will take you there. The most recent three or four reviews (not counting the SF Site reviews) are marked with a .

Book Stores: I like buying books online, mainly for the great selection. Three I can particularly recommend are:

Amazon Books
Amazon UK, invaluable as a source for British books, so often not available in the US.
Advanced Book Exchange, This is a great way to find used books: they search the databases of many used book stores, and provide email forms to contact the book stores which have the book you want.

SF-Related: (these are from the Science Fiction category of my bookmarks, though the SF relationship may at times be tenuous):

SFF Net Our hosts. Lots of authors have home pages here. (Not to mention non-authors like yours truly.) In addition, there is a lot of neat discussion going on at the SFF-Net Newsgroups.
Tangent An excellent SF short fiction review magazine, founded by Dave Truesdale and now edited by Chris Markwyn. I formerly was an active contributor to these pages.
The Alexandria Digital Literature Home Page This neat site allows you to rate novels you've read, and recommends stories for you to read based on the books you like. They also offer stories for download at a reasonable price.
Melisa Michaels' Home Page Melisa is the author of seven SF and mystery novels, including the Skyrider series. Her latest novels are fantasies, called Cold Iron and Sister to the Rain, and were published by Roc in 1997 and 1998. (My review of the first is here.) She formerly maintained the SFWA Web Pages, and her latest project is an electronic publishing company, Embiid, which she and her husband Richard run.
Dueling Modems Another nice place to hang out. Some games, some more discussion about SF and other literature, and a lot of (mostly still nascent) newsgroups on subjects like religion, Canada, current science, and everything in between. Point your newsreader to DM Newsgroups.
The Internet Speculative Fiction Database This site seems to have a record of every SF story ever published. Well, not quite, but they're trying.
SFReader.com This site is run by Dave Felts, who bravely put out the worthwhile small SF 'zine Maelstrom for 8 issues (several of which included a review column I wrote). This site includes many reviews (including those I did for Maelstrom and some others by me, as well as many by other hands), and may eventually also include some original short SF.
The Tufted Shoot A booklog by Trent Goulding. Very sharp, interesting, comments. Lots of SF commented on, but lots of other books, too.
This site, maintained by Thomas David Kehoe, takes a list by Matt Groening, creator of the SF cartoon series Futurama as well as The Simpson, of his favorite SF books and links them to net reviews (many from Amazon.com).
Archon I'm not a big con-goer, but I have started attending a couple fairly local conventions: Archon is held in Collinsville, IL, every October (just in time for my birthday), and ConQuest is held Memorial Day Weekend in Kansas City.
SF Site Perhaps the most comprehensive SF-related site I've ever seen: it has lots of worthwhile content of its own, including plenty of timely book reviews. (I have also been contributing reviews to SF Site.)
Best SF Mark Watson's fine site attempts to briefly review much of the short SF published, as well as provide links to much of the short SF available online.
SCI FICTION The best online source of new short SF, edited by the remarkable Ellen Datlow (previously at Omni and Event Horizon, she has published more good original SF online than anyone else by a factor of at least 10).
Infinite Matrix If this new online SF "magazine" survives, it has a chance to rival SCI FICTION. Edited by Eileen Gunn, it has had a bumpy financial life so far, but the stuff Eileen has published has been very promising.
Strange Horizons Another very fine online SF venture. (Mary Anne Mohanraj is the editor in chief, and the senior fiction editor is Jed Hartman.)
Locus Online Locus is the best known newsmagazine of the SF field, and its online incarnation, run by Mark Kelly (who seems to read and review more SF short fiction than I do, even), includes plenty of neat stuff not in the print version. I add immodestly that I have contributed some stuff to the online version of Locus, specifically a few short fiction review columns. (And as of the February 2002 issue, I will be one of two new short fiction reviewers (with Nick Gevers) for the print edition of Locus.)
Black Gate A brand new High Fantasy magazine, published by former SF Site editor John O'Neill, with Dave Truesdale as fiction editor. I have contributed some reviews and a long essay I'm rather proud of.
The Speculative Literature Foundation Here is the Foundation's mission statement: To promote literary quality in speculative fiction, by encouraging promising new writers, assisting established writers, facilitating the work of quality magazines and small presses in the genre, and developing a greater public appreciation of speculative fiction. There website has lots of interesting resources, and also includes webbed versions of my end of the year short fiction summaries.
The Internet Review of Science Fiction This is a new online SF critical 'zine, run by John Frost. I have a feature in the fourth issue (April 2004). There are excellent regular short fiction reviews by Bluejack, and there have been several other fine features.

News on the Web: Lots of newspapers have web sites, and there are some decent web-based news sources. These are the ones I use most regularly:

Salon, an online magazine with a literary and political focus.
Slate, an online magazine with a decidedly political focus, edited by Michael Kinsley.
The New York Times, their online edition is free. A very fine newspaper.
The Wall Street Journal, their online edition is =not= free. But I actually pay for it. A very useful newspaper.
Honeyguide, this is not really a "News" site. It's the fruit of Raphael Carter's Web explorations, and it supplies links to a variety of fascinating items Carter finds on the Web. It's updated often.
Arts and Letters Daily, a wonderful "portal" site, providing a daily update of fascinating links to Web articles on the subjects of, basically, Arts and Letters.

Search Engines: Search Engines are essential for getting around the Web. These are the ones I use regularly. There are lots more.

Google, This has recently supplanted Alta Vista as my first option among search engines.
HotBot, Primarily a Web search engine, with links to other search options (including Deja News).
Alta Vista, a search engine which is very useful for Web searches.
Google Groups, a Usenet search engine.

Miscellaneous Fun Stuff: These are a few miscellaneous sites which I enjoy:

James Lileks' Bleat, I don't do very much reading of Weblogs (Blogs), but Mitch Wagner pointed me at this wonderful one, and I've grown quite attached to it. (Mitch has a nice Blog of his own, but I read it in his newsgroups on SFF-Net and Dueling Modems, instead of the web -- it's there somewhere too, though!)
WWW Bible Gateway, searchable online texts of five English language Bible translations, as well as at least five other languages.
PGA Tour Home Page, only of interest if you follow professional golf, but this is the best constructed site of its nature that I have seen. Live scoring of PGA events, stats for the three PGA tours, feature articles.
Poet's Corner, this site has quite a few English-language poems reproduced, and includes search capability. It is by no means comprehensive (and makes no such claim), but I've tracked down a few elusive quotes here, as well as found the occasional poem I've taken it on myself to read.
Anthony Powell Resources Page, Powell is my favorite author, and this is a wonderful page on him, put together by Keith Marshall. Well-organized, and full of great information.
The Jane Austin Home Page, people are always asking about the famous writer Jane Austin. Here's a neat page.
Immediacy, a "reading diary" and a blog by Glen Engel-Cox, a descendant of his earlier First Impressions. That Glen's taste is impeccable is evidenced by our close neighbor position in the Alexlit database. More importantly, he reads widely, and he reads interesting books, which he describes in this diary.

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