Tackling the latest massive issue of Black Gate, which almost takes up a whole column. The Good Story award goes to Michael Flynn’s alternate history, posted at Tor.com. Publications Reviewed Tor.com, May 2011 Black Gate #15, Spring 2011 Alt Hist #2, 2011 Lightspeed, May 2011 Tor.com, May 2011 Good to see more original fiction posted […]

Reviewer discretion compels me to reveal up front that I co-edited a collection of Henry Kuttner’s best short macabre fiction recently published by Centipede Press. Having gotten that out of the way, let me note that Terror in the House is a magnificent book, one that measures up to the high standards Haffner Press established […]

Getting caught up at last with the digests, also the usual monthly ezines. Wherein I learn that Genevieve Valentine is a very fortunate author. Her debut novel has just come out, and two different zines are helping promote it by printing stories set in the same milieu, timed to coincide with the launch. Publications Reviewed […]

By now I suspect everyone is familiar with the years-old rumor that China Miéville had been working on a space opera of some sort, but then came The City & The City, which clearly wasn’t it, and then Kraken, which was even less it. Embassytown is it, but – as is increasingly characteristic of Miéville’s […]

Encompassing the viewpoints of youth and relative maturity, in order to shift between bafflement and occasional epiphanies for both the narrator and the even more clueless reader, while doling out the most crucial back story only when it really counts: that’s what Genevieve Valentine’s Mechanique shares with [China Miéville’s] Embassytown – along with a willingness […]

Howard Waldrop: Thor is a big noisy mess. Marvel’s luck with 3rd banana heroes and its hopes for The Avengers next year (all the 3rd banana heroes at once) comes to a screeching halt. Lawrence Person: It would be tempting to do a one word review of “Eh.” Sadly, the word rate for that would […]

A mixed column this time. Catching up with the digests, the usual first-of-the-month e-zines, and a fat anthology that I didn’t like much. The Good Story award goes to the China Miéville piece in April’s Guardian. Publications Reviewed Welcome to Bordertown, edited by Holly Black and Ellen Kushner The Guardian, April 22, 2011 Asimov’s, June […]