http://www.sfsite.com/ The new issue of the SF Site is now online. Copyright 1996-2010 SF Site en-us http://www.sfsite.com/images/sfspot1.gif http://www.sfsite.com/ http://www.sfsite.com/11b/fp260.htm Fri, 16 Nov 2007 11:00:00 GMT As the story opens, a talking raven arrives in a cemetery in the Bronx, New York to deliver a stolen baloney to a man who has been living in the cemetery for the past 19 years. Mr. Rebeck. Shortly he meets Mrs. Klapper who is here to visit the grave of her husband, Morris. The cast of major characters is filled out by a couple of ghosts, each of whom we meet on the occasion of his or her funeral. http://www.sfsite.com/columns/over260.htm Fri, 16 Nov 2007 11:00:00 GMT Neil wonders whether anyone is reading his column. But he has decided to give it another try with Slan by A.E. Van Vogt, in which a young man who is more than human takes on pretty much the whole world as he quests for others (or even one other) like himself, and A Scientific Romance by Ronald Wright, in which a dying man takes a time machine to the future in hope of finding a cure for himself and a way to go back to the past to cure his now dead former lover, and he leaves a manuscript behind which may or may not ever be read... by anyone. http://www.sfsite.com/11b/kl260.htm Fri, 16 Nov 2007 11:00:00 GMT Naval lieutenant Kristine Longknife, Princess of Wardhaven, is in dire need of a vacation, after the way things have gone for her over the past few months. Thusly, she packs her bags and her entourage, and hies off to the planet of New Eden, where she hopes things will stay quiet for the time being, while she (reluctantly) fulfills various diplomatic and military obligations. The first assassination attempt suggests that things aren't going to be quiet. http://www.sfsite.com/11b/da260.htm Fri, 16 Nov 2007 11:00:00 GMT Jonny Hooker is a 27 year-old musician who is accompanied, in a metaphysical sense, by an imaginary monkey boy called Mr Giggles. Nobody else can see or hear Mr Giggles, but that does not mean he isn't there. Soon after the story begins, Jonny is found dead in the pond of Gunnersbury Park. Minus his head, which appears to have exploded. http://www.sfsite.com/11b/cy260.htm Fri, 16 Nov 2007 11:00:00 GMT What's so unusual about this book then? For a start, although it takes place in one of high fantasy's traditional settings -- a mercantile city in desert lands -- the story is complete in a single volume of under 200 pages, which is pretty rare in itself these days. More than that, the structure is unusual: the first 40 pages comprise a prologue and thirteen "preludes" before the main story starts. http://www.sfsite.com/11b/rh260.htm Fri, 16 Nov 2007 11:00:00 GMT On a frontier world, like Coyote, banishment can be a death penalty. Two ruffians, Marie Montero and her lover, Lars Thompson find themselves exiled from their community after they can't make the transition from Rebellion to peacetime. Rather than a permanent exile, however, they are tasked with exploring the planet, still widely unknown, and reporting back via radio every couple of days. To increase their chance of survival, a savant, Manuel Castro, is sent along with them. http://www.sfsite.com/lists/yb-fh-volume01.htm Fri, 16 Nov 2007 11:00:00 GMT In 1988, Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling collected together what they thought was the best short fantasy and horror from the previous year. They went through as many of the magazines, collections and anthologies published in 1987 that they could find and chose those stories which they decided best represented the fantasy and horror field. Jim Frenkel arranged for its publication by St. Martins's Press and it has been produced every year since then. In 2003, Kelly Link and Gavin J. Grant took over from Terri Windling as the fantasy editor. http://www.sfsite.com/11b/sl260.htm Fri, 16 Nov 2007 11:00:00 GMT Henghis Hapthorn is approached by a wealthy socialite with what appears to be a straightforward case: her husband has vanished after buying a small spaceship. Establishing that the spouse was not involved in hanky-panky, Hapthorn investigates further, to discover that several others who had considered buying the vessel also disappeared. He takes on a guise as a buyer himself -- to be captured by a super-intelligent fungus that leeches personality, experience, and knowledge from its victims. http://www.sfsite.com/books/new260.htm Fri, 16 Nov 2007 11:00:00 GMT New this month are the latest from Chris Wooding, Laurell K. Hamilton, Janny Wurts, Stephen Donaldson, and many others, plus some classic reprints from Gene Wolfe, Robert Holdstock, Frank Herbert, Michael Moorcock, and -- you guessed it -- yet still more. It's a busy time of year for publishers. http://www.sfsite.com/11b/ra260.htm Fri, 16 Nov 2007 11:00:00 GMT Set in Paris, the story revolves around Remy, a rat gourmet with a hyper-sensitive palate, who uses his enhanced sense and cooking skills to help Linguini, a young dishwasher who accidentally becomes a chef at the famous Parisian restaurant Gusteau's, founded by the eponymous late chef. Chef Gusteau's former assistant Skinner now manages the formerly five-star bistro and even uses the legendary chef's persona to sell a line of decidedly down-scale frozen dinners. http://www.sfsite.com/columns/rick260.htm Fri, 16 Nov 2007 11:00:00 GMT Nothing new on television so RIck has turned to film with thoughts on The Dark is Rising, Martian Child and Star Trek, The Menagerie. http://www.sfsite.com/11b/os260.htm Fri, 16 Nov 2007 11:00:00 GMT Adam McCormick has run away from home. While hiding out at the home of his girlfriend he takes a novel off the shelf to read. It, too, tells the story of a runaway, but a whiny, preppy kid that Adam feels doesn't have it too bad. After all, nobody knows he has run away, and nobody's after him. His only companion is the ghost of Jamie Marks. http://www.sfsite.com/11b/hi260.htm Fri, 16 Nov 2007 11:00:00 GMT It's not difficult to get hold of the short stories of Philip K. Dick, if you're of a mind to do so. However, doing so usually involves unearthing anthologies old and new in which his work has appeared, or going instead to the Complete Works -- four hefty volumes, which allegedly contain a fair amount of filler in between the killers. So it should come as no surprise that a publisher decided to package a selection of Dick's "greatest hits" into a single paperback volume -- especially considering the increasing number of films being made from his work. http://www.sfsite.com/11a/as259.htm Thu, 1 Nov 2007 11:00:00 GMT Since 1977 the former Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine (somewhere along the way they dropped the Isaac) has published something like 3,000 stories. With this many candidates to choose among, Sheila Williams's task in selecting the contents of a retrospective anthology was mainly one of coping with an embarrassment of riches. She came up with a book of seventeen stories, the great majority of which range from excellent to absolutely breathtaking. http://www.sfsite.com/11a/ha259.htm Thu, 1 Nov 2007 11:00:00 GMT Paul Fadhil Abbas Ali is a young writer. His family is Moslem but he sees himself as wholly British (he has an Irish wife), and his novel, The Pied Piper of Hamnet, is conceived as being a light comic fantasy somewhat in the very English tradition of P.G. Wodehouse. Suddenly the nature of the work is transformed. The authorities, in their rigid proto-fascism, are blind to the humour, to the fantasy, to the very fictionality of the work. In their blinkered way they see only a Moslem advocating the assassination of the prime minister. http://www.sfsite.com/11a/dh259.htm Thu, 1 Nov 2007 11:00:00 GMT The story begins when Jake is fourteen, and at first the reader might assume that he's writing of very recent events. Jake reminds the reader repeatedly that the idea of a preserve for dragons is a fairly tense controversy. Some, including in the government, insist that dragons are dangerous, expensive, and should be wiped out. Environmentalists, scientists, and dragon-lovers remind everyone that there are no records of them eating humans, even though they're a hundred feet long, fly, and breathe fire. But then a man is killed in the dragon preserve. http://www.sfsite.com/columns/audio259.htm Thu, 1 Nov 2007 11:00:00 GMT At times it's more convenient to use ears rather than eyes to experience the latest in science fiction and fantasy, Recent audiobook releases include works by Orson Scott Card, Charles de Lint, Ursula K. LeGuin, Ray Bradbury, Terry Pratchett, Joe Hill, Neil Gaiman, Max Brooks, and Kevin J. Anderson. Forthcoming titles include works from Terry Brooks, George R.R. Martin, Terry Goodkind, and Warren Ellis. http://www.sfsite.com/lists/yb-fh-title01.htm Thu, 1 Nov 2007 11:00:00 GMT In 1988, Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling collected together what they thought was the best short fantasy and horror from the previous year. They went through as many of the magazines, collections and anthologies published in 1987 that they could find and chose those stories which they decided best represented the fantasy and horror field. Jim Frenkel arranged for its publication by St. Martins's Press and it has been produced every year since then. In 2003, Kelly Link and Gavin J. Grant took over from Terri Windling as the fantasy editor. http://www.sfsite.com/11a/ec259.htm Thu, 1 Nov 2007 11:00:00 GMT The story splits into three strands, beginning with a trek across the urban wastelands of post-apocalyptic America, continuing adventures of Knight of the Word Logan Tom, and a ragtag young band of survivors named the Ghosts. Running parallel and equal to this is the tale of another Knight of the Word, Angel Perez, and her mission to help the Elves of Cintra. The final element of this mixed bag concerns the emergence of Hawk, a young man from the previous novel, as a major power and living key to the rebirth of civilisation. http://www.sfsite.com/columns/jeff259.htm Thu, 1 Nov 2007 11:00:00 GMT It is that time in the Smaragdine four-year cycle to commemorate their great military leader Saloment III so things are quiet. During this hiatus, Jeff takes some time to interview Peter Crowther of PS Publishing on what he has in store for us and how his publishing house has evolved. http://www.sfsite.com/11a/be259.htm Thu, 1 Nov 2007 11:00:00 GMT When Marla Mason, sorcerer overlord/guardian of the East Coast city of Felport, travels to San Francisco in search of a magical artifact, she expects it to be a quick trip. Get in, get what she needs, get out with a minimum of threats, intimidation, violence, and/or magical persuasion. She certainly doesn't expect to get involved in some major trouble involving San Francisco's local sorcerers and a mysterious threat picking them off one by one. http://www.sfsite.com/11a/hm259.htm Thu, 1 Nov 2007 11:00:00 GMT In science fiction, one of the most difficult feats to accomplish is a simultaneous appeal to both the romance of the intellect and the romance of the heart. Hard SF writers are all used to invoking a sense of wonder that thrills the imagination, it's what that particular game is all about. Fewer are able to at the same time involve the reader's emotions in a story that evokes the character's personal emotional attractions. http://www.sfsite.com/11a/sp259.htm Thu, 1 Nov 2007 11:00:00 GMT Following on from Jules Verne's Off on a Comet, Hector Servadac, Jr. comes home from France to California to visit his father, with whom he has not been on good terms. Hector Jr. is an art historian. His father is a rich man, and his mother died some decades earlier. He finds that his father has holed up at his ranch in rural California. He is convinced that he is in contact with an intelligent space being, in the form of an asteroid of sorts that is going to collide with the Earth and send part of it on a journey around the Sun. http://www.sfsite.com/books/new259.htm Thu, 1 Nov 2007 11:00:00 GMT This time we're looking at the latest from Terry Pratchett, Paul McAuley, Charlaine Harris, Alan Dean Foster, new YA fiction from George R.R. Martin, some of the annual short fiction anthologies you've been waiting for, plus other new and forthcoming works. http://www.sfsite.com/columns/rick259.htm Thu, 1 Nov 2007 11:00:00 GMT Rick has some thoughts on what he's enjoying on theis year's TV season. He also gives us a list of SF on TV in November. http://www.sfsite.com/11a/ba259.htm Thu, 1 Nov 2007 11:00:00 GMT "My name is Michael, and I am a World of Warcraft addict. I started playing the game in early 2005, a few months after it was officially released to the public. My main characters include a level 70 restoration-specced night elf druid, and a level 70 holy/retribution-specced human paladin. I've played every class and every race, at least for a little while, and my (real life) wife plays the cutest, sweetest, most destructive gnome mage I've ever met." http://www.sfsite.com/rssfeeds01.htm Sat, 1 Jan 2005 11:00:00 GMT After constructing our first RSS feed, it soon became apparent that the size of files could grow quickly. We decided to separate them into smaller ones, breaking them up by month. On this page you will find RSS feed files for all of our content beginning with January 2005.