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/columns/tangent274.htm Mon, 16 Jun 2008 11:00:00 GMT Dave Truesdale has returned with a new column looking at short fiction. For his first, he takes a look at two collections: The Guild of Xenolinguists by Sheila Finch which collects the bulk of her Lingster stories and Nano Comes To Clifford Falls by Nancy Kress made up of her recent stories, grounded in science or technology and featuring nano-tech along with its effect on society. http://www.sfsite.com/06b/is274.htm Mon, 16 Jun 2008 11:00:00 GMT The book opens with a swordsman walking across the desert, soon to encounter mysterious priests kidnapping people, and caravan guards led by an ogre. Pure sword and sorcery, right? Not at all, as readers of "Womb of Every World," from last year's SFBC anthology Alien Crimes, will immediately realize. That story, moderately revised, represents a bit more than the first third of this novel. http://www.sfsite.com/06b/ew274.htm Mon, 16 Jun 2008 11:00:00 GMT The Lion Hunter picks up just after the events in The Sunbird, in which Telemakos, grandson of Arthur, is introduced, and becomes a victim of international intrigue. Readers unfamiliar with this novel will find expert back story painted in at the start of The Lion Hunter as Telemakos challenges himself to overcome the fears he suffered after being held prisoner, blindfolded and bound, as a result of deadly international politics. http://www.sfsite.com/06b/sr274.htm Mon, 16 Jun 2008 11:00:00 GMT The post-human universe isn't just for grown-ups anymore. In his first novel, Paul Melko brings the classic style of young adult science fiction headlong into a future where the singularity has come and gone, leaving old-fashioned human beings and a new kind of humanity, the pods, reeling and attempting to recover in its wake. It's a fast-moving story full of adventure, angst, and the growing pains of a young being known as Apollo Papadopulos. http://www.sfsite.com/06b/om274.htm Mon, 16 Jun 2008 11:00:00 GMT The action takes place mostly in Angland, on an alternate Earth on the other side of the mirror, where "magik" is a reality, and physics does not permit the development of electrical power. In Angland, DNA spirals to the left, and people travel in steam-buggies and airships. Geography and history are similar to the world we know, but differ at key points. The story centres on two teenage boys, Danny Royce, a disaffected wastrel from our reality, and Garreth Royal, a budding wizard who has just failed to make the grade. http://www.sfsite.com/06b/tm274.htm Mon, 16 Jun 2008 11:00:00 GMT Josette Monier has been living alone, in self-imposed exile for many years, in order to keep her immensely strong psychic abilities under control. To most of her fellow shapeshifters, those known as the Sazi, she's both a legend and a hermit by choice, one of the oldest and most powerful of her kind. Unfortunately, what she's just become is a target. http://www.sfsite.com/06b/ij274.htm Mon, 16 Jun 2008 11:00:00 GMT The new Indiana Jones movie is the best action-adventure film seen in a long time. You would have to go back to the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie for one as good. But it is not as good as Raiders of the Lost Ark, Star Wars, or The Lord of the Rings. For a film to be that good, it has to be a new idea, with new characters. http://www.sfsite.com/06b/pc274.htm Mon, 16 Jun 2008 11:00:00 GMT Andrew Adamson, who helmed this film of the second book in the seven book Narnia series, decided to go all out for big-budget action this time. Maybe the studio pushed him in that direction, but he deserves the credit and blame for turning a human adventure into a special-effects extravaganza. In the middle is an entire battle sequence that isn't in the book and doesn't advance the plot. http://www.sfsite.com/06b/th274.htm Mon, 16 Jun 2008 11:00:00 GMT What pass for horror movies these days are seldom designed to induce fear. Fear, after all, is an unpleasant emotion, though the relief afterwards is pleasant. There are the horror movies where you experience self-righteous satisfaction when women who have sex out of wedlock are killed or when teen-agers who have sex before marriage are killed. And there are the horror movies which produce roller-coaster thrills where each horrible death produces a shriek of laughter. http://www.sfsite.com/06b/gs274.htm Mon, 16 Jun 2008 11:00:00 GMT A few months following the destruction of the infamous Axis Institute, the university for young villains-in-training created by international mad scientist and all-around bad guy Phineas Darkkon. At present, Darkkon is missing, his nefarious right-hand-man Prosper English is sitting in an Australian jail cell, and their unwilling protege fifteen-year-old computer genius Cadel Piggott, has been dumped in yet another foster home. Adding to Cadel's unstable life, he's living in legal limbo, his citizenship as uncertain as his parentage, under the constant shadow of police surveillance. http://www.sfsite.com/06b/di274.htm Mon, 16 Jun 2008 11:00:00 GMT The author's reputation, first and foremost, is as one of today's preeminent "idea men" of SF. His fiction is built around scientific or sociological ideas -- that is to say, on speculation. Particular areas of interest seem to be mathematics, physics, and the workings of the brain (and indeed all of these ideas are often interconnected). He eagerly uses concepts from the cutting edges of these fields, and speculates beyond the cutting edge -- sometimes, as he has admitted, a bit implausibly. http://www.sfsite.com/columns/graphica274.htm Mon, 16 Jun 2008 11:00:00 GMT Regular readers of comics news and reviews already know that Rory Root, the affable, pioneering proprietor of Berkeley, California-based Comic Relief passed away suddenly last month. The scope and breadth of what the store carried, how Rory was an advocate/supporter of lesser-known, or just-starting-out-of-the-gate work, and how well liked he was in the comics community by creators and retailers. Mark London Williams remembers his days growing up in the Berkeley area and how Rory affected his development into the writer he is today. http://www.sfsite.com/06b/yp274.htm Mon, 16 Jun 2008 11:00:00 GMT Meyer Landsman is about as hard-boiled as detectives get. He lives in a cheap flop-house of a hotel, and smokes too much, drinks way too much, and works obsessively -- besides abstractly thinking about suicide, drinking and working are what gets him through his days. He's divorced and estranged from his ex-wife Bina, who is now his superior officer, and he's plagued by family ghosts -- his chess-obsessed suicide of a father, his sister Naomi, a pilot who crashed her Piper Cub into a mountain, the tiny voice of his aborted baby. He's long on bitterness and short on hope, unable to see anything but the bleakest future for himself or his people. Because, unlike your run-of-the-mill depressed and hard-bitten police detective, Landsman is also facing Reversion. http://www.sfsite.com/books/new274.htm Mon, 16 Jun 2008 11:00:00 GMT New books are flooding into the SF Site office almost as quickly as we can unpack 'em. The most recent arrivals include the latest from Kevin J. Anderson, Arthur C. Clarke & Stephen Baxter, F. Paul Wilson, Timothy Zahn, Gregory Frost, Charlaine Harris, Charlie Huston, John C. Wright, L.E. Modesitt, Jr., Mike Resnick, Katharine Kerr, Scott Bakker, Mike Carey, Harry Turtledove, and many, many more. http://www.sfsite.com/columns/audio274.htm Mon, 16 Jun 2008 11:00:00 GMT At times, it's more convenient (and enjoyable) to hear the latest in science fiction and fantasy. Recent audiobook releases include works by Lewis Carroll, Laurell K. Hamilton, Simon R. Green, Kelley Armstrong and Philip K. Dick. http://www.sfsite.com/columns/rick274.htm Mon, 16 Jun 2008 11:00:00 GMT Rick has some thoughts on the first half of Battlestar Galactica Season 4. And he has questions that he hopes the writers will address in the second part of the show's last season. http://www.sfsite.com/06b/si274.htm Mon, 16 Jun 2008 11:00:00 GMT John Stark, besides being a tough and independent mercenary, is a man with a very thin veneer of civilisation overlying an almost animalistic core. In somewhat of a parallel with Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan of the Apes, Stark was raised from infancy by barely-human Mercurian aborigines, and under certain stressful situations, which are not uncommon in his business, he reverts to his origins and lives by his quasi-animalistic instincts. http://www.sfsite.com/06a/mt273.htm Sun, 1 Jun 2008 11:00:00 GMT At its heart is the story of three siblings, two sons and the daughter of the King of Sarl. Sarl is a low-tech civilization, steam power is just recently being put to use, situated on a Shellworld. The Shellworlds are artificial constructs, planet-sized habitats made up of a series of concentric shells, built long ago by a civilization that has since vanished from the galaxy. They are now inhabited by many different species, low-tech societies like the Sarl are watched over by other species to prevent interference in their development. http://www.sfsite.com/06a/sb273.htm Sun, 1 Jun 2008 11:00:00 GMT This is something different. It is not quite fantasy and not quite science fiction. Not quite a quest epic and not quite a character study. But it is, for the most part, a good read. There are pleasures to be found in its pages that comprise the story of Leodora, a shadow puppeteer, and Diverus, a god-touched musician, and their performances across the interlinking, innumerous bridge-cities that stretch across the fathomless oceans of Shadowbridge. http://www.sfsite.com/06a/wr273.htm Sun, 1 Jun 2008 11:00:00 GMT Instead of Zorro-style swordsmen as central protagonists, the author has reverted to the formula that began his success, and dusted down the magic. The result was a small renaissance, rekindling past glories, alongside the best enemy that the author has created in twenty years. These were the Dasati; a wholly militaristic alien society, where casual cruelty is seen as the social norm, and any weakness as an abhorrence to be swiftly and fatally terminated. http://www.sfsite.com/06a/cs273.htm Sun, 1 Jun 2008 11:00:00 GMT Elijah Baley is a regular police detective, content in his work and his life until the day his boss assigns him the most delicate and dangerous case of his career. A Spacer scientist has been murdered by an Earthman, and Baley is responsible for finding the culprit and avoiding increased tension between the City and Spacetown. He has been assigned a partner from Spacetown, R. Daneel Olivaw, a robot designed to exactly mimic human appearance. In Olivaw's case, the appearance he is mimicking is that of the murder victim. http://www.sfsite.com/06a/sw273.htm Sun, 1 Jun 2008 11:00:00 GMT Most people understand sword & sorcery to mean derring-do with pointy weapons, set in a far-away kingdom where there may or may not be involvement with the supernatural and or magic. There is a distinct flavor of the Arabian Nights in most early twentieth century sword and sorcery, probably left over from the largely imaginary "travel" tales of the late 1600s and 1700s. The conflict in sword & sorcery tales is usually personal rather than ideological or political -- even when the enemies are two kingdoms. Most http://www.sfsite.com/06a/pc273.htm Sun, 1 Jun 2008 11:00:00 GMT As pointed out in Jess Nevins' introduction to the volume, urban fantasy -- intended as a type of fiction where cities are the setting and the supporting character of the story -- has a long-established tradition in the literature, can be traced as far back as the Arabian Nights and appears throughout the centuries in Gothic novels, Dickens' London and modern horror and SF fiction. http://www.sfsite.com/columns/graphica273.htm Sun, 1 Jun 2008 11:00:00 GMT On May 8, 1940, The Chicago Daily News published Sterling North's influential condemnation of comic books "A National Disgrace (And a challenge to American Parents)." North calls comics "a poisonous mushroom growth," calling upon parents and educators to "break the 'comics' magazines." And those who don't would be "guilty of criminal negligence." He claims that "the antidote to the 'comic' magazine poison can be found in any library or good bookstore." Rick Klaw notes that in 2008 most libraries and bookstores gladly sell "these lurid publications" and that the line between prose and comics literature has never been closer. http://www.sfsite.com/books/new273.htm Sun, 1 Jun 2008 11:00:00 GMT New books recently arrived in the SF Site office include the latest from Ray Bradbury, John Crowley, Margaret Weis, Jeffrey E. Barlough, limited editions of some classic Tim Powers, an assortment of genre magazines, new and classic titles for younger readers, and much more. http://www.sfsite.com/columns/rick273.htm Sun, 1 Jun 2008 11:00:00 GMT Rick speculates on why shows like Smallville and Battlestar Galactica have such low viewership numbers along with which shows returning later this summer. He also gives us a list of SF on TV in June. http://www.sfsite.com/06a/fs273.htm Sun, 1 Jun 2008 11:00:00 GMT Flora Segunda Fyrdraaca is neither a girly-girl, nor a nerd. She is not an heir-in-disguise, nor does she have some tremendous magical power hidden away inside her, just waiting to be discovered. This isn't that kind of YA fantasy novel. Instead, Flora is the decidedly un-illustrious youngest daughter of a very illustrious family fallen on hard times, just a bit like Califa, the country where they live. http://www.sfsite.com/06a/sg273.htm Sun, 1 Jun 2008 11:00:00 GMT The eponymous hero Severian begins this omnibus edition of Book of the New Sun as an apprentice of the obscure Torturer's Guild in the city of Nessus, and he experiences a revelatory event in the necropolis near the Guild's tower which causes him to begin questioning the established dictums of authority -- both those of his guild and those of the society beyond it. As a result, he later transgresses the rules of the Guild by helping a prisoner to commit suicide and is effectively expelled for it, though he is saved from the ignominy of death at the hands of his fellow guildsmen by the seeming compassion of his old Master. Instead, Severian is sent out into the world beyond Nessus to take up a post as the torturer and executioner of a distant city -- a form of exile that falls just short of excommunication. http://www.sfsite.com/06a/ea273.htm Sun, 1 Jun 2008 11:00:00 GMT After Robert E. Howard, the creator of Conan, died in June 1936, a number of the works he had submitted before his death continued to be published in the pulps, particularly in Weird Tales. However, by 1938 this supply had largely run out, yet the demand for such fare hadn't -- so a number of authors attempted to fill the void, amongst them Henry Kuttner. 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.