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/best10.htm Tue, 16 Mar 2010 11:00:00 GMT Here we are at the SF Site's 13th annual Editors' Choice Best Books of the Year -- our official Best Reading recommendations from everything we read in 2009. As our stable of editors, reviewers, columnists, interviewers, and other contributors continues to grow, our choice of reading material likewise continues to expand. This year it seemed more than ever that there was very little overlap in our reading selections, so the results of our Best of the Year list are even closer than ever. http://www.sfsite.com/03b/ol316.htm Tue, 16 Mar 2010 11:00:00 GMT In this sequel to Acacia, Corinn has gained the throne and become Queen, and she has plans to restore and expand Acacia's power. As her siblings become pawns in her schemes, two problems loom. One, Corinn has come in to possession of a magic artifact that grants her great power, but she doesn't know how it works or what the price for using it might be. Second, by sending her brother Dariel as an emissary to the Other Lands, she has helped to trigger events that will lead to the most horrific invasion Acacia has ever seen. http://www.sfsite.com/03b/gs316.htm Tue, 16 Mar 2010 11:00:00 GMT Brandon Sanderson, has reinvigorated the Wheel of Time with a renewed sense of momentum. The last battle between main character Rand al'Thor and the Dark One is finally imminent. Darkness covers the land and the final seals are breaking on the Dark One's prison. Evil is becoming more manifest as spring blooms fail and food inexplicably spoils, throwing kingdoms into famine and chaos. http://www.sfsite.com/03b/ma316.htm Tue, 16 Mar 2010 11:00:00 GMT Thre is an undercurrent of SF runninng through this new collection of essays. Very few of them directly address genre, though the collection opens with him trying and failing to launch a comics fan group when he was a child, but fantasy and science fiction provide images and analogies right the way through. http://www.sfsite.com/03b/se316.htm Tue, 16 Mar 2010 11:00:00 GMT This is an extremely intricate novel and tells a complex tale set in a desert society that is presided over by a king, yet ruled by Desert Lords and the mysterious ha'rethe told through two alternating storylines. The first is the story of Idisio, a common street thief who accidently picks the pocket of Cadaf Scratha, a desert lord, and ends up embroiled in the political machinations of the king and the desert families. The second is the story of Lady Alyea, one-time lover and trusted friend and advisor to the king, who is asked to travel deep into the desert to preside over the lands of Cadaf Scratha while he completes a mission for the king. http://www.sfsite.com/columns/best10b.htm Tue, 16 Mar 2010 11:00:00 GMT For more than a decade now, SF Site has been annually soliciting you, our readers, to vote for your favourite books of the past year. Over the past couple of months, we've been receiving your input on the best of 2009 with interest, and now we're ready to present the results. What follows is the best books of 2009 as chosen by the SF Site readers. http://www.sfsite.com/03b/tr316.htm Tue, 16 Mar 2010 11:00:00 GMT John is always anxious about reading short story collections as they often leave me unsatisfied and unhappy like a carbohydrate-heavy buffet breakfast. This was not the case here. The editor has managed to put together a anthology in which every single story was innovative, well-crafted and unique while still touching on the theme. http://www.sfsite.com/03b/an316.htm Tue, 16 Mar 2010 11:00:00 GMT Eve Levine is probably a poor choice for an angel. She's a half-demon, a dark witch, and something of a rebel. The fates need her for her underworld contacts and her ability to deal dirty to get the job done, then reprimand her for using those same underworld contacts and dirty methods. She gets sick of this, and sets about to get herself fired. http://www.sfsite.com/03b/dj316.htm Tue, 16 Mar 2010 11:00:00 GMT In this modern gothic tale of love, lust, betrayal and murder, Niall Casey, a rather ne'er-do-well mail clerk and wannabe graphic artist, comes across the diary of Fiona Walsh, one of three sisters from Castletownbere, Ireland. Fiona was found dead with one of her sisters, Roisin, and their Aunt Moira Hagarty in a house in Dublin. The diary describes the last days of Fiona's life and the twisted tale of how Jim Quick, a traveling seanachai (storyteller) came to Castletownbere and changed the lives of four women. http://www.sfsite.com/columns/steven316.htm Tue, 16 Mar 2010 11:00:00 GMT Science fiction fans have always had a respect and understanding for the history of the genre. Unfortunately, science fiction has achieved such an age that each year sees our ranks diminished. Deaths in 2009 included Philip Jose Farmer, J.G. Ballard, Tom Deitz, David Eddings, Robert A. Collins, Charles N. Brown, Phyllis Gotlieb, Donald M. Grant, Mark Owings, Louise Cooper and Robert Holdstock. http://www.sfsite.com/03b/mm316.htm Tue, 16 Mar 2010 11:00:00 GMT Many science fiction novels ask, "What is the next big thing?" This is hardly a surprising trend. Within our own lifetimes, we have seen a succession of these next big things. It's a theme as old as the genre itself. This novel instead concerns two other, perhaps more interesting questions: "What does it mean to be the next big thing?" and "What happens after the next big thing?" http://www.sfsite.com/lists/greg2009.htm Tue, 16 Mar 2010 11:00:00 GMT If you'd have talked to Greg in the middle of the year, say August or so, you might have heard him bemoan the state of the year thus far in science fiction, few of the books he'd read by that time had struck him as worthy of inclusion on a best of the year list. But that quickly turned around. http://www.sfsite.com/03b/fv316.htm Tue, 16 Mar 2010 11:00:00 GMT Zombies and Vampires are real. There's a government department responsible for dealing with the problem in the USA. We are introduced to the founder of the organization who is about to be killed. http://www.sfsite.com/03b/sk316.htm Tue, 16 Mar 2010 11:00:00 GMT Ayla and Shannon, a lesbian couple, have just moved back into "the city." (We never really know where we are, though toward the end, brief mentions of Yorkshire hint at England.) Ayla is a werewolf; the stresses in her family over her gender choice, and her place in the Pack, had driven her out for eight years. Her partner is a human woman, a PI named Shannon. http://www.sfsite.com/columns/booknews316.htm Tue, 16 Mar 2010 11:00:00 GMT Patricia Briggs talks about coyotes, alpha werewolves and telling whoppers in her latest Mercy Thompson story, Silver Borne; and get ready for flesh-rending gore as editor Christopher Golden and authors Tad Williams and Tim Lebbon take on the scariest monster on the block in Zombie: An Anthology of the Undead. http://www.sfsite.com/columns/graphica316.htm Tue, 16 Mar 2010 11:00:00 GMT So last month, Mark London Williams wrote of his hurlyburly week where comics seemed to be bursting out of the confines of their panels, into what is commonly held to be the "real" world. This started with his mother taking a last-minute trip down to L.A., to catch the R. Crumb Genesis exhibit at the Armand Hammer museum. But then no sooner does he get home to read the day's news than he sees comics again, bursting their bonds (bounds?) to appear as part of the "real" world conversation, the warp and woof of non-comics things. http://www.sfsite.com/columns/rick316.htm Tue, 16 Mar 2010 11:00:00 GMT FlashForward and V will return sooner than expected. Clips from old episodes of FlashForward will air March 16, with new episodes March 18 and 25. Clips from old episodes of V will air March 23, with a new episode March 30. ABC is heavily promoting both shows, and promising to reveal lots of secrets. http://www.sfsite.com/sd316.htm Tue, 16 Mar 2010 11:00:00 GMT The brain behind the book is Paul Parsons, a science writer with a PhD in cosmology, years of popular science writing under his belt, and an unabashed love for all things Doctor Who. Parsons begins right off by telling us that he intends his guide to be "a gathering of amazing possibilities" rather than an exercise in scientific pedantry -- all the better to celebrate one of the most unabashedly fun science fiction shows around. http://www.sfsite.com/columns/best10b.htm Mon, 1 Mar 2010 11:00:00 GMT For more than a decade now, SF Site has been annually soliciting you, our readers, to vote for your favourite books of the past year. Over the past couple of months, we've been receiving your input on the best of 2009 with interest, and now we're ready to present the results. What follows is the best books of 2009 as chosen by the SF Site readers. http://www.sfsite.com/03a/gs315.htm Mon, 1 Mar 2010 11:00:00 GMT Greater Brazil, in this future, controls most or all of the Americas, and it is the leading force in the Three Powers Alliance, a union of convenience of the three major Earth powers in the war to subdue the Outer Planets. Earth politics is dominated by flavors of radical Greenness, a response to the near destruction of Earth due to climate change. The primary technological effort on Earth is to restore the planet to something like its pristine, prehuman, condition. http://www.sfsite.com/lists/greg2009.htm Mon, 1 Mar 2010 11:00:00 GMT If you'd have talked to Greg in the middle of the year, say August or so, you might have heard him bemoan the state of the year thus far in science fiction, few of the books he'd read by that time had struck him as worthy of inclusion on a best of the year list. But that quickly turned around. http://www.sfsite.com/03a/co315.htm Mon, 1 Mar 2010 11:00:00 GMT Meet Corvis Rebaine, Terror of the East and the most feared man in all of Imphallion. After taking the city of Denathere and digging up something from far below the meeting hall, Corvis mysteriously disappears abandoning his army, his campaign and his chance at ruling all Imphallion. Flash forward the clock twenty years... http://www.sfsite.com/03a/sh315.htm Mon, 1 Mar 2010 11:00:00 GMT The setting is a devastated urban wasteland on a near future Earth, where most of the population have vanished. The disappeared include all who were adult at the time of the cataclysmic event referred to simply as the Change. The world's children are either living wild, or being farmed in huge dormitories, where on their Sad Birthday, aged 14, they are removed to the Meat Factory. http://www.sfsite.com/03a/rt315.htm Mon, 1 Mar 2010 11:00:00 GMT We return to the adventures of Rizla and that paragon of perfection, Hugo Rune. The story begins with young Rizla awakening to discover that not only has the past been changed by evil forces and the Nazis have won the war, but he is also now expected to get a job. In his attempt to avoid the latter, he is captured by the former. http://www.sfsite.com/03a/we315.htm Mon, 1 Mar 2010 11:00:00 GMT Widely famous as a SF writer, Ray Bradbury is an eclectic author who in the course of his long career has been dealing with various fiction genres, including mystery. Bookended by the short, previously unpublished and rather unremarkable title story, Where Everything Ends, the present volume collects Bradbury's three mystery novels in a hefty volume. http://www.sfsite.com/03a/ad315.htm Mon, 1 Mar 2010 11:00:00 GMT Indiana Jones has faced Nazis, Communists, Knights, the Holy Grail, Noah's Ark and even found the city of Atlantis in his myriad screen and Expanded Universe exploits. So, keeping up with current popularity, why not throw some zombis into the mix? That's what we find in the first novel adventure of everyone's favorite globe-trotting archaeologist to see print since Max McCoy's Indiana Jones and the Secret of the Sphinx back in 1999 from Bantam. http://www.sfsite.com/03a/mc315.htm Mon, 1 Mar 2010 11:00:00 GMT This isn't a novel so much as it is a series of poems and vignettes that that run together, with little continuity between the characters except at the very end, when the war starts on Earth, and several characters are brought back to react to it. This book doesn't succeed because of its plot or characters. It achieves greatness through its language and its lyrical beauty. http://www.sfsite.com/03a/da315.htm Mon, 1 Mar 2010 11:00:00 GMT GraphicAudio continues their "Movie in Your Mind" production of R.A. Salvatore's Demon Wars Saga with book three of the seven-book series. I haven't decided yet if I'm fond of the way the book is divided into three parts. On the one hand, this approach offers the book in smaller, digestible audiobook chunks. But on the other hand, the producer really knows where to divide the books to create massive cliffhangers between the sections, and this one ends with the listener craving to know what happens next. http://www.sfsite.com/03a/ga315.htm Mon, 1 Mar 2010 11:00:00 GMT Science fiction writers have used historical characters before, everyone from Jesus Christ to Richard Nixon has had their life, or part of it, used as the basis for a science fiction or fantasy story. But using a standard science fiction plot device like time travel as a means to enhance and expand upon what is at its core a serious biographical look at the life of one of the most important figures in the history of science is a bit out of the ordinary. The world of literature has long been home to historical fictions and biographical novels, time to make room for biographical science fiction. http://www.sfsite.com/03a/cu315.htm Mon, 1 Mar 2010 11:00:00 GMT For the last 12 days Nick has: 1) thought about the state of his life, 2) made lists, 3) gotten slapped. That last item has caused him to decide that he has been cursed by some malevolent entity. His best friend Cicely received her own curse. She woke up with a tennis ball in her hand and absolute certainty that if she ever let go, the world would end. http://www.sfsite.com/03a/ur315.htm Mon, 1 Mar 2010 11:00:00 GMT Under the rose -- sub rosa -- has long been associated with secrecy. It is particularly related to the confidentiality of the confessional. None of the 27 stories gathered in this anthology is confessional in mode or concerns the passing on of secrets, however; this is not by any stretch of the imagination a theme anthology. The secrecy, then, would seem to lie in the existence of the anthology itself. http://www.sfsite.com/columns/graphica315.htm Mon, 1 Mar 2010 11:00:00 GMT This month marks the fifteenth anniversary of Weird Business. Co-edited by Rick Klaw and Joe R. Lansdale, the massive 420 page hardcover anthology contained 23 stories by 56 different creators including some of the biggest names in the sf/f/h field including Robert Bloch, Poppy Z. Brite, Nancy Collins, Charles de Lint, Michael Moorcock, Norman Partridge, Howard Waldrop, F. Paul Wilson, and Roger Zelazny. Rick decided to use this opportunity to check out what happened to some of the then-lesser known contributors. http://www.sfsite.com/books/new315.htm Mon, 1 Mar 2010 11:00:00 GMT Robin Hobb, Charlaine Harris, Robert Conroy, Elizabeth Bear, Stephen Hunt, Robert V.S. Redick, Kay Kenyon, and many others are among the authors bringing us new works this time out. http://www.sfsite.com/columns/audio315.htm Mon, 1 Mar 2010 11:00:00 GMT Recent audiobook releases received by SF Site include works by Kelley Armstrong, Laura Anne Gilman, R.A. Salvatore, Ursula K. Le Guin, Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter. At times it's more convenient (and enjoyable) to hear the latest in science fiction and fantasy. http://www.sfsite.com/columns/rick315.htm Mon, 1 Mar 2010 11:00:00 GMT When Lost first aired, Rick watched a few episodes, but it did not hold his interest. There were too many flashbacks, vignettes about the characters, with no sf content. But he did watch each season finale and each season premiere, and after they announced that the current season, Season Six, would be the last, he watched all of Season Five. Now Rick is hooked. http://www.sfsite.com/03a/ht315.htm Mon, 1 Mar 2010 11:00:00 GMT Yeine Darr, our heroine and narrator, is the mixed-race chieftain of her homeland in the north. After her mother dies unexpectedly, Yeine is summoned to the imperial capital by her grandfather Dekarta, the king of the Arameri Empire which rules the eponymous hundred thousand kingdoms of the known world. Once there, she is shocked to discover that she has been named as heir to the throne, along with two manipulative cousins who are none too happy about a barbarian woman competing for the throne of the world. 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.