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/neil360.htm Mon, 16 Jan 2012 11:00:00 GMT Here we are again, offering you your annual chance to let the world know what you thought was the best of all the speculative reading material you encountered from the past year. If you've been a regular visitor to the SF Site for more than a couple of years, you are quite probably already familiar with this annual event. If you're new to us, all you need to know is that we want to hear what you believe was the very best of what you read from the past year. If you've forgotten what you chose in previous years, you can find them all linked at Best Read of the Year including The Dervish House by Ian McDonald which was the top choice last year. http://www.sfsite.com/01b/pdf360.htm Mon, 16 Jan 2012 11:00:00 GMT The author claims that two possibilities exist for why writers choose to tell single-idea SF: 1) According H.G. Wells, writers should not beleaguer readers with too many strangenesses in one narrative. 2) SF writers are stingy with their ideas. A third reason not mentioned by him may be that writers want to make a clear, philosophical extrapolation of a single idea or theme. If they add too much to the pot, they fear cooking something more like mud than stew. http://www.sfsite.com/01b/az360.htm Mon, 16 Jan 2012 11:00:00 GMT The stories here all qualify as Lovecraftian metafiction, ranging from parody to pastiche to homage. The author adds spice to this stew by calling in elements from authors as disparate as William Faulkner and James Herriot. The most surprising and surprisingly successful combination is the importation of P.G. Wodehouse's air-headed Bertie Wooster and Bertie's "gentleman's gentleman," the unflappable Reginald Jeeves, into the world of Lovecraftian weirdness. http://www.sfsite.com/01b/ab360.htm Mon, 16 Jan 2012 11:00:00 GMT Absorption, the first book in the Ragnarok series, also marks a return to the world of the pilots and their infinite city of Labyrinth in mu-space. That said, one doesn't need to have read any of his other books to enjoy or understand this one. There is a lot going on in these pages, and perhaps too much, but Absorption is more of a setup novel than a plot novel in which he introduces characters and situations, and much more will hopefully be learned in future installments. http://www.sfsite.com/01b/sn360.htm Mon, 16 Jan 2012 11:00:00 GMT In a sequel to Iron Shoes, the story picks up a few years later: Guiare and Imogen have married and have had a child. And her devious fairy father, Mr. Finnegan, has shown up on her doorstep, wanting to get to know his long-lost daughter. Finnegan promises not to harm any of her family -- a promise he cannot break. But Imogen is unsure if her father can still do damage, playing with the wording of the promise. http://www.sfsite.com/01b/ju360.htm Mon, 16 Jan 2012 11:00:00 GMT The thirty-third issue is subtitled Euanthe, as ever after a moon of Jupiter. This issue has five stories, as well as two poems by Allen Ashley on astronomical subjects (Venus and Mercury). The issue opens with "Battlefield of Woe" by Alexander Hawes. http://www.sfsite.com/01b/dm360.htm Mon, 16 Jan 2012 11:00:00 GMT It starts with the manned expedition to the moon, but the real reason for doing so was hidden from the public gaze, wasn't televised and never talked about with the net result that it was considered top secret. The government were instead interested in finding out more of an alien ship that had crash landed on the planet. The story starts in the 60s with the scientists trying to find out what it all meant, and whether they could make any sense of what was buried under there. http://www.sfsite.com/01b/ba360.htm Mon, 16 Jan 2012 11:00:00 GMT First there was the Contagion, a modern-day plague that washed over Gotham City leaving its population decimated. Then came the Cataclysm, a massive earthquake with its center just miles from Gotham's downtown. Costing $100 billion to rebuild the wasted city, it was a price tag the government quickly decided they did not want to pay. Those who wanted out were evacuated but hundreds of thousands stayed, unwilling to leave their homes, or perhaps having nowhere to go. With the bridges to the mainland demolished, the United States government washed its hands of the whole affair. Gotham City was gone, now there is only No Man's Land. http://www.sfsite.com/01b/ka360.htm Mon, 16 Jan 2012 11:00:00 GMT "Kafkaesque" is a word used very often to describe bureaucratic snafus and paradoxes. Even people who have never read a word of Kafka use it to describe their encounter with the Department of Motor Vehicles, or airport security. So pervasive has "Kafkaesque" become that it has nearly lost its link with the works of Franz Kafka. When it comes to trying to summarise this wonderful anthology, there is something of a dilemma. It can be recommended unhesitatingly to anyone who has ever read any Kafka, but what about those for whom Kafkaesque is a noun they use but Kafka is not someone they've read? http://www.sfsite.com/01b/gc360.htm Mon, 16 Jan 2012 11:00:00 GMT This doorstopper of a book seeks to reverse the bog-standard LOTR-style hero quest by presenting the story from the perspective of the bad guys. As we soon learn, the machinations of Morthul, dreaded Charnel King of the Iron Keep, have failed. Centuries of plotting come to nothing, due to a band of so-called heroes sent by good King Dororam. The price paid for thwarting evil, is the cold blooded murder of Princess Amalia, Dororam's only daughter. As winter falls upon the Brimstone Mountains, a grieving Dororam begins to assemble a mighty army, with the intention of finally destroying the great enemy of humanity. http://www.sfsite.com/01b/la360.htm Mon, 16 Jan 2012 11:00:00 GMT This is first adventure of Jennifer Strange, adolescent foundling and indentured servant, who manages the Kazam Mystical Arts Management, a collective of wizards for hire. Also it turns out that Strange is a chosen one, the last of a long line of Dragonslayers, destined to kill the last surviving dragon, thereby opening up the heretofore magically protected Dragonlands to land development. http://www.sfsite.com/01b/cs360.htm Mon, 16 Jan 2012 11:00:00 GMT Marooned in the Slow Zone, the last surviving human population has a clear goal; rebuild their technological civilization in time to protect themselves from the Blight that is surely coming their way. Unfortunately, almost all of them are teenagers or young adults, and they're not sure they believe an official story that includes their parents as the villains who freed the Blight. http://www.sfsite.com/01b/bt360.htm Mon, 16 Jan 2012 11:00:00 GMT Apparently a village located in the south-east of England, Binscombe, is a place where odd things happen all the time, reality is not only what meets the eye and the supernatural and the paranormal are the bread and butter of everyday life. The living center of the village is the Duke of Argyll, the local pub, where, in the tradition of Arthur C. Clarke's White Hart and Pratt and de Camp's Gavagan Bar, things are discussed and revealed, old traditions are kept alive and odd events take place. http://www.sfsite.com/01b/dd360.htm Mon, 16 Jan 2012 11:00:00 GMT Robert Silverberg's science fiction work has won him multiple Hugos and Nebulas. Are these justified? Do they stand the test of time? This is a five-story ebook which puts those questions to the test. All are very different: from culture SF, to classic SF, to contemporary SF, to hip and quirky SF, to a more literary SF. There's something here for every type of SF reader. http://www.sfsite.com/columns/graphica360.htm Mon, 16 Jan 2012 11:00:00 GMT After taking a month sabbatical from reviewing books for this column, Rick Klaw found himself with an abundance of material. In fact so many titles to cover, that they squeezed out his typical Nexus Graphica rantings. He'll be back in 30 with a more traditional piece. http://www.sfsite.com/books/new360.htm Mon, 16 Jan 2012 11:00:00 GMT This time it's a short list, but some of the highlights include the latest works from the likes of Orson Scott Card, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Mike Resnick, and Tad Williams. http://www.sfsite.com/columns/graphica359.htm Tue, 3 Jan 2012 11:00:00 GMT Mark London Williams opines that comic shops can become pillars of their local retailing communities, the way book and record stores are -- or were. But the mix of customers they attract are important for ancillary and neighboring businesses, and vice versa. As we move to increasingly digital means of delivery however, what happens to such public mercantile spaces? On which note, just because something can be delivered digitally, it doesn't mean there's an automatic audience aggregated for it. There's still the necessary "word of mouth," even if those mouths are digital. http://www.sfsite.com/01a/dt359.htm Sun, 1 Jan 2012 11:00:00 GMT Few countries have had as dark a half-century as Argentina. Once one of the ten wealthiest nations on earth, and blessed with outstanding natural resources, Argentina's post-war history became a catalogue of repression, oppression, exploitation and (perhaps worst of all) a pervasive sense that justice was never done. The most intense and damaging period of repression was the so called processo, which introduced "disappeared" as a noun to the lexicon. We meet the narrator, Robert Cavenaugh, who works for a fictional American corporation whose Buenos Aires office was, it turns out, complicit in all this. http://www.sfsite.com/01a/lu359.htm Sun, 1 Jan 2012 11:00:00 GMT Lucy Sussex is one of the best writers of fantasy and science fiction to emerge from Australia over the last 25 years or so, and one of the least well known outside that country. She has a respectable shelf full of Australian Awards, but has been largely ignored by the genre's international awards. She does not, apparently, have a regular publisher outside Australia. Paul is confident that those of you who do pick up the book and read it will wonder why. http://www.sfsite.com/01a/is359.htm Sun, 1 Jan 2012 11:00:00 GMT A widowed woman of the early 1900s tries to restore the family racing horse ranch to its former glory. Her husband had made some poor choices, which his mother and wife are now paying for. Now they either have to start selling horses or pin their hopes to Blue Streak, the horse who stands the best chance of winning the ranch some money. Enter a horse she just bought, sight unseen. Paddy, the ranch's best trainer, tells Imogen it's sick and he doesn't know what to do. Imogen knows immediately. The horse is a fairy trapped in the horse form. http://www.sfsite.com/01a/izo359.htm Sun, 1 Jan 2012 11:00:00 GMT There have been occasions when a new writer with a singular new style and vision appears whose fiction seems destined to have lasting impact on the field. Jason Sanford is one such a new writer. He writes with a confidence and skill that makes it difficult to believe that he burst onto the scene only in the past few years. The November-December issue of Interzone is a special Jason Sanford issue. http://www.sfsite.com/01a/izn359.htm Sun, 1 Jan 2012 11:00:00 GMT This issue features a celebration of 25 years of Nick Lowe's "Mutant Popcorn" film reviews that have so often been far superior to the work he is writing about, along with five well-written and imaginatively exotic science fiction stories by burgeoning UK writers that seem a bit too alike in their enigmatic settings and war-torn dystopian pessimism. http://www.sfsite.com/01a/ft359.htm Sun, 1 Jan 2012 11:00:00 GMT For readers who enjoy reading steampunk stories, the ones in this latest issue runs along similar lines except David B. Riley's chosen selection of stories are also featured in the Wild West of old. The caption on the front of the magazine, "Where science fiction meets the Wild West," is very apt as it shows what would happen if the technology of today was available to the few over a hundred years ago. http://www.sfsite.com/01a/sa359.htm Sun, 1 Jan 2012 11:00:00 GMT Ten thousand years ago, the Atoners visited our planet. Rather than just observe our fledgling species, the Atoners meddled. In a grand experiment of their own devising, the Atoners altered the DNA of homo sapiens, while abducting a number of unaltered humans and depositing them on seven different planets. Were they just curious, or deliberately mean? Maybe they interfered with humanity the way humans sometimes interfere with ant colonies, or bee hives. No one knows for sure, but what they did irrevocably altered the course of our species forever. Now the Atoners are back, and according to their advertisement on the internet, they wish to atone for what they did. http://www.sfsite.com/01a/pl359.htm Sun, 1 Jan 2012 11:00:00 GMT Merritt Abraham graduated from college but was too poor to pursue a higher degree in archeology (rather, polypolisology -- the study of many cities) as she wanted. Taking a job in a museum, she marks time until her boss learns of her true desire and helps her out. Merritt attends graduate school and falls in love with her offbeat professor, Scoria. They join an expedition team on a journey to Vayavirunga, the Jungle blocks of the Linear City. http://www.sfsite.com/01a/fm359.htm Sun, 1 Jan 2012 11:00:00 GMT Sophie's mother is dropping her off at the Oak Cottage in Louisiana with her aunt and grandmother -- people Sophie doesn't particularly enjoy -- so that the mother is freed to pursue her accounting degree since the father has left the family. Sophie, on the cusp of becoming a woman, doesn't feel like she has any power over her life, and these women don't help. Behind the Oak Cottage is a maze constructed out of tall shrubs. It is there that Sophie is first haunted by the Creature who taunts Sophie when she gets lost in the maze. http://www.sfsite.com/01a/fe359.htm Sun, 1 Jan 2012 11:00:00 GMT In this second novel in the series, the Vikings are intent on getting a French Count's sister, they want to take her and, in return, they will not slaughter the people. This, in turn, proves to be a no win situation for the count as he can either let them take her and protect his people, or face the Vikings and the wrath of his own people. As he is next in line to be the ruler of the Franks, he has to let his fate take its course. http://www.sfsite.com/columns/derek359.htm Sun, 1 Jan 2012 11:00:00 GMT As we begin 2012, Derek is looking at upcoming science fiction releases and, as usual, finds himself indifferent to most of the proposed offerings. Granted, 2011 wasn't the complete disaster he anticipated -- despite the usual dogs and high-profile disappointments, a few modestly entertaining efforts, surprise hits and one or two gems played at his local multiplex and the nearest arthouse -- but for the most part he viewed much of his film-going experience with a mixture of apprehension and dread... and, sadly, he feels the same way whenever he thinks of the genre movies opening next year. http://www.sfsite.com/books/new359.htm Sun, 1 Jan 2012 11:00:00 GMT The new year brings a fresh look at new works from such authors as Paul McAuley, Tim Powers, Karl Schroeder, Robin Hobb, Brian Herbert & Kevin J. Anderson, Ari Marmell, and many others. http://www.sfsite.com/columns/rick359.htm Sun, 1 Jan 2012 11:00:00 GMT The big, blockbuster science fiction films of the Christmas season aren't science fiction at all. Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol and The Adventures of Tin Tin have the splashy special effects that suggest sf, without any sf story elements. They also lack characters you care about and interesting ideas. They are entertaining. Rick also tells us what's SF on TV in January. http://www.sfsite.com/01a/st359.htm Sun, 1 Jan 2012 11:00:00 GMT This is an updated version of the ground-breaking 1978 book How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way by comics writer Stan Lee and artist John Buscema, although much of the material is new. It includes work by 60s/70s artists such as Jack Kirby, John Romita, Sr., Neal Adams and Gil Kane, along with much more recent work by artists apparently associated with "contributing writer" Dave Campiti. Both volumes seek to demonstrate how to draw comic books in the super-hero and related genres. 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.