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The Afterlife by Gary Soto
reviewed by Trent Walters
Chuy is an average kid -- average-looking and average at athletics -- from the poorer district of L.A. He plays basketball but
only plays when their team is way ahead or way behind. We meet him in the restroom of Club Estrella, spiffing up for his
date. Chuy tells a stranger in yellow shoes that Chuy likes the shoes. The guy doesn't much care for the remark. So he stabs
Chuy, and Chuy dies. Chuy is now a ghost slowly disappearing and is tossed by the wind.
The Changers by Ezra Clayton Daniels
reviewed by Cindy Lynn Speer
Bisso and Geaza are two young men sent three million years back into the past -- to our present -- in order to become a catalyst in the
evolutionary chain of events. In this future, humans have attained all possible things, they have evolved as far as they can go and
they want more, they feel that they can become more. They are living quiet, if boring, lives, not knowing if
they've succeeded or failed, until a strange looking creature finds them.
Jeremiah
a give-away contest
Set in the future, the series focuses on Jeremiah who must navigate his way through a world populated by the survivors of a
deadly epidemic that spared only those who had not yet reached puberty. Now those same survivors must find their way in a
decadent civilization and attempt to create a new world order of hope.
Read the contents, answer the questions, win a DVD. Easy, eh?
New Arrivals
compiled by Neil Walsh
2004 is here at last, and with it come new books from Sarah Zettel, Guy Kay, Lucius Shepard, Richard Morgan, Steve Alten, and many more.
The Monsters of Morley Manor by Bruce Coville
reviewed by Rich Horton
Anthony is a sixth-grader living in Owl's Roost, Nebraska, with his florist parents and his annoying but lovable younger sister Sarah.
While his parents are out of town and his Gramma is staying with them, he and his sister visit an estate sale at the spooky Morley
Manor. Old Man Morley has just died, but Sarah encounters a strange man looking much like him, who shows her a curious and intriguing
box. Sarah convinces Anthony to buy the box. When they get home, he opens it and finds 5 curious figurines: a dinosaur-headed man,
a hunchback, a dog-faced man, a vampire woman, and a snake-haired woman.
The Return of the King
a movie review by Rick Norwood
Good beyond hope!
The third film in the trilogy takes even more liberties with Tolkien than the second did, but all in the service of a great cinematic
experience. Taken as a whole, the three films are even better than other high points of modern cinema, Star Wars
and Indiana Jones, and will be remembered as long and as fondly as Gone With the Wind and The Wizard of Oz.
Babylon 5.1
TV reviews by Rick Norwood
It is the end of the 2003 and Rick offers us his choices for the best of the year in films, televison, DVDs, books, comics and video games.
Last July, he listed which films would be hits and which would be busts. Have a look and see how his predictions went.
Paycheck
a movie review by Rick Norwood
Great directors pay careful attention to the script: James Cameron, Peter Jackson, Steven Spielberg. Their movies make lots
and lots of money. Wouldn't you think that would motivate lesser directors to pay attention to the script? Why don't John Woo
and Richard Donner buy good scripts?
Peter Pan
a movie review by Rick Norwood
It is impossible to film Peter Pan well. Like Tom Sawyer, the book is so politically incorrect
that anyone who dared make a film true to the book would be tarred and feathered and run out of town on a rail. And so, in
this Peter Pan, in the interests of political correctness, Peter acknowledges from the first that girls are smarter
and stronger than boys, all Native Americans possess wisdom greater than any white man, and the many things we call love...
The Far Side of the Stars by David Drake
reviewed by Peter D. Tillman
This is the third in the author's RCN series, light space opera books starring Lt. Daniel Leary, a
young starship captain in the Republic of Cinnabar Navy, and his faithful and deadly Signal Officer Adele Mundy.
The RCN series is his SF tribute to Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin Master & Commander series -- itself a
knockoff of Forester's Hornblower stories.
Conqueror's Moon by Julian May
reviewed by Cindy Lynn Speer
When we first meet him, he calls himself by his given name, Deveron Austrey, but soon he will tell us how he earned another name, and
a title. When we first speak to him, he is an old man, bored, realizing that his exile from his homeland will soon be ended by an
assassin sent to make sure his blood is what is spilled, not the royal secrets to which he is witness. So, he has
decided to take another option. He has decided to write about all he knows, beginning with Prince Heritor Conrig Wincantor
and his desire to re-conquer the four island provinces once ruled by his own line. Conrig is willing to do anything to reach this
goal.
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Greetings from Lake Wu by Jay Lake
reviewed by Sherwood Smith
The danger with many collections is that, when one spends so much time exclusively with one author, one becomes aware of similar themes,
frequently used tropes, sometimes obviously favorite plot devices that get repeated.
Even if one is fond of the author's work, sometimes collections can be a little like eating one's way through a box of the
same kind of candy. The breadth of his interests and his authorial skill avoids this pitfall, even for the reviewer
who rereads the entire collection in a couple of sittings.
Open Space edited by Claude Lalumière
reviewed by Steven H Silver
Canada is a vast land, comprised of ten provinces and three territories and covering nearly 10 million square kilometers,
it is the second largest nation on Earth. It would be silly to assume that Canadian science fiction was any more homogenous
than the science fiction of its southern neighbor. In this anthology, the editor
has selected twenty-one Canadian science fiction authors and allowed them to demonstrate the breadth of Canadian science fiction.
Stargate SG-1
a give-away contest
The Stargate is a round portal that can instantaneously transport an object from one point in space to another by generating
an artificial wormhole. A wormhole is created between any two Stargates when one Stargate dials the address of another
Stargate. A Stargate uses 6 of 38 symbols, representing star constellations, to locate another Stargate and then uses a
final 7th symbol, unique to each Stargate, as its point of origin.
Read the contents, answer the questions, win a DVD. Easy, eh?
Cigar-Box Faust, and Other Miniatures by Michael Swanwick
reviewed by Greg L. Johnson
Art for art's sake? There would seem to be few other explanations for the existence of this collection.
In an age of multi-volume epics, even the short novel is met with a bit of reluctance on the part of a publisher. A
volume of short-short stories, most no more than a few hundred words long, just doesn't have any slot in the current
marketplace. All the better for SF readers, then, that this collection of stories is a treasure.
SF Site News
compiled by Steven H Silver
Every day, items of interest to you arrive in our email. Our bi-monthly format doesn't lend itself to daily updates.
However, this is a small inconvenience to our Contributing Editor Steven H Silver. His column
will fill you in on recent news in science fiction. We'll be updating the page as he sends in new items.
Dark Matter: Reading the Bones edited by Sheree R. Thomas
reviewed by Steven H Silver
In 2000, the editor did a volume of short stories, both original and reprint, of speculative fiction written by black authors.
To round out the anthology, she included several essays which discussed the role of African Americans in science fiction and the
importance for blacks to read within the genre. Here, she presents another collection of stories
using the same format.
Midnight Harvest by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro
reviewed by Cindy Lynn Speer
Ferenc Ragoczy, le Comte de Saint-Germain, knows that the increasing unrest in Spain may well force him to close his household and
leave. This is not something he hasn't done many times before. But this time, he is unwilling to allow the airplane manufacturing plant
he worked so hard to build to fall into the hands of the government. It will surely use the planes in war against its own
people. His loud refusal will make one official send an assassin to track him down, even after he flees Spain with his faithful
manservant Rogerio by his side.
A Place So Foreign by Cory Doctorow
reviewed by Peter D. Tillman
This is the author's first collection, and it's a nice one.
You can easily judge this for yourself, as he's put up six of the nine stories in the book for free download, along
with Bruce Sterling's perceptive introduction.
Best in Show edited by Fred Patten
reviewed by Hank Luttrell
When furry fandom got started in the early 80s, it was focused almost entirely in comic books, such as Omaha the
Cat Dancer and the small press comic book explosion that started with Teenage Mutant Nina Turtles. There were also
anthropomorphic fanzines and amateur press associations. The editor points out that, in addition to the comic
book stories, there have also been many text short stories published, many of high quality, and the purpose of this book is
to present those stories in an accessible format, so they can be read and preserved outside of the relentlessly ephemeral
environment of small circulation amateur magazines and internet websites.
Nobody Gets the Girl by James Maxey
reviewed by Cindy Lynn Speer
Richard Rogers was a person with a very normal life. He had a clean-freak wife, he would go to open mic nights and use
his comedic talents to poke fun at current events. True, the world was going a bit mad around him, but he was going along
with it. Until one day, he wakes up to find his house is furnished completely different and he's sharing his bed, not
with his wife, but with strangers. It doesn't bother the strangers. They can't see him.
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