A Conversation With Kevin J. Anderson
An interview with Kilian Melloy
On winnowing and sorting ideas:
"An idea is just the starting point. "Let's go to Chicago." Then you have to get the map and plan your route, do research on where you want to stay and what you want to do, then you make the actual drive. Okay, maybe I stretched that metaphor a little too much. I find I have lots of smaller ideas, and some big ones, that float around in my head, and they collide, join with each other, and grow into bigger and bigger components of a story. Some of them are interesting characters, some of them are fascinating settings, others are visual scenes that I see like snippets from a movie trailer in my mind."

Schrödinger's Bookshelf
a column by Michael M Jones
Michael is reading short fiction and young adult titles and he has some thoughts. This time, he looks at All Hell Breaking Loose edited by Martin H. Greenberg, Time After Time edited by Denise Little and Crossroads edited by Mercedes Lackey.

The Pillow Friend by Lisa Tuttle
reviewed by Alma A. Hromic
Sometimes books can be deeply unsettling. A book like this one kind of haunts you afterwards, not always in a good way -- it's fantasy in its subject matter but gritty literary realism in so many other ways and occasionally the two rub up against one another in a way that leaves you vaguely upset and ill at ease, questioning the nature of reality and fantasy and the borderline between them, questioning the validity of fantasy and whether it is a good thing at all or just a cauldron of uncontrollable dreams and wish fulfillment which does nobody any good at all.

Pushing Ice by Alastair Reynolds
reviewed by Rich Horton
It opens with a curious prologue set 18,000 years in the future, describing an ambitious plan to celebrate the legendary Benefactor who started humanity on the road toward expansion into the Galaxy. Then we get a flashback to 2057, and the story of this Benefactor, a woman named Bella Lind. Bella is the captain of an ice mining spaceship, the Rockhopper. This ship is suddenly diverted to chase a moon of Saturn, Janus, which has suddenly accelerated and headed out of the Solar System: clearly, it's an alien artifact of some sort. Bella, however, must convince her crew to go along: it's a highly dangerous mission, and their corporate bosses do not inspire confidence.

Firebirds Rising edited by Sharyn November
reviewed by Rodger Turner
These days being a teenager is tough. They have competitive parents telling them what they should do to ensure a good future. They have McJob employers giving them no end of grief over the franchise's rules and regulations. They have peers giving them bad advice for no reason other than an attempt at undermining their status in the local teenage hierarchy. They have their media idols trying to sell them on the latest fashion or tech toy. It seems that almost nobody is on their side and, when there is someone, often it leads to a betrayal to be buddies with someone cooler. It's no wonder adults think teens are rude and inconsiderate. How would you feel if it appeared that everybody was out to get you?

States of Grace by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro
reviewed by Donna McMahon
During the tumult of the Reformation, St. Germain is living in Venice, and trying to keep his European publishing businesses from being closed down by the Inquisition. In these inflammatory times, anyone who writes and publishes intellectual works outside a narrowly prescribed range of religious subjects is open to persecution and St. Germain -- impossibly noble and suave as always -- is trying to protect his authors, even though he himself is in great peril if his nocturnal secret is revealed.

Blade: The Series
a promotion
BLADE: THE SERIES premieres on June 28. Spike TV's two-hour series premiere opens with Blade setting up shop in Detroit, investigating the vampire house of Chthon. Along the way he forms an uneasy alliance with Krista Starr, a former military veteran who becomes entrenched in the world of vampires while investigating the murder of her twin brother.

Enter the contest to visit the set where the series is filmed at http://www.bladetv-contest.com/.

Judas Unchained by Peter F. Hamilton
reviewed by Greg L. Johnson
Readers of Pandora's Star will recall that that novel ended with a doozy of a cliff-hanger ending. Judas Unchained jumps forward from that time, as the leaders of the Commonwealth are attempting to deal with an attack that was far beyond anything they had anticipated. Some suspect treachery, a few individuals have started to believe that the Starflyer is real, and that the Guardians, known for a hundred years as a terrorist organisation, may have been right all along.

Shaman's Crossing by Robin Hobb
reviewed by Donna McMahon
In Gernia, first sons are their fathers' heirs, second sons are soldiers and third sons enter the priesthood. It has always been that way, and it would never occur to Nevare Burvel to question his destiny as the second son of a second son. His father was a hero two decades earlier when the King's Cavalry conquered the nomadic tribes of the grasslands, and now he expects to make his own career on the new frontier -- the mountainous forest lands that will give Gernia access to another coast. Still, he doesn't expect his father to send him for training with an old enemy -- a fierce Kidona warrior.

Red Lightning by John Varley
reviewed by Ernest Lilley
Ray Garcia-Strickland is a pretty typical teenager. Which is to say he's bored, bitching about it, and going no place in particular. The fact that he lives on Mars and his folks pioneered interplanetary travel when they were about his age in Red Thunder only makes things worse. From where he stands, they don't look much like heroes; just a middle aged couple that's gradually growing apart. But when something hits the Earth moving at a considerable fraction of the speed of light, stirring up a tsunami that wipes out the entire East coast, he finds out what heroes really look like.

New Arrivals
compiled by Neil Walsh
Highlights from our most recent crop of new arrivals include the latest from Bruce Sterling, Jeffrey Ford, forthcoming titles from Alan Dean Foster, Greg Keyes, Harry Turtledove, and plenty more.

Babylon 5.1
TV reviews by Rick Norwood
Rick offers his thoughts on what to make of the new Doctor Who.

Old Man's War by John Scalzi
reviewed by Stuart Carter
On his 75th birthday John Perry does two things: he visits his wife's grave, then he enlists in the army. Fortunately for him, this being at some unspecified (but not terribly distant) point in the future, he doesn't have to impose gunpoint democracy and secure oil supplies; rather he gets taken up into earth orbit via a space elevator and shipped off to join the Colonial Defense Forces, fighting and dying to win a place for mankind in a remarkably busy and even more remarkably hostile galaxy.

Arts Unknown: The Life and Art of Lee Brown Coye by Luis Ortiz
reviewed by Georges T. Dodds
This book chronicles the life of Coye, and reproduces several hundred of his works. While Coye largely successfully supported himself (and his family) as an artist of some sort or other, from when he left high school until his death, the coincidence of his early efforts to get established with the onset of the Great Depression and later attempts to get out of advertising with the outbreak of WWII, meant he never got the big break.