Death Draws Five by John J. Miller
reviewed by Nathan Brazil
It was a world where an alien virus had been deliberately released in Earth's atmosphere, with the intention of testing its ability to turn ordinary people into super-powered soldiers. It killed ninety percent of those it affected, usually in horrific ways. The unfortunates were said to have drawn the Black Queen. A further nine percent of victims found their bodies or minds cruelly twisted. The world called them Jokers. The remaining one percent gained special abilities, ranging as far and wide as anything ever imagineered in comic books. They were the Aces.

Spider-Man III,
Shrek the Third
and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
movie reviews by Rick Norwood
The three summer blockbuster threequels are not as bad as the reviewers would have you believe. They are, to praise them with faint damns, the best genre films so far in 2007. So, three stars each for Spider-man 3, Shrek the Third, and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. The bad news is that none of these is as good as the second film in the series, which in turn was not as good as the first. To find a film trilogy that actually improved in the third film, you need to go back to The Return of the King, and before that to The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.

Fantastic Four: The Rise of the Silver Surfer
a movie review by Rick Norwood
Fantastic Four: The Rise of the Silver Surfer is a fun film. It isn't a great film -- it doesn't pretend to be. Unlike some Summer films, it does not try too hard and wind up deeply flawed. Instead, it aims at the same brand of lighthearted entertainment found in the Jack Kirby and Stan Lee comic books, and hits the mark.

The Bonehunters by Steven Erikson
reviewed by Neil Walsh
In this sixth volume of Tales of the Malazan Book of the Fallen, the events of the Malazan campaigns on Genabackis and Seven Cities, the Tiste Edur conquest of the Letherii Empire, the machinations of the Malazan Empress, her allies and enemies, assassins and wizards, soldiers and priests, gods and ascendants, foundlings, slaves, refugees -- almost everyone we've met so far and everything that has happened is pulled together in this book. You won't find answers to all your questions, but you will be left with a sense that all these events we've been treated to thus far are not going to pass by without an even more profound impact on the world than we had already anticipated.

Feeling Very Strange edited by James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel
reviewed by David Soyka
This is the second "please don't call us science fiction or fantasy" anthology of the summer. Unlike the "new wave fabulists" in Paraspheres, this collection is more firmly rooted in the genre; the editors are well-recognized SF&F authors in their own right, as are most of the anthologized writers. Moreover, the subtitle employs a term originated by Bruce Sterling back in 1989. This is "The Slipstream Anthology," though the stylistic variations among the selections don't help to clarify exactly what slipstream is. The editors themselves note that they weren't sure "there was such a thing as slipstream."

The Ocean and All Its Devices by William Browning Spencer
reviewed by Mario Guslandi
More than ten years after his first collection, the critically acclaimed The Return of Count Electric, William Browning Spencer returns, much to his fans' delight, with a second volume of short fiction. This book assembles nine previously published stories, scattered so far among the pages of a number of genre magazines.

Nova Swing by M. John Harrison
reviewed by David Soyka
The science fiction of the book is also heavily blended with noir, a detective story of sorts in which the question isn't "whodunit" but rather "who does it to us." Right from the opening page, the name of the bar, Black Cat White Cat, connotes both the on/off state of Schrödinger's cat as well as the cinematic tones of classic noir film. Indeed, the theme here echoes The Maltese Falcon.

Going Back by Tony Richards
reviewed by Mario Guslandi
Two years after the appearance of his last collection Ghost Dance, Tony Richards, an excellent, but hardly prolific author of dark fiction, provides yet another bunch of short stories, much to the satisfaction of his many admirers. It assembles fourteen tales varying in themes and atmospheres, but mostly revolving around the difficult but unavoidable relationship the human race has with time.

Babylon 5.1
TV reviews by Rick Norwood
Rick has some news on the renewal of Jericho and the cast changes on Smallville. Flash Gordon will be returning to television in August and Rick has some thoughts on its history and whether it will succeed.

Star Wars: Allegiance by Timothy Zahn
reviewed by David Maddox
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away... a simple farm boy helped destroy a space station, a scoundrel found fell in love with a Princess and a Sith Lord found redemption. The original Star Wars Trilogy reverberates through the hearts of all ages. As this year marks the 30th Anniversary of Episode IV: A New Hope, what better way to relive those nostalgic feelings than with a trip back to mere weeks after the destruction of the first Death Star.

The Best of Philip José Farmer by Philip José Farmer
reviewed by Nathan Brazil
Any 'best of' title is, by its nature, prone to individual interpretation, and putting together a cross section of work by an author as prolific as Philip José Farmer was never going to be easy. Some of his best includes entire series, which clearly could not form part of this single book collection, although the Riverworld is represented here. What the book does manage, is to provide an excellent primer for what made Farmer so popular for so long. Readers who have heard his name, and want to know what all the fuss is about without risking their cash on an entire series, should start here.

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.

Cover Story by John Picacio
reviewed by Jayme Lynn Blaschke
Jayme has seen the future of speculative fiction art, and its name is John Picacio. Except, if he's being honest with himself and readers, that's not true. You see, to be the future would imply that he has yet to come into his own. Anyone who even casually thumbs through this book knows full well that this young artist has arrived. The question isn't how good he is, it's how much better can he possibly get?