Implied Spaces by Walter Jon Williams
reviewed by Rich Horton
The book opens with a swordsman walking across the desert, soon to encounter mysterious priests kidnapping people, and
caravan guards led by an ogre. Pure sword and sorcery, right? Not at all, as readers of "Womb of Every World," from last year's SFBC
anthology Alien Crimes, will immediately realize. That story, moderately revised, represents a bit more than the first third
of this novel.
The Lion Hunter and The Empty Kingdom by Elizabeth E. Wein
reviewed by Sherwood Smith
The Lion Hunter picks up just after the events in The Sunbird, in which Telemakos, grandson of Arthur, is
introduced, and becomes a victim of international intrigue. Readers unfamiliar with this novel will find expert back story
painted in at the start of The Lion Hunter as Telemakos challenges himself to overcome the fears he suffered after being
held prisoner, blindfolded and bound, as a result of deadly international politics.
Singularity's Ring by Paul Melko
reviewed by Greg L. Johnson
The post-human universe isn't just for grown-ups anymore. In his first novel, Paul Melko brings the classic style of young adult
science fiction headlong into a future where the singularity has come and gone, leaving old-fashioned human beings and a new kind
of humanity, the pods, reeling and attempting to recover in its wake. It's a fast-moving story full of adventure, angst, and the
growing pains of a young being known as Apollo Papadopulos.
The Other Side of Magik by Michael Lingaard
reviewed by Nathan Brazil
The action takes place mostly in
Angland, on an alternate Earth on the other side of the mirror, where "magik" is a reality, and physics does not permit the
development of electrical power. In Angland, DNA spirals to the left, and people travel in steam-buggies and airships. Geography
and history are similar to the world we know, but differ at key points. The story centres on two teenage boys, Danny Royce,
a disaffected wastrel from our reality, and Garreth Royal, a budding wizard who has just failed to make the grade.
Timeless Moon by C.T. Adams and Cathy Clamp
reviewed by Michael M Jones
Josette Monier has been living alone, in self-imposed exile for many years, in order to keep her immensely strong psychic abilities
under control. To most of her fellow shapeshifters, those known as the Sazi, she's both a legend and a hermit by choice, one of the
oldest and most powerful of her kind. Unfortunately, what she's just become is a target.
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
a movie review by Rick Norwood
The new Indiana Jones movie is the best action-adventure film seen in a long time. You would have to go back
to the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie for one as good. But it is not as good as Raiders of the Lost
Ark, Star Wars, or The Lord of the Rings. For a film to be that good, it has to be a new idea,
with new characters.
Prince Caspian
a movie review by Rick Norwood
Andrew Adamson, who helmed this film of the second book in the seven book Narnia series, decided to go all
out for big-budget action this time. Maybe the studio pushed him in that direction, but he deserves the credit and blame
for turning a human adventure into a special-effects extravaganza. In the middle is an entire battle sequence that
isn't in the book and doesn't advance the plot.
The Happening
a movie review by Rick Norwood
What pass for horror movies these days are seldom designed to induce fear. Fear, after all, is an unpleasant emotion,
though the relief afterwards is pleasant.
There are the horror movies where you experience self-righteous satisfaction when women who have sex out of wedlock are killed or when
teen-agers who have sex before marriage are killed. And there are the horror
movies which produce roller-coaster thrills where each horrible death produces a shriek
of laughter.
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Genius Squad by Catherine Jinks
reviewed by Charlene Brusso
A few months following the destruction of the infamous Axis Institute, the university for young
villains-in-training created by international mad scientist and all-around bad guy Phineas Darkkon. At present,
Darkkon is missing, his nefarious right-hand-man Prosper English is sitting in an Australian
jail cell, and their unwilling protege fifteen-year-old computer genius Cadel Piggott, has been dumped
in yet another foster home. Adding to Cadel's unstable life, he's living in legal limbo, his citizenship as uncertain as his
parentage, under the constant shadow of police surveillance.
Dark Integers and Other Stories by Greg Egan
reviewed by Rich Horton
The author's reputation, first and foremost, is as one of today's preeminent "idea men" of SF. His fiction is built around
scientific or sociological ideas -- that is to say, on speculation.
Particular areas of interest seem to be mathematics, physics, and the workings of the brain (and indeed all of these ideas are
often interconnected). He eagerly uses concepts from the cutting edges of these fields, and speculates beyond the cutting
edge -- sometimes, as he has admitted, a bit implausibly.
Nexus Graphica
a column by Rick Klaw and Mark London Williams
Regular readers of comics news and reviews already
know that Rory Root, the affable, pioneering proprietor of Berkeley, California-based Comic Relief passed
away suddenly last month. The scope and breadth of what the store carried, how Rory was an advocate/supporter of
lesser-known, or just-starting-out-of-the-gate work, and how well liked he was in the comics community by
creators and retailers. Mark London Williams remembers his days growing up in the Berkeley area and how
Rory affected his development into the writer he is today.
The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon
an audiobook review by Nicki Gerlach
Meyer Landsman is about as hard-boiled as detectives get. He lives in a cheap flop-house of a hotel, and smokes too much,
drinks way too much, and works obsessively -- besides abstractly thinking about suicide, drinking and working are what gets
him through his days. He's divorced and estranged from his ex-wife Bina, who is now his superior officer, and he's plagued
by family ghosts -- his chess-obsessed suicide of a father, his sister Naomi, a pilot who crashed her Piper Cub into a
mountain, the tiny voice of his aborted baby. He's long on bitterness and short on hope, unable to see anything but the
bleakest future for himself or his people. Because, unlike your run-of-the-mill depressed and hard-bitten police
detective, Landsman is also facing Reversion.
New Arrivals
compiled by Neil Walsh
New books are flooding into the SF Site office almost as quickly as we can unpack 'em. The most recent arrivals include the latest from Kevin J. Anderson, Arthur C. Clarke & Stephen Baxter, F. Paul Wilson, Timothy Zahn, Gregory Frost, Charlaine Harris, Charlie Huston, John C. Wright, L.E. Modesitt, Jr., Mike Resnick, Katharine Kerr, Scott Bakker, Mike Carey, Harry Turtledove, and many, many more.
New Audiobooks
compiled by Susan Dunman
At times, it's more convenient (and enjoyable) to hear the latest in science fiction and fantasy. Recent
audiobook releases include works by Lewis Carroll, Laurell K. Hamilton, Simon R. Green, Kelley Armstrong and Philip K. Dick.
Babylon 5.1
TV reviews by Rick Norwood
Rick has some thoughts on the first half of Battlestar Galactica Season 4.
And he has questions that he hopes the writers will address in the second part of the
show's last season.
The Secret of Sinharat by Leigh Brackett
reviewed by Georges T. Dodds
John Stark, besides being a tough and independent mercenary, is a man with a very thin veneer
of civilisation overlying an almost animalistic core. In somewhat of a parallel with Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan of
the Apes, Stark was raised from infancy by barely-human Mercurian aborigines, and under certain stressful situations,
which are not uncommon in his business, he reverts to his origins and lives by his quasi-animalistic instincts.
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