Zom Bee Moo Vee by Mark McLaughlin
reviewed by Lisa DuMond
If you spent any amount of time plunked down in front of the TV on Saturday afternoons, watching Ghoulardi, Dr. Paul Bearer, Zacherley, or any of the scores of horror movie hosts that brought you your weekly fix of truly bad movies, you'll recognize the occasional music immediately -- zom bee MOO VEE... zom bee MOO VEE...

SF Site: Readers' Choice Best Books of 1999
For the past month, we've been soliciting your votes for what you thought were the best books you read in 1999. We not only compiled an interesting list, we also read your insightful comments. Many people felt there was something of a dearth of good books in 1999, and yet most had no trouble naming 5 to 10 titles they enjoyed enough to recommend to others. (Some people even listed "runners up" after exhausting the 10 votes they could legally cast.)

Orcs: First Blood by Stan Nicholls
reviewed by Todd Richmond
What do you get when you combine a squad of orcs, five strange tokens of unknown power, and a vindictive, paranoid, blood ritual-using sorceress? A strange tale of magic, fantastic creatures, and mythical elder races that warps your expectations.

Babylon 5.1
TV reviews by Rick Norwood
Rick offers us his view on the World Wrestling Federation and Mulder's sister. You can read his opinion on the Star Trek: Voyager episode "Tsunkatsa" by Kenneth Biller, Robert J. Doherty, and Gannon Kenny and the 2-part X-Files' "Sein und Zeit" and "Closure" by Chris Carter and Frank Spotnitz.

Isaac Asimov's Solar System edited by Gardner Dozois & Sheila Williams
reviewed by Peter D. Tillman
This anthology takes us on an SFnal tour of our home system, with a story for each planet, plus one for the Sun. It's a solid collection, with no really weak stories, and a couple of outstanding ones. All are reprinted from Asimov's SF magazine.

Forthcoming Books
compiled by Neil Walsh
Over the next couple of months we'll be seeing continuations of series by such authors as Guy Gavriel Kay, Harry Turtledove, and Mary Gentle, as well as new works by the likes of Gregory Benford, Kathleen Ann Goonan and Dennis Danvers. Also coming is a previously unpublished novel by Keith Roberts, only to appear in serial in a new SF magazine.

Interzone, December 1999
reviewed by Rich Horton
This issue features a number of regulars: the always baroque Richard Calder opens an unusual contemporary story, "Impakto," with a horror edge to it; Leigh Kennedy's "The Bicycle Way" tells of a diminutive woman who plays a child in an effort to flush out potential rapists and abusers; and "The People of the Nova" by Eric Brown features the head of a Station on Tartarus, charged with evacuating the planet before its sun blows up.

New Magazines
compiled by John O'Neill
The SF Site's FictionHome page brings you the latest news and reviews of genre magazines and other short fiction. We look at brand new issues of Talebones, Interzone, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and many more.

White of the Moon edited by Stephen Jones
reviewed by Georges T. Dodds
Descents into madness, tales of crazed revenge, megalomaniacs, pyrophobes, serial killers, designer psychopaths, places where alternate worlds become reality -- they're are all here in this solid set of intelligent stories. The little gore or graphic violence is more than made up for by the portrayal of the skewed mental processes and associated twisted individuals who fall prey to their madness.

A Conversation With Elizabeth Moon
Part 2 of an interview with Jayme Lynn Blaschke
On playing music:
"I used to play for the German club parties when I was at Rice, because I could play the accordion and pick things up by ear. In fact, three of us had a weird little trio that was accordion, cello and mandolin. That makes a very interesting sound."

Amazing Stories, Winter 2000
reviewed by David Soyka
With this issue, this magazine continues to pull off its amazing trick of packaging a pretty cool collection of leading SF and Fantasy writers sandwiched between the covers of a media tie-in publication seemingly of interest only to adolescent gamers. What remains is a nicely illustrated SF magazine with some real edge.

Cuckoo by Richard Wright
reviewed by Lisa DuMond
No matter how rotten your life may be, at least it's your life, right? There is always that last little shred of comfort to cling to. What if you woke up one day to find that you were not you. Not only that, the life you thought you were living is now occupied by a stranger -- living in your house, taking your name, loving your wife. So, you have a sparkly new life, but none of it is familiar, or particularly comforting.

Let Me Explain Certain Things by George Foy
George Foy explains a few things about the creation of his novel, The Memory of Fire. Speaking of the story's beginnings, he says: "When I dig deep enough into how a book started I invariably find at its very root a mood, a sense impression. This mood surrounded a woman... living in a strange city dreaming about the place she had fled."

Emphyrio by Jack Vance
reviewed by Rich Horton
This is one of his better novels, and in many ways a good introduction. On display are many of the hallmarks of his mature style: his elegant writing, his wonderful depiction of local colour, his unusual social systems. It lacks only the humour that is so often present in Vance: this is one of his more melancholy books. It's also better plotted than many of his novels, and it's a stand-alone.

Farmer Giles of Ham by J.R.R. Tolkien
reviewed by Trent Walters
A dumber-yet-luckier than your average-Joe is the hero of this 1949 farcical fantasy. Originally written for his children and later revised for an adult audience, this book straddles the fence and lacks the richness or texture of The Hobbit. On the other hand, a reader can gain much understanding of Tolkien as a writer at work.