One day the Singularity would elevate humans to cybernetic superbeings, and maybe then people would say what they meant. Probably not, though. Charlie Jane Anders’s Hugo-nominated book, All the Birds In the Sky is a modern-day fantasy/sci-fi drama that’s partly about a global apocalypse and a war between science and magic, but mostly about two
The clock’s ticking; we only have a few more weeks before the 2017 Hugo Award ceremony in August. Since I think it would be a crime to leave any of the shorter fiction entries unread, this week I’m reviewing three of the nominees for Best Novella at once. Click the jump for a review of
When the blood fails, the Father of Monsters rises again to devour all. The last installment in R.S. Belcher’s Golgatha series ended with the widow Maude Stapleton leaving her strange little town in Nevada in pursuit of her father. Martin Anderton has given up trying to talk sense into his only child, so he’s claimed custody of
Alice fell down a rabbit hole to Wonderland. Dorothy was whisked away to Oz by a tornado. Wendy, Michael, and John flew away to Never Land with Peter Pan, and Harry Potter could just go to Platform 9¾ whenever he needed to enter the wizarding world. Literature is full of examples of children who stepped
Father Earth did not always hate life, the lorists say. He hates because he cannot forgive the loss of his only child. The first book of The Broken Earth series introduced us to the earthquake-prone world of Stillness, plus the orogenes who calm earthquakes, and the Fulcrum Guardians who keep the orogenes in line. It
Hands up, anyone who knows the difference between a novelette and a novella. Anyone? Okay, a novelette is a work of fiction that clocks in at anywhere from 7500 – 17500 words; basically it longer than a short-story but shorter than a novella. Everyone take notes because there’ll be a test later. This year the
Okay, it’s time to buckle down and start trying to see how many of this year’s Hugo Nominees we can review before the awards are given on August 11. Everyone who reads this column probably knows by now that I’m really fond of short stories, so let’s start with those. Click the jump for a short (naturally,
It’s the quintessential American Dream: a respectable government job and a house in the DC suburbs. The picture wouldn’t be complete without a beautiful wife and two happy children, or at least that’s what the Vision thinks. So he went to a lot of trouble and made them. Nominated for a Hugo Award this year,
Samantha Locklear is dealing with things as best as she can. And she does have a lot of things to deal with. A former marine who served three tours of duty, she’s suffering from PTSD and multiple medical problems after being held as a POW for almost a year. And then there’s the mysterious lights in the