Author: Marion Deeds

WWWednesday: January 24, 2024

The Japanese lunar lander made the most precise lunar landing in history. The craft was experiencing a problem with its solar panels, but the earth crew may be able to correct that.

We seemed so far out of the blast radius of any 2023 Hugo fallout (did I just mix metaphors there?) that I was shocked when the latest one(s) blew up. It might be two scandals, it might be more, it might be none. It’s hard to tell. When the 2023 Hugo nominating data was released last weekend, hours before the mandated deadline, people discovered that the nominating patterns in several categories were,

January 24th, 2024. Marion Deeds | World Wide Wednesday | 9 comments |

WWWednesday: January 17, 2024

Effective January 23, Tor.com the website will become Reactor. After Tor.com announced this, there was confusion (even confusion about whether it was tor.com or Tordotcom Publishing. I don’t see how that could have happened, she said sarcastically). Future Reactor addressed those questions.

StokerCon has added Justine Ireland and Nisi Shawl to the Guest of Honor slate in 2024. Thanks to File770.

Atlas Obscura follows the history of forgotten women astronomers at University of Chicago’s Lake Geneva- based observatory.

January 17th, 2024. Marion Deeds | World Wide Wednesday | 4 comments |

WWWednesday: January 10, 2024

To my personal dismay, the Peregrine One lunar lander did not make moonfall because of fuel problems. Space.com has more technical information. (Personal because among the many things meant for the moon is a digitized library that includes a short story I wrote.)

Nerds of a Feather reviews That We Maye with Free Heartes Accomplishe Those Thynges, by Thomas M. Waldroon, as part of their Novella Project.

Tor.com previews Paolo Bacigalupi’s new fantasy novel (that’s right, fantasy), Navola due out in July,

January 10th, 2024. Marion Deeds | World Wide Wednesday | no comments |

A Power Unbound: Comprehensively wraps up the overarching storyline

A Power Unbound by Freya Marske

In 2023’s A Power Unbound, Book Three of the LAST BINDING trilogy, Freya Marske resolves the complex and tantalizing issues she set out in the first book. The riddle of the Last Contract is explained, magic (in Britain, at least) is changed forever, and arrogant, broody aristocrat Jack, Lord Hawthorn, gets a boyfriend.

This review may contain mild spoilers for the first two books.

At the end of A Restless Truth,

January 8th, 2024. Marion Deeds´s rating: 3.5 | Freya Marske | SFF Reviews | no comments |

WWWednesday: January 3, 2024

Let’s start the New Year off right! Here is a chocolate review by Elizabeth Bear.

Tor.com reviews the Doctor Who Christmas episode, introducing Ruby Sunday, the new companion.

Stubby the Rocket shares seasonal holiday favorites that aren’t holiday themed in this article.

Nerds of a Feather review Marie Vibbert’s new fantasy, The Gods Awoke.

From earlier last month, they also had an interview with Malka Older.

Champagne toasts? Football games? Fireworks? How about getting scared silly by creatures in sealskins,

January 3rd, 2024. Marion Deeds | World Wide Wednesday | no comments |

A Restless Truth: Magical hi-jinks on a transatlantic ocean liner

A Restless Truth by Freya Marske

2022’s A Restless Truth is the second book in Freya Marske’s queer magical alternate history series THE LAST BINDING. Book One, A Marvelous Light, had the sparkling prose and deep characterization of a Dorothy Sayers novel. This one is marginally more madcap, as if Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers were characters in a comedy on a transatlantic ocean liner—if they were both women and there was magic and there wasn’t a lot of dancing.

January 2nd, 2024. Marion Deeds´s rating: 3.5 | Freya Marske | SFF Reviews | no comments |

A Marvelous Light: An Edwardian fantasy mystery with a Dorothy Sayers vibe

A Marvelous Light by Freya Marske

What struck me first about A Marvelous Light, (2022), Book One of Freya Marske’s THE LAST BINDING trilogy, was the style and narrative tone. Set in an alternate world in the last decade of the 19th century, A Marvelous Light could have featured Dorothy Sayers’s aristocratic detective Lord Peter Wimsey, if Wimsey were a magician and had sex with men. The descriptions and the dialogue sparkle, and the book seems inhabited with real (if, in many cases,

December 28th, 2023. Marion Deeds´s rating: 4.5 | Freya Marske | SFF Reviews | no comments |

WWWednesday: December 27, 2023

Wishing you and yours a delightful week filled with joy, laughter, warmth and love. I’ll be back on January 3 with a regular roundup column.

Enjoy Voces 8 and “In Dulci Jubilo” in the meantime.

December 27th, 2023. Marion Deeds | World Wide Wednesday | 2 comments |

Memory Reborn: We weren’t expecting a love story

Memory Reborn by David Walton

2023’s Memory Reborn is the third book in David Walton’s LIVING MEMORY series, which started with Living Memory and introduced us to individuals from an advanced society living during the Cretaceous Period, and who happened to be dinosaurs (maniraptors to be precise). Reading Memory Reborn, we were both eager to see how Walton resolved the many, increasingly complex problems the modern-day characters, both human and dinosaur, faced. Neither of us expected the love story to be the plot line that grabbed us the hardest.

December 22nd, 2023. Marion Deeds and Bill Capossere´s rating: 3.5 | David Walton | SFF Reviews | no comments |

Spark of Destiny: It’s a treat to read some old-fashioned steampunk

Spark of Destiny by Gail Z. Martin & Larry N. Martin

Steampunk as a fiction genre has nearly disappeared. It’s become much more of a fashion or costume statement; or subsumed completely into alternate history. I understand the reasons; and expect the various sub-genres to ebb and flow like everything else. It was still a nice treat to read 2023’s Spark of Destiny by Gail Z. Martin and Larry N. Martin, a genuine steampunk adventure.

Here’s an incomplete list of what I expect in steampunk:

alternate European or North American history (or other locations—this is just what I mostly see);

December 21st, 2023. Marion Deeds´s rating: 3.5 | Gail Z. Martin | SFF Reviews | no comments |

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