Author: Stuart Starosta

The Gone-Away World: Relentlessly ironic, digressive, and clever

The Gone-Away World by Nick Harkaway

The Gone-Away World (2008) is a post-apocalyptic comedy/tragedy about our world before and after the Gone-Away Bombs have wiped up out much of humanity and the world we know. It is about Gonzo Lubitsch and his nameless best friend, who work for a special crew that is assigned to put of a fire along the Jorgmond pipeline, which produced the special material “Fox” that can eliminate the Stuff, the matter that is left over after gone-away bombs have removed the information from matter so that it no longer can form coherent form and structure.

Brothers in Arms: Adds a new facet to the Vorkosigan character

Brothers in Arms by Lois McMaster Bujold

This is Marion’s review of The Vor Game, Brothers in Arms, and Mirror Dance.

Miles Vorkosigan is nearly a dwarf, with bones as brittle as fine porcelain, and he is a Vor, one of the elite, the son of the Imperial Regent. The Vor, and everyone on Barrayar for that matter, are terrified of mutation because of their history, and Miles looks like a mutation even though he isn’t one. During the middle books of this series,

April 17th, 2018. Marion Deeds, Kat Hooper and Stuart Starosta´s rating: 3.5 | Lois McMaster Bujold | SFF Reviews | no comments |

Borders of Infinity: Three important stories about Miles

Borders of Infinity by Lois McMaster Bujold (contains the novellas “The Mountains of Mourning,” “Labyrinth,” “The Borders of Infinity”)

Borders of Infinity has a different structure than the earlier VORKOSIGAN books. It’s actually three previously published novellas with a frame story. Simon Illyan, head of Imperial Security, is visiting Miles while he’s recuperating in the hospital after a surgery for bone replacements. Knowing that the government will start asking questions, Simon needs Miles to justify three large vague items in his expense reports. When Miles protests,

Paper Girls (Vol 3) by Brian K Vaughan

Paper Girls (Vol 3) by Brian K Vaughan (writer) and Cliff Chiang (artist)

This is the third volume of Brian K. Vaughan’s Paper Girls, and if you thought you were starting to get a handle on where the story was headed, think again…

[SPOILER TERRITORY AHEAD – DON’T READ UNLESS YOU’VE READ VOLUMES ONE AND TWO]

The four paper girls are reunited in a completely new place somewhere far off in the future or past,

The Android’s Dream: A zany SF thriller

The Android’s Dream by John Scalzi

The Android’s Dream (2006) is one of John Scalzi’s earlier books, and a stand-alone rather than part of a series, so I couldn’t resist given the obvious Philip K. Dick reference in the title. I decided to go into this one without knowing anything about the plot or reading any reviews at all. I know Scalzi’s humor and style from the OLD MAN’S WAR series, Redshirts and Lock In,

Paper Girls (Vol 2) by Brian K Vaughan

Paper Girls (Vol. 2) by Brian K Vaughan (writer) and Cliff Chiang (artist)

This is the second volume of Brian K. Vaughan’s Paper Girls, and takes up the story right where it left off in volume one. The four paper girls from 1988 have found themselves in 2016, but still in the sleepy suburb of Stony Stream. And they are about encounter more weirdness and sinister characters that the first volume…

Paper Girls has been likened to a female version of Stranger Things,

Cetaganda: A murder mystery in space

Cetaganda by Lois McMaster Bujold

Cetaganda (1996) is the ninth novel that Lois McMaster Bujold published in her popular VORKOSIGAN SAGA but, chronologically, the story takes place earlier in the sequence, between The Vor Game and Ethan of Athos. If you’re new to this series, I (and the author) recommend reading these novels in order of internal chronology which is how we have them listed here at Fantasy Literature. I read some of them out of order because of how they were presented in the Baen Omnibus editions and I regret that.

The Invincible: Early classic encounter with a swarm intelligence

The Invincible by Stanislaw Lem

Stanislaw Lem was a Polish SF author, one of the most famous and successful writers outside the English language world, selling over 45 million copies in 40+ languages over five decades from the 1950s, but mainly in Eastern European communist bloc countries such as Poland, Germany, and the Soviet Union. However, despite his success he had a rocky relationship with the United States SF community, having a fairly low opinion of American SF fiction writers other than Philip K Dick’s works,

The Vor Game: Mixes space opera with political drama

The Vor Game by Lois McMaster Bujold

This is Marion’s review of The Vor Game, Brothers in Arms, and Mirror Dance. Kat’s comments about The Vor Game are at the bottom.

Paper Girls (Vol 1) by Brian K Vaughan

Paper Girls (Vol 1) by Brian K Vaughan (writer) and Cliff Chiang (artist)

If you are a fan of Brian K. Vaughan’s amazing Saga comic series, you are likely to want to check out some of his other series as well. In addition to writing many stories for Marvel and DC comics’s well-known franchises, he has also written a number of original series, including Y: The Last Man, Ex Machine, Runaways,

Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

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