Robert Silverberg was the Master of Ceremonies at the Nebula awards, which Marion and I attended a few weeks ago.

Robert Silverberg, Master of Ceremonies

Silverberg told stories about the writers of the Golden Age, like Clifford Simak, Damon Knight, Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, and even lesser known writers like Silverberg’s own mentor Randall Garrett.

There were clearly three “eras” in the room; the Golden Age (1938-1946 if you trust Wikipedia); the New Wave (1960s-1970s, again, Wikipedia) and the current era which I want to call The New Golden Age, ... Read More

The Blue Blazes by Chuck Wendig

Mookie Pearl is a big ugly brute who works for the boss of New York City’s criminal underworld. Mostly he’s called on to be a thug — it’s the thing he does best. One of his specific jobs is to manage (i.e., cajole, threaten, beat up) a team of workers who descend into the underground to collect the blue powdery drug that allows its users to see the supernatural creatures who have lived among us ever since some New York City miners accidentally blew open a portal to Hell while tunneling under the streets.

Things are never really safe in Mookie’s line of work, but everything suddenly comes to a head when the boss announces that he’s dying and leaving his son Casimir in charge of his criminal empire. When all the gangs in the city sense an imminent power void, and when his own immature teenage daughter makes a play designed to get revenge on the daddy who was never there for her, Mookie’s normally da... Read More

The Red Knight by Miles Cameron

The thing about military-esque epic fantasy is that it will always have an audience. Always. There will always be someone out there who sees a blurb about a knight on a horse and buys the book. It’s a sort of subgenre that will have fans no matter how redundant, or unique, the book may be. For me, books that fit into that genre have a greater challenge ahead of them. They need to do something new, or present an old story in a refreshing way because there really are only so many different things that you can say about a guy on a horse on a quest.

On the surface, The Red Knight is exactly what I look for in this kind of book. It’s unique. Set in an alternative earth/post-apocalyptic earth/secondary earth (I never was quite clear on that point), The Red Knight reads more like historical fantasy than anything else. There is a religious order that will call to mind the days of the... Read More

Live Free or Die by John Ringo

Humans were alarmed when the first aliens that arrived to introduce themselves to Earth set up a hypergate that immediately connected Earth with all the outside universe. We were no longer alone. At least the Glatun were friendly aliens.

Tyler Vernon, a smart hard-working guy who chops wood for a living, decides to take this opportunity to improve his fortune. He finds a product that our new alien friends love and begins a business empire. Soon he’s the richest man on Earth, and that means he’s got a lot of influence on how things get done. When another alien race, the Horvath, come through the gate, declare themselves Earth’s “protectors” and start demanding tribute, Tyler is the only human who seems ready to take them on.

Live Free or Die, the first in John Ringo’s TROY RISING series, starts strong. Tyler is, at first, a likeable entrepreneur whose clever busines... Read More

Dreams and Shadows by C. Robert Cargill

C. Robert Cargill has some interesting ideas in his debut novel Dreams and Shadows, but I think the book needed more revision before it was done. Under-developed characters and bad structural choices stand between the reader and the story in this one, and it’s a shame, because there is a story here and it is interesting.

Dreams and Shadows brings us a faerie land that is closer to the dark, original myths of Britain and middle Europe; bloodthirsty beings who feed on humanity in various ways. Instead of brownies and sprites, Cargill gives us redcaps, who drench their caps in the blood of their victims to keep up their strength, and nixies, who drown unwary travelers. Against the backdrop of a faerie kingdom in Texas, he tells us the story of two boys, Colby and Ewan. Ewan, a human boy, was stolen from his parents as an infant. A changeling was left in his place. He was broug... Read More

The City by Stella Gemmell

For a novel titled The City, we see surprisingly little of the Stella Gemmell’s eponymous setting itself, save for its labyrinthine underground tunnels and sewers. But there’s no doubt the city sits at the center of this patiently-developed, detailed work thanks to its ongoing and seemingly endless war against the enemies that ring its lands and its internal dissensions as some of its most powerful citizens begin to chafe under the leadership of the Immortal.

The City begins from the point of view of a young brother (Elija) and sister (Emly) who live in one of the many communities in the sewers of the city. It’s a purposefully gritty and grim opening, as it sets the reader up with a particular view of the City — this is not a place that takes care of its most vulnerable and seeing it through these young children’s eyes we’re predisposed to root against maintenance of the statu... Read More

Victorious by Jack Campbell

Victorious is the sixth and last book in Jack Campbell’s original LOST FLEET series. (If you haven’t read the previous books, you’ll want to read them before reading this review.)

Captain Black Jack Geary and the Alliance fleet have finally arrived, battered and bruised, to their home in the Alliance system and Geary’s feet touch ground for the first time in 100 years. Not surprisingly, the Alliance senate is leery of Geary (ugh, that rhyme!) and suspect that he may be planning a coup. But all he wants to do is deliver the ominous news from space about the aliens who’ve been driving the Syndic-Alliance war all this time. Surely they have bad intentions toward the human races they’ve been manipulating.

So, after only a brief respite, Captain Geary, Tanya Desjani, Victoria Rione, and many of the other officers of the Alliance fleet, head back out in space to end the war... Read More

War in Heaven by David Zindell

David Zindell’s space opera books, that started with the stand-alone Neverness and continued with his REQUIEM FOR HOMO SAPIENS trilogy (of which this volume is the conclusion), always scratch that itch I have for DUNE-like space opera. You’ve got the baroque world-building of a far, far future of humanity in an interstellar diaspora that combines elements of medieval and pre-industrial societies with ‘magical’ technology and gleaming ships that fold space; you’ve got bizarre human enclaves (sometimes almost reminiscent of Jack Vance, though with less obvious caustic humour) so that societies of warrior-poets, pilot-mathematicians, scientist-philosophers, autist-savants, and priest-kings all rub shoulders in a bewildering and colourful throng; you’ve ... Read More

The Summer 2013 issue of Subterranean Magazine has a special K.J. Parker section, which is a treat for anyone who has read any of Parker’s work. This author (gender unknown) writes from the perspective of a military historian, and appears to have a special interest in ancient Greek and Roman warfare. All of his/her stories have the flavor of ancient days.

“The Sun and I” is the first of two Parker stories in this issue. It is a take on the statement attributed to L. Ron Hubbard: “If you want to get rich, you start a religion!”  Five friends, all from wealthy and educated backgrounds, but all presently out of funds, decide to start a religion. It seems a better way to raise funds than to beg as unemployed and disabled veterans, and besides, they don’t have and can’t afford the red lead they’d need to g... Read More

Strange Magic by Gord Rollo

Reading Strange Magic made me think deeply about a number of issues I doubt Gord Rollo intended me to be thinking about. I wasn’t pondering whether good and evil are entirely human or whether there is a supernatural agency at work in some forms of evil (and good); I wasn’t thinking about addiction, its causes and cures; I wasn’t thinking about the redemptive power of love. Instead, I was thinking about whether a book can be considered good when it has a decent story but is poorly written, with numerous grammatical and spelling errors. I was thinking about the value of revision. And I was thinking about how necessary a good editor can be.

Strange Magic has a decent storyline that unfolds with fine suspense over the course of the novel. I liked its grounding in stage magic and the mechanics of escape artistry. I found the drunken c... Read More

Rocket Ship Galileo by Robert A. Heinlein

When I was a kid I loved the “Heinlein Juveniles.” Rocket Ship Galileo, Heinlein’s first Juvenile, is one I missed back then. It won’t hold up well today (actually, it wouldn’t have held up well when I was reading Heinlein Juveniles in the 1980s) but sometimes it’s fun to read these old science fiction stories for kids and I did have fun recently reading Rocket Ship Galileo even though I am very much aware of its flaws. Let’s remember that it was published in 1947, just after World War II and well before we managed to put a man on the moon.

Ross, Art, and Morrie (I love those retro names!) are three teenage boys who love science and each have special geeky skills. When Morrie’s uncle, a Nobel Prize-winning nuclear physicist, discovers that the boys are building a rocket ship, he gives them some funds and a little help and off they all go to the moon. ... Read More

This week we hear from Gurgi of the Lands of Prydain, assistant to Taran, Assistant Pig-Keeper of Caer Dallben. Which makes Gurgi a sort of super-concentrated assistant, I suppose. Anyway, Gurgi hails from the Prydain Chronicles, the best children's fantasy series that no one's heard about.

Gurgi: This week Gurgi found a book, a good book, yes. Gurgi found it stimulating and he found it enriching. It was the best crunchings and munchings Gurgi had all week, poor hungry Gurgi.

Kat: I read three novellas and one and a half novels this week. The first was Dan Simmons’ The Guiding Nose of Ulfänt Banderōz which is one of the stories from the anthology  Read More