Next SFF Author: Chloe Neill

Previous SFF Author: Vera Nazarian

Series: Nebula Award

Timescape: Intimate but slow-moving story about scientists

Timescape by Gregory Benford

Timescape (1980) has been on my TBR list for 35+ years, I’ve long wanted to read physicist Gregory Benford, the book won the Nebula Award, and it deals with time paradoxes, which I find fascinating but invariably unconvincing. First off, most of the book’s considerable length is devoted to a slow-moving and detailed portrait of scientists (mostly physicists, but also some biologists and astronomers) at work in the lab as well as their personal relationships with colleagues and wives/girlfriends. So to describe this as a “techno-thriller” would be inaccurate.

Thoughtful Thursday: Who should win the Nebula Award?

It’s award season! Next Saturday, May 14th, the 2015 Nebula awards will be announced, and the Hugos are coming up in August. Like last year, there is excitement, and plenty of controversy in many categories, although both Best Novel shortlists look solid.

As always, there are books we here at the site loved, and some we didn’t warm up to that much. And as always, there are books we hope will win and books we think will win, and those aren’t always the same books.

Let’s talk about the Nebula nominees first. We’ll do the Hugos in August.

May 12th, 2016. Marion Deeds | Nebula Award | Giveaway!, Thoughtful Thursday | 23 comments |

Red Mars: This is where we start again

Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson

When the First Hundred arrive on Mars, they find a beautiful red planet that’s all but untouched by humanity. What should they paint on this amazing canvas?

The question turns out to be very political, and the discussion of politics in Kim Stanley Robinson’s Red Mars perhaps begins with ecology. The relationship between people and their environment is introduced when the Martian settlers consider whether they should change the red planet to suit human needs.

SHORTS: Shu, Lemberg, Salvatore, Bradbury, Pinsker

Here are some of the stories we read this week that we wanted you to know about, most of which are free to read online. This week we continue focusing on 2015 Nebula-nominated short fiction, along with some other stories that caught our attention.

“Everybody Loves Charles” by Bao Shu, trans. Ken Liu (2016, free at Clarkesworld magazine; Kindle magazine issue).

I listened to this novella in the car on the way to WriteFest in Houston,

Man Plus: Puzzling and enjoyable

Man Plus by Frederik Pohl

In the 1970s Frederik Pohl produced a number of highly regarded science fiction novels. Man Plus, which earned a Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1976, shows its age just a bit but I still found it very much worth reading.

In the near future, as seen from the 1970s, we may well be there now, the world is in a pretty bad shape. The sheer size of the human population the earth has to support has put a strain on the resources available.

SHORTS: El-Mohtar, Miller, Cooney, Pullman, Bear, Valente

Here are some of the stories we read this week that we wanted you to know about. This week we continue focusing on 2015 Nebula-nominated short fiction, along with some other stories that caught our attention.

“Madeleine” by Amal El-Mohtar (2015, free on Lightspeed magazine, Kindle magazine issue), nominated for the 2015 Nebula award (short story)

Madeleine is in therapy after the death of her mother from Alzheimer’s. She and her therapist, Clarice, are discussing the loss of her mother and the odd side-effects from a clinical trial for an Alzheimer’s drug that Madeleine has taken part in.

March 7th, 2016. Kate Lechler, Katie Burton, Tadiana Jones and Kat Hooper | Amal El-Mohtar, C.S.E. Cooney, Catherynne M. Valente, Greg Bear, Philip Pullman, Sam J. Miller | Nebula Award, Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 4 comments |

The Forever War: An SF treatment of Vietnam

The Forever War by Joe Haldeman

William Mandella, a genius studying physics, has been drafted into the elite division of the United Nations Exploratory Force, which is fighting a seemingly never-ending war with the Taurans. After strenuous training with other elites on the Earth and in space, William and his colleagues are sent on various missions throughout the universe, traveling through black holes to get to each warfront. During each mission some of William’s friends die, but that’s expected. What’s surprising is that when he returns home, very little time has passed for him,

Ancillary Justice: An excellent debut!

Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie

Breq used to be a spaceship, or at least a fragment of the spaceship known as Justice of Toren. The ship controlled innumerable human bodies, known variously as “ancillaries” to the people of the interstellar Radchaai Empire and as “corpse soldiers” to the cultures and planets the Empire has conquered. Those soldiers used to be regular, innocent human beings who, if sufficiently healthy, were slaved to one of the Radchaai ships, their personalities more or less overwritten to become part of one of the Empire’s many-bodied artificial intelligences.

The Windup Girl: Divisive

The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi

My Body is Not My Own…

Having just finished Paolo Bacigalupi’s Hugo and Nebula award-winning novel, I’m left rather bereft at how to describe, let alone review, The Windup Girl. I am not a big reader of science-fiction or dystopian thrillers, which means that no obvious comparisons come to mind, and the setting and tone of the novel are so unique (to me at least) that they almost defy description.

Set in a future Thailand where genetically engineered “megodonts” (elephants) provide manual labor and “cheshires” (cats) prowl the streets,

February 11th, 2016. Rebecca Fisher, Marion Deeds, Stefan Raets, Justin Blazier, Ruth Arnell and Stuart Starosta´s rating: 4 | Paolo Bacigalupi | Audio, Hugo Award, Nebula Award, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 8 comments |

SHORTS: Delany, Liu, VanderMeer, Robinson

There is so much free or inexpensive short fiction available on the internet these days. Here are a few stories we read this week that we wanted you to know about.

“Aye, and Gomorrah” by Samuel R. Delany (1967, free at Strange Horizons)

“Aye, and Gomorrah” was first published as the final story in the ground-breaking anthology Dangerous Visions (1967), edited by Harlan Ellison. It was also included in Samuel Delany‘s only major short-story collection Driftglass (1971) and an expanded edition titled Aye,

Next SFF Author: Chloe Neill

Previous SFF Author: Vera Nazarian

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