http://www.sfsite.com/ The new issue of the SF Site is now online. Copyright 1996-2010 SF Site en-us http://www.sfsite.com/images/sfspot1.gif http://www.sfsite.com/ http://www.sfsite.com/09b/pk256.htm Sun, 16 Sep 2007 11:00:00 GMT This is a story about Jilly Coppercorn set in the early 70s, during her time at Butler University. Having just recently set her life on track after struggling through abuse, drug addiction, prostitution, and life on the streets, she gets a surprise visit from an old friend who offers her a very unusual choice: to stay where she is, or to move with her to paradise. http://www.sfsite.com/09b/sc256.htm Sun, 16 Sep 2007 11:00:00 GMT At a time when so-called literary writers are employing science fiction tropes, one of the granddads of cyberpunk seemingly becomes mainstream, setting his last two novels in the present tense of post-9/11 America. Not exactly a sequel, but rather a companion piece to the widely regarded Pattern Recognition, this novel explores moral behavior within an impersonal society of global corporate and government interests saturated by advanced technology and mass media. http://www.sfsite.com/09b/pw256.htm Sun, 16 Sep 2007 11:00:00 GMT Gavir is a boy who was kidnapped from his home in the Marshes as a tiny baby, and taken to the City State called Etra to be a slave in the House Arcamand. The Father of the House of Arca is a relatively benign slaveowner, and Gavir, along with his sister Sallo, grows up fairly comfortably. Gavir does have a magical talent, apparently unique to people of the Marshes -- he occasionally "remembers" future events. But his sister urges him to conceal these visions. http://www.sfsite.com/09b/bm256.htm Sun, 16 Sep 2007 11:00:00 GMT Monsters represent a standard, time-honored theme in horror fiction. They haunt our dreams, lurk in dark corners, stalk us in dark alleys. It was high time, therefore, that one of the various Mammoth anthologies would be devoted to monsters and who more suitable than Stephen Jones to deal with the task? http://www.sfsite.com/books/new256.htm Sun, 16 Sep 2007 11:00:00 GMT New and forthcoming works from Naomi Novki, Karl Schroeder, Robert Newcomb, Jennifer Fallon; some great new anthologies and collections; a wide variety of classics in new editions; plus a whole lot more -- that's what we've seen come to the SF Site office recently. http://www.sfsite.com/columns/rick256.htm Sun, 16 Sep 2007 11:00:00 GMT Instead of reviewing a TV show this issue, Rick is reviewing a fantasy game, The Legend of Zelda, Twilight Princess. Rick has invested better than one hundred hours and he has found it to be challenging, thrilling, awe inspiring. http://www.sfsite.com/09b/hc256.htm Sun, 16 Sep 2007 11:00:00 GMT Set in North Carolina in 1992, this novel features everything that makes fantasy a potentially great genre: epic struggles between good and evil; a blend of realism and magic; an enchanted view of the various fantastical species that dwell in realms other than our own, and sometimes trespass here softly or in malicious, murderous force. It starts with widower Ben Tyson meeting an enchanting woman of great beauty and charm named Valeria who proposes marriage. Marriage and parenthood bring with them a certain transparency, which means that Ben becomes privy to Valeria's secret: she is a leading figure among the Faerie. http://www.sfsite.com/09b/sm256.htm Sun, 16 Sep 2007 11:00:00 GMT This short story collection is really two collections, one telling of the wizard Magdalene, the other chronicling the adventures of the thief Terazin. The two "books" are bound back-to-back in a single volume. The telling is bright and breezy (a world away from the stilted, formal prose of so much fantasy of that ilk), the tone generally light; as the author writes in the afterword, "there should always be room for a few laughs." http://www.sfsite.com/09b/iw256.htm Sun, 16 Sep 2007 11:00:00 GMT Physics, jazz, and a world gone bad. The author's latest novel is sub-titled "An Alternate-Universe Novel of A Different Present." It's a story of people caught up in war, and their growing feeling that the world they live in is not what it should and could be. But if changing history means losing the people you love, can you afford the price to be paid for setting things right? http://www.sfsite.com/09b/si256.htm Sun, 16 Sep 2007 11:00:00 GMT In the wake of Heroes and the re-emergence of The Bionic Woman, the author's timing is fortuitous. Pitched between familiarity and spandex-shifted reality, it is written in the first person, split between the perspectives of two characters. One, a female cyborg called Fatale, newly recruited to the newly reformed Champions, the world's greatest superteam, and the other, Doctor Impossible, who is the epitome of a science-based evil genius. http://www.sfsite.com/columns/hank256.htm Sun, 16 Sep 2007 11:00:00 GMT "A favorite book of mine was made into a movie recently. As is usually the case, the book is much better than the movie, but I liked the movie as well. The book, and the movie, are titled Stardust, and the book was written by Neil Gaiman. The movie has gotten mostly favorable notices by the reviewers that I've read, but, and here I want to make a complaint, every review I've seen has made the same mistake. The book by Neil Gaiman has universally been referred to as a graphic novel." http://www.sfsite.com/columns/over256.htm Sun, 16 Sep 2007 11:00:00 GMT For years, Neil has been told to read these two books. Not by the same people, mind you. They're not that much alike, except that they're both about earthlings on far distant planets who get themselves into awkward situations. Brin's earthlings are dolphins, and the aliens are far more technologically advanced than we are. Russell's earthlings are Jesuit missionaries and the aliens are less technologically advanced. So which one is the classic, and is it over-hyped? And which one is the forgotten treasure? Or has Neil gone totally off his rails? http://www.sfsite.com/lists/yb-sf-title01.htm Sun, 16 Sep 2007 11:00:00 GMT In 1984, Gardner Dozois gathered together what he thought was the best short science fiction of the previous year. He scrutinized as many of the magazines, collections and anthologies published in 1983 that he could get his hands on and chose those which he felt best represented the science fiction field. Jim Frenkel published it as part of his Bluejay Books line (for three years) and it has been produced every year since then (by St. Martins's Press). http://www.sfsite.com/09b/bf256.htm Sun, 16 Sep 2007 11:00:00 GMT This book collects a bunch of stories previously published in various magazines and anthologies between 1967 and 2004, displaying the many faces of a literary chameleon able to easily jump from a genre to the other. Predictably, the book includes such a variety of themes, styles and atmospheres to constitute an interesting showcase of the author's fictional work but also a tour de force for the average reader with well defined literary preferences. http://www.sfsite.com/09b/bn256.htm Sun, 16 Sep 2007 11:00:00 GMT Although some authors, such as Lester del Rey, wanted the academics to "get out of my Ghetto," many other authors, and fans, have yearned for social respectability they have felt was long denied. They wanted a chance for science fiction to prove that it had put that "Buck Rogers" stuff behind it and graduated to a serious literature, not only of ideas, but of characterization, plot, and even relevance. While this book can't bestow any of those things on the genre, it does demonstrate that academics are taking it seriously. http://www.sfsite.com/09a/ll255.htm Sat, 1 Sep 2007 11:00:00 GMT T.J. is a fourteen-year-old whose family has had to sell their farm, and T.J.'s horse, and move to the city. The city is a foreign place to T.J. who maintains her sanity by texting with her friend Julie. Even that bond is threatened, however, when Elizabeth comes into T.J.'s life. Elizabeth is a Little, an eighteen-inch-tall girl whose family lives in the walls of the house T.J.'s family has bought. Just as T.J. feels her parents don't understand what she's going through, Elizabeth also feels separated from her parents, who don't realize she's grown up. http://www.sfsite.com/09a/ut255.htm Sat, 1 Sep 2007 11:00:00 GMT The author does an extraordinary job of juggling a dozen balls -- political mayhem, exotic tech, ethical dilemmas, probability magic, cultural milieu, social interactions between both HUMAN friends, enemies and rivals and ALIEN ones. She creates a beautifully coherent world, and exhibits the true storyteller's gift of creating truly alien aliens -- because she understands humans so well. http://www.sfsite.com/09a/pd255.htm Sat, 1 Sep 2007 11:00:00 GMT In the third of a series of fantasy/SF/detective novels, the story involves a young chorus boy who makes money on the side as a rent boy. Someone who hires him has a nastier desire -- they send him magically to hell. This attracts the attention of Inspector Chen of the Singapore Three police force and his colleague Zhu Irzh, a demon from Hell, but at first they can't do much -- missing rent boys, alas, are only too common. But Chen and Irzh have another assignment -- they are sent to Hell on a bureaucratic tour of sorts, complete with a companion: a warrior woman of Heaven. http://www.sfsite.com/09a/in255.htm Sat, 1 Sep 2007 11:00:00 GMT Jack and Amy Whalen, a former policeman turned writer, and his wife who works in advertising, are living the quiet life tucked away in small town America. Until Gary Fisher, an old high school friend of Jack's, turns up with circumstantial evidence which suggests Amy might have a connection to the Anderson murders. Running parallel with this is the story of nine-year-old Madison, a girl who goes missing while walking on a deserted beach. Madison is suffering from odd blackouts, during which she cannot remember her actions. Inside her head she senses another presence, and it is this entity, an older adult mind, which directs her relentlessly toward an unknown destination. http://www.sfsite.com/09a/bv255.htm Sat, 1 Sep 2007 11:00:00 GMT Dark Horse published several dozen Buffy comics beginning in 1998, not too many of them very good. The quality of the art varied wildly, and the writing was often flat and uninspired. Though it had enthusiasm to spare, it was missing the guiding hands of Whedon and the talented men and women who wrote and produced the television show through seven mostly excellent seasons on two different networks. No such problem exists for this new series. http://www.sfsite.com/lists/yb-sf-author01.htm Sat, 1 Sep 2007 11:00:00 GMT In 1984, Gardner Dozois gathered together what he thought was the best short science fiction of the previous year. He scrutinized as many of the magazines, collections and anthologies published in 1983 that he could get his hands on and chose those which he felt best represented the science fiction field. Jim Frenkel published it as part of his Bluejay Books line (for three years) and it has been produced every year since then (by St. Martins's Press). http://www.sfsite.com/09a/sp255.htm Sat, 1 Sep 2007 11:00:00 GMT "I have not read Jules Verne's Hector Servadac. That's not particularly remarkable; I've not read A La Recherche Du Temps Perdu or Les Particules Elementaires or any number of other works of French literature. The reason for mentioning this is that Splinter is a sort of riposte to Hector Servadac (published in English as Off on a Comet), a novel Adam Roberts freely admits is 'not one of Verne's well known titles.'" http://www.sfsite.com/09a/na255.htm Sat, 1 Sep 2007 11:00:00 GMT This book is presented as a series of loosely connected novellas, centred around the crime solving adventures of Lady Abigail Irene Garrett, and Sebastian de Ulloa. Garrett is a flint hard, caustic tongued, forensic sorceress, and de Ulloa is a thousand year-old wampyr, something like a bisexual Hercule Poirot. Beginning separately, but eventually combining talents and causes, the pair make their unique way through six stories, set at the turn of the 20th century. But this is a world in which sorcery is an every day fact of life. http://www.sfsite.com/09a/tw255.htm Sat, 1 Sep 2007 11:00:00 GMT TWOC is British police shorthand for Taken Without Owner's Consent, and it's what British juveniles get charged with when they are nicked behind the wheel of somebody else car that they've stolen for a joyride. It's what sixteen-year-old Matt was done for after being involved in the taking of a silver-grey Ferrari Testarossa that wound up unhappily for all concerned. http://www.sfsite.com/09a/sb255.htm Sat, 1 Sep 2007 11:00:00 GMT Todd is a thirteen-year-old boy who yearns to slip the surly bonds of Earth and explore the vastness of space. Unfortunately, Todd is intelligent enough to understand that he doesn't have enough aptitude in math or the physical requirements to become an astronaut. Instead he spends his days as a typical teenager. Life doesn't begin to get strange for him until the day that he sees a dwarf appear from thin air in his backyard. http://www.sfsite.com/books/new255.htm Sat, 1 Sep 2007 11:00:00 GMT The most recent stack of books to arrive on the doorstep of the SF Site offices has quite a few exciting treats, including the latest from William Gibson, Stephen Baxter, Kelley Armstrong, and Terry Brooks, as well as a first novel from Christopher Barzak, a good selection of genre magazines, plus advance copies of forthcoming books from Stephen Donaldson and Terry Pratchett, and much more besides. http://www.sfsite.com/09a/ft255.htm Sat, 1 Sep 2007 11:00:00 GMT This is a clever book, and a cute book, and one can chuckle a lot while reading it. It's nothing less or more than what it purports to be: fairy tales for writers, mixed up into verse. The author takes fairy tales like Cinderella and Snow White and uses them as templates for various experiences modern-day writers live: the workshops, the rejections, the rewrites, the sales (and, ahem, the reviews). http://www.sfsite.com/columns/rick255.htm Sat, 1 Sep 2007 11:00:00 GMT September is a busy month for television watchers. There is a lot to see. Whether any of it is worth seeing remains to be seen. Best bet: Heroes. http://www.sfsite.com/09a/fm255.htm Sat, 1 Sep 2007 11:00:00 GMT Jason Taverner is a successful pop singer (more in the Frank Sinatra mode than in any plausible 70s mode), and also the host of a very successful TV variety show. He lives in the US in 1988, in a future where almost all black people have either been killed or sterilized. There are flying cars, but otherwise the milieu is somewhat seedy and not too different from our real 1974. He believes himself to be a "six," one of a group of genetically enhanced individuals. Then one day Jason Taverner is erased from existence. http://www.sfsite.com/rssfeeds01.htm Sat, 1 Jan 2005 11:00:00 GMT After constructing our first RSS feed, it soon became apparent that the size of files could grow quickly. We decided to separate them into smaller ones, breaking them up by month. On this page you will find RSS feed files for all of our content beginning with January 2005.