Patient Zero and The Dragon Factory by Jonathan Maberry
reviewed by John Enzinas
Patient Zero is a tightly written Clancyesque techno-thriller with super secret government organizations, jihads, Machiavellian businessmen, well executed violence, plausible science and zombies! It was a gripping read and that's the only complaint John had. There were very few pauses in the action where he could set the book down and get some sleep. Then he started The Dragon Factory.

In Between by R.A. MacAvoy
reviewed by Rich Horton
The story is about a Chinese-American painter named Ewen Young. He lives a peaceful enough life, and he's a fine painter, though his personal life has had some disappointments, including a live-in girlfriend who left him. But overall, things seem fine. Then he is attacked by a couple of thugs, who state that he's a message for his beloved but rather disreputable Uncle Jimmy, who apparently owes a mobster a lot of money.

Thoughts and Dreams by John H. MacDonald
reviewed by Sandra Scholes
The first thing that grabs you about this book of contemporary poetry is the fact it puts off the reader by using capital letters throughout its entirety, and due to the advent of the internet and netiquette, those who are aware of netiquette will feel the poetry on every page is shouting at them.

Star Trek TNG: Lost Souls by David Mack
reviewed by Michael M Jones
After decades of buildup and innumerable skirmishes, the Borg have declared all-out war upon the Federation and her allies. As thousands of Borg cubes launch a relentless, genocidal assault upon civilized space, leaving nothing but destruction in their wake, only a few Federation starships are left free to seek out a solution. But what, if anything, can stop the Borg once and for all?

Star Trek TNG: Mere Mortals by David Mack
reviewed by Michael M Jones
As the Borg continue their relentless, unstoppable assault upon the Alpha Quadrant, the Federation and its allies examine every possible solution in the hopes of preventing an otherwise-inevitable extinction. Entire worlds are dying, and the clock is ticking, while Starfleet's finest ships desperately pursue various avenue. The U.S.S. Enterprise, as usual, is at the forefront of the action, with Captain Picard determined to hold the line against the invading Borg.

Star Trek TNG: Gods of Night by David Mack
reviewed by Michael M Jones
The Federation is in danger once again, as the Borg have renewed their attacks with a new, vicious enthusiasm, aiming for annihilation rather than assimilation. Entire worlds have already fallen beneath their relentless fury, and the Federation's resources are rapidly being stretched to their limits. But not all hope is lost.

Scuzzworms by Ella Mack
reviewed by John Enzinas
A scientific detective novel, it begins with the arrival of the main character on the research station. She has been hired as an Ethnobiologist, someone who looks at the interactions of creatures and attempts to understand what drives them. She is also a very angry person and carries a chip on her shoulder that the slightest breeze could disturb.  Thankfully on a orbital station, the breezes are few and far between.

Scott Mackay

Weird Scenes Inside the Godmind by Douglas A. Mackey
reviewed by Georges T. Dodds
The book has Ronan doing a Edgar Cayce exercise in channeling a presumably Dick-like author's posthumous masterpiece, Mark getting involved in a play with a woman who is actually a good old fashioned BEM (Bug-eyed Monster), Mary Anna, an unstable therapist who becomes a homicidal whore while possessed by the evil entity Da, and Cora a nouveau-vampire who is reaching new spiritual levels through her Tibetan guru. These four misfits are supposed to unify in some transcendent state when the apocalypse comes...

Wages of Sin by Jenna Maclaine
reviewed by Katherine Petersen
The story takes place in Regency England in and around London. Dulcinea Craven comes from a long line of powerful witches who usually come into their power gradually as they age, but Dulcie receives all her power at once, the night her parents are killed in a mysterious carriage accident on their way home from a party. In fact, Dulcie's whole life changes that night.

Journeys by Ian R. MacLeod
reviewed by Steven H Silver
The author's stories have won multiple World Fantasy and Sidewise Awards and his novels have garnered him Clarke and Campbell trophies. This fourth collection provides insight into why his work is held in such high esteem. In many of the stories, he is able to take the time to flesh out a complex setting, familiar, yet quite different from the world in which we live.

Breathmoss and Other Exhalations by Ian R. MacLeod
reviewed by Chris Przybyszewski
In the novella, "Breathmoss," the author sets the story on a fantasy world that implants spores called Breathmoss into the lungs of its young so that they can breath in the environment. The world of is terribly original, a living, breathing space of reality that lacks ornamentation and that holds an internal truth. It teaches the reader a new language, one that draws the reader into the story and as we understand the language more regularly, we perceive the characters in a new way.

The House of Storms by Ian R. MacLeod
reviewed by David Soyka
The discovery of the alchemical substance aether has ushered in an alternate Industrial Revolution based on magic rather than steam power; the "Age" that follows the events of The Light Ages, the author's previous novel, is a sort of late Victorian period in which Victrola phonographs exist not at all incongruously side-by-side with telephone systems capable of video transmission.

The Light Ages by Ian R. MacLeod
reviewed by Gabe Mesa
Robert Borrows is born into one of the lowlier guilds in the village of Bracebridge, a town that lives off the mining of aether. He leads a normal existence, living with his parents and older sister, going to school... barring any disaster he will one day be expected to follow his father into the toolmakers' guild and into the same life of grinding, borderline poverty. One day, however, Robert accompanies his mother on a mysterious trip to a rundown house in a nearby town Shortly after the visit, Robert's mother takes ill and the family's worst fears are realized when it is clear that she is becoming a changeling, for reasons Robert can't fathom.

The Night Sessions by Ken MacLeod
reviewed by Greg L. Johnson
Subterfuge, misdirection, false assumptions and misplaced suspicions are the building blocks of many a good murder mystery. This is a novel that constantly leads its characters, and its readers, down one path, only to have the story twist away in a new direction. By the end, what begins as a murder mystery with some political overtones has become, for everyone involved, much, much more.

The Restoration Game by Ken MacLeod
reviewed by David Soyka
This is a techno-thriller, though it's more precisely a geek-thriller in that the first person narrator, Lucy Stone, is an online game developer for a company called Small Worlds (one of number of jokes underpinning the novel's plotline). However, Lucy isn't so much a geek as a "chicks-kick butt"-styled heroine who is usually the smartest one in a room full of clueless testosterone.

The Human Front by Ken Macleod
reviewed by Nathan Brazil
It is a feather-weight book, which packs a heavyweight punch. In terms of size, it's a novella, but it includes more entertainment than many books that are four times its length. The theme is alternate history, with specific reference to AHABs, an acronym meaning Advanced High Altitude Bomber. AHABs are better known as flying saucers, and in this timeline, they are the ultimate weapon.

Newton's Wake by Ken MacLeod
reviewed by Adam Volk
We follow the misadventures of Lucinda Carlyle, a hard-bitten combat archeologist and member of the infamous "bloody Carlyle's"; a group of renegade explorers who have managed to gain control of a network of wormholes known only as the Skein. On her first tactical command, Lucinda leads her motley crew to the uncharted -- and supposedly uninhabited -- planet of Eurydice, only to discover the descendants of long forgotten group of human colonists who fled the Earth centuries ago during the chaotic period known as the Hard Rapture.

The Human Front by Ken MacLeod and A Writer's Life by Eric Brown
reviewed by Greg L. Johnson
There are basically two ways to approach the publishing of these two-in-one paperbacks, you can pick stories that are similar in style and content, hoping they will each appeal to the same readers, or you can present a contrast, pair up two stories that are quite dissimilar in content, written by two writers with different styles, and give readers familiar with one the opportunity to discover someone new.

Cosmonaut Keep by Ken MacLeod
reviewed by Peter D. Tillman
Like most of his books, this novel is told in two alternating timelines. By far the most interesting story-strand is set on the planet Mingulay, in a complex society of humans, saurs, krakens and other sentients. This first volume in a new series comes to an adequate resolution, with plenty of hooks to prime you for the next installment. MacLeod's writing just keeps getting better, with intelligent politics, amazing inventions and a spectacular new universe-playground. Highly recommended.

Countdown by Michelle Maddox
reviewed by Michael M Jones
Kira has been eking out a passable existence as a thief and pickpocket ever since the brutal murder of her family when she was in her teens. Occasionally using her psychic ability to "read" people, she picks her targets carefully. Unfortunately, she's finally crossed the wrong person. She wakes up in a dark room, chained, with an infamous mass murderer likewise secured.

The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction

The Magazine of Speculative Poetry Volume 9.1
reviewed by Sandra Scholes
From the front cover, readers will think that the poets inside this small sized digest think outside the box, and they would be right. These poems are all based on the imaginings of poets who have in them an interest in science fiction whether it is about spaceships, far off galaxies or robots.

The Magazine of Speculative Poetry -- Spring 2008
reviewed by John Enzinas
The Magazine of Speculative Poetry
from the Spring of 2008
Holds poems related to rocketry
and one of a robot's dark fate.

The Magazine of Speculative Poetry, Spring 2003
reviewed by Stephen M. Davis
This edition of The Magazine of Speculative Poetry doesn't have the strength of previous numbers I've seen, and the best poem of the lot, "The Water Bulls" by Ray DiZazzo, doesn't appear particularly speculative.

The Magazine of Speculative Poetry, Volume 4, Number 3
reviewed by Stephen M. Davis
Stephen found the best overall poem to be Sandra Lindow's "Because We Must," which tries to find a new approach in talking about a sexual encounter. He also discovered some nice moments in the poems of Charlee Jacob and Rachael M. Lininger. Most of the poetry, however, didn't stand up to Stephen's rigid 'Wordsworth prose paraphrase' test.

Kingdom Come by Elliot S. Maggin
reviewed by Mark Shainblum
Mark thinks the author has distinguished himself as a man who truly understood the mythological underpinnings of the material he was writing before such understanding was fashionable. He is one of a very small stable of writers who can convincingly write superhero adventure in prose form.

Mirror Mirror by Gregory Maguire
reviewed by Hank Luttrell
The retelling of Snow White in this book has it placed in a more definite historical milieu and geographical location. Instead of a land far, far away; long, long ago, it takes place in Renaissance Italy, and the architect of the poisoned apple becomes Lucrezia Borgia, a reasonable situation for an infamous poisoner. All the well-remembered players in the old tale are here, but their identities are better defined and complex, their motivations more clear and definite, and their roles much larger.

Never The Bride and Something Borrowed by Paul Magrs
reviewed by Sandy Auden
Everyone living in Whitby has a secret. A small English coastal resort it may be, but it is also hides some strange and curious people. For starters, there's Mrs Claus, the maniacal owner of the Christmas Hotel -- a place where they're perpetually celebrating Christmas for the hordes of coach parties and local pensioners. Then there's Mr Danby, the owner of the spookily named Deadly Boutique, where beauty and youthful looks come at a high price. And don't forget Effie, the old lady at the Junk Shop with her dubious set of ancestors, and Effie's best friend Brenda, the Bed & Breakfast lady with some of the biggest secrets of all.

The Horribly Haunted School by Margaret Mahy
reviewed by Neil Walsh
This is an intelligent, playful adventure with an air of mystery about it. There are plenty of silly-sounding names (like Scrunley Filcher and Jessica Frogcutlet), interesting characters, and spoofing glimpses at some of the unusual obsessions and instabilities of adults.

Time Rider by Rickey R. Mallory
reviewed by Lisa DuMond
What the author has created is a rare surprise: an actual love story in a science fiction setting. Not a slurpy romance, plunked down in the future to snare a few more readers, but an involving, earthy love dependent on its speculative story. And it's not a 'young miss' kind of romance: this is emotion, and lust, and definitely not for the kiddies.

Le Morte D'Arthur by Thomas Malory
reviewed by William Thompson
This represents not only the first novel in English, but arguably the first novel of fantasy. Its universal tale of love and betrayal, the striving for unattainable ideals amidst the turmoil of human frailty, an earlier age at the threshold of profound change, has remain seated in the imagination of successive generations, profoundly influencing a large and diverse number of authors, artists and filmmakers, from the Pre-Raphaelites and Beardsley, directors as different as John Boorman, Bresson and the crew of Monty Python, to writers as far distant in their outlook and intention as Twain, Steinbeck, The Inklings and Michael Moorcock.

The Business of Science Fiction: Two Insiders Discuss Writing and Publishing by Mike Resnick and Barry N. Malzberg
reviewed by Steven H Silver
The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America publish a quarterly magazine, the SFWA Bulletin, which contains a variety of articles on the business of writing, markets, news about the members, and so on. One feature of the Bulletin, which has run since the 90s, is a series of dialogues between Mike Resnick and Barry N. Malzberg on the business of writing.

The Best Time Travel Stories of All Time edited by Barry Malzberg
reviewed by Steven H Silver
Steven looked at the name of this anthology and thought: what a great title. Opening the book, he was quickly disappointed. Sure, the stories included are wonderful, but he noticed that all of the stories in the book were published before 1996. Surely a book about time travel purporting to the best of all time should include stories from 2013, 2395 and 3641.

The Boy with the Cuckoo-Clock Heart by Mathias Malzieu
reviewed by Sarah Trowbridge
High on a hilltop in the city of Edinburgh in 1874, the kindly and eccentric Dr. Madeleine indulges her love for mending people. She serves as a midwife to prostitutes and other desperate women, and houses their babies until she can find adoptive homes for them. On the coldest day in the history of the world, a young woman shows up on Dr. Madeleine's doorstep, brokenhearted and on the brink of giving birth. But when Little Jack emerges, something is terribly wrong: Jack has been born with a frozen heart.

Clarkesworld Magazine #1 edited by Nick Mamatas
reviewed by Amal El-Mohtar
Livejournal is a wonderful thing. Say what you will about blogging and how it's shameless wankery on the part of the author and shameful voyeurism on the part of the reader, it remains that blogs spread the word about things that might be easily missed and really ought not to be. Clarkesworld Magazine is one of those things.

Terrapin Or by Tilper Manaday
reviewed by Georges T. Dodds
You could describe as absurdist this tale of an unemployed engineer who discovers a machine capable of selectively teleporting items or bits of matter all over the world and even the universe. Along with his sidekick, a reclusive obese billionaire with a pathological fear of women, he uses it to clean up and disarm the Earth, eliminate drug addiction (at least locally), set straight a televangelist and, of course, set off a number of amusing if odd consequences.

Razor Girl by Marianne Mancusi
reviewed by Michael M Jones
In 2030, as the world was descending into chaos thanks to a flu-like plague that killed many and mutated others into ravening monsters, Molly Anderson and her mother hid away in a specially-prepared bunker, courtesy of her father, a brilliant scientist and conspiracy theorist who always knew this day would come. Six years later, the bunker's locks release, and Molly is released into a world devastated and transformed, a post-Apocalyptic society where decaying corpses litter empty houses, and vicious zombies prowl the streets.

Razor Girl by Marianne Mancusi and Life As We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer
reviewed by Georges T. Dodds
Both novels are about teenage girls growing up to become young women under the impetus of having to survive after a planet-wide disaster. However, each takes a radically different approach to their subject. Both are entertaining reads, seemingly achieve the effect they intend, and neither suffers from major faults in their respective genres, though neither are entirely original or groundbreaking either.

Stevenson Among the Palm Trees by Alberto Manguel
reviewed by Seamus Sweeney
Oscar Wilde once wrote to Robert Ross that "romantic surroundings are the worst surroundings possible for a romantic writer. In Gower Street, Stevenson could have written a new Trois Mousquetaires. In Samoa, he wrote letters to The Times about Germans." Looking at the lives of some the titans of imaginative literature, there is some justice in the remark. Jules Verne, creator of so many spectacular (not to mention fantastic) voyages, would have the vapours at the mere thought of leaving Paris; and of course Proust, confined to the cork-lined room, was the supreme literary pioneer of the exploration of time as well as space.

The Dictionary of Imaginary Places by Alberto Manguel and Gianni Guadalupi
reviewed by Steven H Silver
This book is a tribute to the collective human imagination in more ways than one. It contains more than 1200 imaginary places ranging from Homer's Aiaia to J.K. Rowling's Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Many of the locations included come from much more obscure sources (Tommaso Porcacchi's Le isole piu' famose del mondo); however, the more famous are also well represented (J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Shire").

Ghosts of Manhattan by George Mann
reviewed by Nathan Brazil
The setting is 1926 New York, in an alternate reality where there are coal-powered cars, and biplanes take off from standing starts atop skyscrapers, using primitive rocket boosters. The USA is engaged in a Cold War with the British Empire, which still covers half the globe, and the British have only just buried Queen Victoria, whose life was artificially preserved to the age of 107. Targeted murders are occurring across New York, the victims all found with pristine Roman coins laid on their eyelids after death.

The Solaris Book of New Fantasy edited by George Mann
reviewed by Rich Horton
All lovers of short SF and Fantasy have been missing a regular series of unthemed original anthologies, in the mode of Frederik Pohl's pioneering Star, Damon Knight's Orbit, Terry Carr's Universe, Robert Silverberg's New Dimensions, and most recently, Patrick Nielsen Hayden's all too short-lived Starlight. So it is delightful to see in 2007 the beginnings of no fewer than four such series: Jonathan Strahan's Eclipse, Lou Anders's Fast Forward, and two separate books from Solaris, edited by George Mann: The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction, and The Solaris Book of New Fantasy.

The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction edited by George Mann
reviewed by David Hebblethwaite
Solaris Books is the new science fiction and fantasy imprint from Games Workshop's publishing arm. This anthology is their "book-sized calling card." It's heartening to see a company with Games Workshop's clout investing, as it were, in the field; so one wants to wish Solaris well -- provided, of course, that they publish good fiction.

The Severed Man by George Mann
reviewed by David Hebblethwaite
The fifth entry in the Time Hunter series sees time travellers Honoré Lechasseur and Emily Blandish on the trail of two mysterious figures -- a small boy and a tramp. Lechasseur has the ability to perceive people's time-lines (or 'time-snakes' as he calls them here), and both these individuals have unusual ones. The boy's time-snake has no end or beginning; in contrast, the tramp's has been cut, so he exists only in the present.

The Compleat Boucher edited by James A. Mann
reviewed by Peter D. Tillman
The wry, literate, understated and still very readable stories collected here were mostly written between 1940 and 1952. The author's best stories have entered the permanent science fiction and fantasy repertoire. It's a collection to be read a story or two at a time.

Horror and Mystery Photoplay Editions and Magazine Fictionizations by Thomas Mann
reviewed by Trent Walters
This book is a curiosity. It covers a period of books made inspired from film, which morphed into what we know today as the movie tie-in. The author writes why he began collecting: "At the time, I usually assumed I would never get to see all the movies to which photoplay books were linked," noting that he could not have anticipated the invention of the DVD and cable TV.

A Change Of Destiny by Marilynn Mansfield
reviewed by Lisa DuMond
Romantic science fiction. Science fiction romance. Sounds as if it ought to be the same thing, doesn't it? This e-book falls somewhere in the middle, but Lisa'd have to give it a nudge toward the romance department.

Dawn Song by Michael Marano
reviewed by Victoria Strauss
It's 1990, the eve of the Gulf War. As ruler of hell, the Enfolded One is busy dealing out mass hysteria, war, bigotry and religious oppression. Meanwhile, a Succubus arrives in Boston, sent by the Unbowed One, who is rival to the Enfolded One. The Unbowed One once ruled in hell and wishes to do so again...

Hum by Scott Marcano and Tom Lenoci
reviewed by John Enzinas
Hum takes place on a world that was colonized and then ignored. The world was capable of supporting human life, but something caused 80 percent of the colonists to be struck permanently blind. At first, the sighted cared for the blind, but then they became resentful and made the blind their slaves, justifying it through their physical superiority. The slaves rebel and leave to set up their own villages of the blind.

Astronauts and Heretics by Thomas Marcinko
reviewed by David Maddox
Seven stories set in seven different worlds very similar to our own, but very different as well. This is what the author creates with his short story collection. It is a compelling read that ventures through the super-hero genre, alien/human intermingling, the second coming of Jesus, and even a well-known sitcom retold as a fan-boy extravaganza.